Church

A week ago (last Sunday), I experienced church. And it was pretty cool.

Let me back up. I had been discontented with a lot of "church" stuff lately. I was seeing a lot of hypocrisy, a lot of showiness, a lot of bright and shiny faces sitting in pews while the minds behind the eyes were brooding over the hurts and sores and sins they were unwilling to confess to anyone because they were still too busy playing

the stained-glass masquerade.

I had been attending the "conservative" congregation in town, the "bulwark of the faith" for the area, boasting nearly 1000 members on Sunday mornings and yet... Not really helping make life changes in any of them. I was so tired of conservative Christianity arguing all of the time about the dangers of heresies such as liberalism, idealism, and worse still... the Democratic party. So my reaction was to get away from that and go to the other end of the spectrum. I started attending some of the more "open-minded" churches in the area, trying to find a better balance between Christ's teachings and Christ's true purpose in life: to love God and love others. I figured the conservative churches had the teaching but were missing the purpose, so I went to hang out with liberals I thought would get the purpose.

They weren't.

I realized that they were just the other side of the same coin, arguing all of the time about freedom in Christ and how the "conservatives" were so full of division (not seeing that by labeling them as "conservatives" they were dividing from them themselves). They were arguing the other end of the spectrum on the same exact issues and

nobody was looking anything like what I thought Christ died for.

So after my day of fasting, I went and talked with my campus minister from back home. We talked about a lot of things, but one thing that I really wanted to discuss was my disillusionment with church. I was so tired of what we had changed the community that Christ intended for us to have as brothers and sisters in Christ into, and I told him that it was greatly crippling my faith. He told me something I will never forget, "Don't let the church get in the way of your relationship with Christ."

I needed that one.

But at the same time, he said, this messed-up, hypocritical system of "church" was EXACTLY what Christ died for. He died for messed-up people, to try and bring them into a better way of life. And the church is disfunctional because it's full of people: people that are still trying to figure it out. And he encouraged me to not give up on them, but to lead them.

That's when I remembered that someone once taught me, "Church isn't about what you get out of it, but about what you put into it."

So I'm done with the labels. I'm done with "conservative," and I'm done with "liberal." There is no "conservative" or "liberal" in God's eyes. Those are terms we use to add shades of gray to His spectrum of black-and-white, absolute truth. Someone isn't "conservative" or "liberal," they are either right or they are wrong. And it's my goal to do what's right and encourage others to do the same, regardless of what that might mean for the labels they've been wearing in church for so long.

And so I came back to school last Sunday afternoon and I decided that I would find a church where it could be about what I put into it instead of what I got out of it. So where did I go? You'll get a kick out of this one: the nursing home down the street. They had a service at two o' clock in the afternoon. So I showed up in my holey jeans and unwashed button-down I'd been wearing that weekend, and the little, blue-haired old women accepted me just fine. They were just glad that I was there. There were only three of them. The minister from one of the local churches was so excited to see fresh faces that he was encouraged too; he even had me pass out the Lord's Supper to the old women. We sat and chatted, we sang songs, we read Scripture and prayed and I walked away feeling recharged. And it wasn't at all because I went to some magnificent or glorious or elaborate service; it was because I connected with other people who were trying to connect with God.

And I think that's what church really is.