***This was originally shared in the Weekly Grazing—the weekly newsletter for Church of the Good Shepherd***
Earlier this week, I read a great article that in many ways details who we’re trying to be as a church. We desire to be a community that experiences and shares the love of Jesus Christ in everything we do—as opposed to being the cool or relevant church of the day.
Roger Scruton (British philosopher) correctly wrote, “Our deepest social need is for the first-person plural of belonging, and to belong is to belong in a place.” To say that another way, people need to belong to something as a community and a place. Each of us needs to be part of a “we,” and that “we” is generally connected to a place. We all desire and long for a community or a church that “feels like home.”
Quoting the article:
“Modern christianity is eager to fill this void. Churches will go to great lengths adapting into a society that emphasizes utility and function, where creature comforts become the model for attracting more members. The modern church becomes a mere tool for the purpose of bringing in new people to consume what is offered. Those who come, come to take, not receive. I have often wondered how many of those multitudes would show up to worship at any given time if the coffee shops, merchandise, children’s programs, comfortable chairs, or even the buildings themselves were stripped away…”
These ‘creature comforts’ are not an evil thing at all (we all appreciate and enjoy them at Good Shepherd!), but when they become the primary attracting magnet of a church, something is clearly wrong! So what ought to be the attracting pull to a church? More from the article:
“When people grow tired of the rapidly shifting nature of modern culture, weary of not finding happiness in self-satisfaction, they will find the core of their longing fulfilled in the steadfast, though paradoxical, love of Christ. After all, those who want to find their life must lose it.
A church filled with this love will brim with joy despite leaky roofs of old buildings, yellowed linoleum, loud children, or long distances traveled. In fact, you are likely to see a sparkle in someone’s eye, participate in shared meals during times of sorrow and celebration, find a place of belonging, and ultimately experience the Presence of Christ. Within the Church, imperfections and foibles are still aplenty. Yet how good it is to find a haven of peace, to hang up the mask of self-preservation used to blend seamlessly into the world.”
Amen and amen. Elsewhere in the article, the writer shares a story about her Anglican priest paying genuine attention to her children. This is something she’d not witnessed in her prior church experience. She writes,
“Later, I realized this may have been the first time a pastor had ever paid genuine attention to our children. Their pastoral interactions up to this point had been mainly of the “be good to your momma” Southern Baptist variety with a hand-shake at the door...What we were given was not a singular moment, but a form of love we continued to see played out in many ways during our time at the church. People were recognized as individual souls, down to the smallest child, with their unique qualities noticed and cherished…It felt the way a family ought to love: grace for the imperfect and forgiveness for the repentant. And where this love dwells, joy has freedom to bubble forth.”
Please join me in praying that Church of the Good Shepherd would be a church just like that—a church that values and loves all of its people (especially the smallest ones!), shows grace to the imperfect, and bursts with the joy of Christ’s love.
***If you’re interested, you can read the entire article at Mere Orthodoxy: “How Patient Attention Nurtures the Life of the Church” by Jessie Turpin.