Doing it wrong…

As I get back into my normal ‘working’ week after being away in Northern Ireland with our friends visiting DH’s family, I read this post from Jamie Wright and it really resonated. The picture of church that Jamie paints of kids running everywhere, people chatting (I mean, really telling you how they feel) and general chaos is the story of our (church) lives. This often brings me pain and doubt. I feel uncomfortable when people express things in church that I would never say. I want the children to sit down and shut up. I want church to be cool and sexy. I want it for myself, so that I can be a pastor of the cool and sexy church. I want it so that I can say to other (generally male) pastors with off-handed coolness that we have ‘x’ number of cool people in our church. I want to be able to tell my friends and relatives that my church is super funky and definitely won’t make you feel uncomfortable if you visit it. I want to sing those sexy Christian songs that sound so good with the super-great band and hot worship leader. I want to hear 30 minute-long sermons (without interruptions for questions) complete with film illustrations and back-lighting for the (generally male) preacher.

The problem is that every time I go to not-very-wrong church I feel very wrong. I used to be able to be comfortable doing a bit of wrong-church and a bit of not-very-wrong church, but I can’t anymore. The balance of comfort to discomfort has shifted too far, and I feel that everyone can see that I’m a bit fish-out-of-water with the whole situation. And, truth be told, wrong church sort of fits me. I’m too full of doubt, too much of a woman pastor, too interested in loving-people-just-because-they-are-people-not-to-try-to-convert-them to fit in anywhere else. But I do worry because we don’t really have the answers and there seem to be loads of cool churches out there who do. I think though, from the conversations that I keep having with other only-just-30-somethings (!) that that is actually OK. Church perhaps used to be a place that people had their questions answered, and certainly there is a place for trying on different answers for questions that we have, but I think that we need church to be a place that we can honestly put the questions out there and talk, wrestle and pray. Rachel Held Evans has been writing about this for CNN and on her blog and it has struck a chord with many people. Perhaps wrong church is what many people really long for: a place that we might discover Jesus together, and begin to figure out how to follow him with honesty, integrity and love for each other and those around us.

I have been encouraged recently by a friend who was visiting commenting that they wished that their church did some of the things that ours does: like helping out our neighbours with the unruly gardens, or cleaning an elderly gentlemen’s house. Another visitor also said how special it was that we were a church where people could name their pain and their struggles. I don’t want to get too over-enthusiastic about our motley crew, but actually, I think that its probably time that I had a bit more confidence and optimism about what and who we’re trying to be. We’re not getting it right all the time, maybe not even most of the time, but some of the time, by the grace of God, I think that we just might be.

Its a good place to start on a Monday morning.