Buying a Church

If you can go church shopping can you presumably buy a church?  Lately I've been doing a lot of shopping.  Of churches that is.  I counted in my head last night and I've been to 7 churches in the 7 Sundays that I've lived in San Diego.  I'm guessing there were 3 weeks when I didn't go to church at all.  Last Sunday I went to 3 different congregations.  The first one was Crosspointe church.  The name was misleading though.  It should have been called Prophecy Prosperity Powerhouse.  For an hour the band and pastor would exchange the spotlight and make random disparaging comments about other denominations and movements within Christianity.  The most stereotypical Pentecostal church I've ever been to.  After said hour Chris and I left to go home.  At least the church was within walking distance.  On the way home we checked out a rec center by our house.  Who knows, maybe there is basketball court in there...

We were met by Russell, in his late twenties or early thirties wearing an oversized shirt and accessorized with a contemporary manbag.  He was quite friendly and eventually we got into talking about IC and a possible screening.  He was telling us about all the events this church has during the week and some great ways for us to get involved.  He also went on this spiel about how the church needs to forget about denominations and division and return to its roots. We politely asked what denomination his church was apart of.  International Church of Christ . Ok sounds legit enough to me.  When we leave Chris explains to me that he thinks that denomination was the same one his sister got involved with at college, which turned out to be extremely legalistic and considered a cult.  After Wikipedia enlightened us, we realized his spiel was a classic Restorationist argument.  Ok quick review here: First church, freaks.  Second church, cult.  And this is all happening during a very tumultuous time in my faith.  I am tempted to write the whole church thing off.

After lunch my roommate Ad suggested going to another local church called Journey Community Church.  Given that my faith began at a community church, this sounded pretty safe.  So I went.  As we walk up to the church a bunch of young people are walking towards their cars.  Instead of a formal service they were heading downtown to feed the homeless.  Ok this I can deal with.  So we went and had some good conversations and got to meet some pretty resilient people.  I was thinking that that experience redeemed the previous ones.  A couple days later I called Jay and we were talking about our general attitudes at churches now.  I feel like I've moved past criticizing everything a church does.  My thoughts would range from the bulletins to the band.  That really isn't important to me now.  And I almost appreciate that people have found God in all of that- however much I could care about it.  Then I started thinking about my former job at Christ Community and how focused I was on the little things, like the fonts we used for the slides or how we decided to arrange Christmas carols.  And I know those things are important but they're all secondary to what a church is all about.  I've been to so many hip churches who use incredible media and have professional musicians lead their worship time.  But I could care less about that.  Isn't it really about loving people and seeking justice in the world?  And if people at a church aren't concerned about those things then why would I want to become a part of that?  I realized that I really look for people who genuinely care about others.  I can set aside the theological, cultural, and social differences for now.

I then thought of an excerpt from Blue Like Jazz that Kelly read to me and Jay before I finished the book.  It all centered on what was really important about a church and her mission.  Don Miller brought up all these people who are so focused on aesthetics but neglect the heart of what it means to be a good person.  A good person.  How have we lost that?  And I realized that I understood this idea on an emotional level not just an intellectual one.  And a light went on.  And I started thinking about how the church can do this.  That there has to be another way out.  That there has to be something better than this.  Something that's worth shopping for.  And I just might buy it.