I’ve been thinking (and struggling) with the notion of church lately. Before you get up in arms about that, let me say that I’m not leaving the established modern Western evangelical church. But there are definitely times where I think the notion of “church” is well meaning, but not honestly realistic.
Let me explain…
So, we sit in church on a Sunday morning, sometimes after we’ve been to Sunday School or perhaps we slept in or decided to do some work prior to church or whatever, but here we are, sitting in church. And then, invariably, the worship leader or pastor or some leader will say “let’s throw out all the distractions so we can concentrate on God.” Or something to that ilk. And the leader believes that’s totally possible.
I’m not necessarily one to think the world has changed so much on the last “X” number of years. I believe the single biggest societal change is the speed at which information travels. This causes the perception that life is somehow moving faster than it used to. I also feel that as we have moved from a lower middle class thru “regular” middle class and into a upper middle class society, we are afforded more opportunities. And thus, life seems to move faster.
So, the pastor is asking us to spend this one hour focused on God while the remainder of our lives are completely spent on other tasks. Perhaps others can make that immediate switch and somehow focus completely on what they are asked to focus on. I for one, find that difficult.
I think some of this points to where scripture asks us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). If our minds are always occupied with things of God, then, that time of focus perhaps isn’t so difficult. Perhaps it’s natural. Maybe I’m being too transparent here.
I don’t know how or even if there’s a solution to this. There’s many assumptions on how church should “work”. And this is typically based on how is has been done in the past. I suppose Jesus preached to the crowds so the precedent set is for crowds to gather to listen to a sermon. But maybe there’s a better suited way that (dare I say it) caters to how our minds function, or at least takes into account that information travels so fast now. Maybe the church should revise how the church does church?
