consumers in the church.

it's the end of my second full week of unemployment.

my first full week of unemployment was spent driving my sister and her dog to phoenix, somewhat ironically, because she has a new job there.

so for a week, i was mostly off the grid, and completely away from "church."

in some ways, it was a good break. in others, it was completely exhausting and not really what you could call a break.

i came back and taught my community my first day home.

then yesterday, i met with the pastor who is taking back the community after the young pastor he handed it off to a couple years ago was fired back in july (see previous post, etc).

i want to say we had a good conversation, but i think he is so excited at the prospect of teaching regularly that he can't hear my concerns that the overall church is losing its voice to speak to those with a postmodern mindset (often also called the "emerging generations"). we talked about reading and background and research when preparing a teaching, and he very firmly believes that the difficult questions should be avoided so that the faith of the hearers isn't trampled.

i can't do that. my teaching last week was on exodus 15, and i had to point out that the events in the song of 15 both don't completely match each other and don't match the prose account in chapters 13 and 14. i took it as an opportunity to point out to people how we read our bible and how it was written to be read differently. that we shouldn't expect poetry to match word-for-word a prose account.

i can't believe that a church should let people stay consumers, giving them what they want to hear and never disturbing their comfortable, middle class existence. the church should challenge them, it should make them question their faith and be a safe place to ask those questions and be real about struggles.

my husband said that if you don't give people what they want, you'll very quickly find yourself without a livlihood. i don't know if it's the voice of the idealistic seminarian or the prophet who answered, but i said, "i don't care! you preach the gospel. and if they kill you for it, then they kill you for it, but you don't stop preaching the gospel." he said i crossed the line from passion to anger.

i don't know. i guess i am angry about the consumer-oriented church. i'm sick of self-help christianity with a theraputic god who you only call on when your own ingenuity and pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps attempts fail. christianity isn't about making you a happier and better person. it's about living a new, resurrected life that makes no sense by the old rules so that you can show the world that there is a better way and it's coming, and let's be part of it!

the american church is dying because we give selfish people what they want. we need to give them what they don't want, what they can't want until their lives are full of Jesus and his Spirit.