Church...what is it good for? (again)

(From 'Naked Pastor'- see links. It is such a brilliant site...)


The blog title says it:- 'musings from the web'...


This is one I unearthed a few days back, quoting from someone who trained for the ministry (Chris Hedges http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081229_why_i_am_a_socialist/) who now rarely attends worship. It is from a USA perspective (I think):-

'the inanity of the sermons and the arrogance of many congregants, who appear to believe they are "honorary" sinners. The liberal church, attacked by atheists as an ineffectual "moderate" religion and by fundamentalists as a "nominal" form of Christianity, is as its critics point out, a largely vapid and irrelevant force… it does not understand how the world works or the seduction of evil. The liberal church is largely middle class, bourgeois phenomenon, filled with many people who have profited from industrialisation… and global capitalism. They often seem to think that if "we" can only be nice and inclusive, everything will work out. The liberal church also usually buys into the myth that we can morally progress as a species… [and has a] naive belief in our goodness and decency - this inability to face the dark reality of human nature, our capacity for evil and the morally neutral universe we inhabit……

Religious institutions, however, should be separated from the religious values imparted to me by religious figures, including my father. Most of these men and women ran afoul of their own religious authorities. Religion, real religion, involved fighting for justice, standing up for the voiceless and the weak, reaching out in acts of kindness and compassion to the stranger and the outcast, living a life of simplicity, cultivating empathy and defying the powerful. It was a commitment to care for the other. Spirituality was defined not by "how it is with me," but rather by the tougher spirituality of resistance, the spirituality born of struggle, of the fight with the world's evils. This spirituality, vastly different from the narcissism of modern spirituality movements, was eloquently articulated by King and the Lutheran minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was imprisoned and put to death by the Nazis'.

(HT: http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/)

His bile is against the 'liberal church', but it could be any of us. Is church really worth anything if we just attend from time to time or even attend regularly, but spend ages on what goes on inside (and just become banal and safe)?


I was leading something this week based on something that 'Fresh Expressions' http://www.freshexpressions.org.uk/index.asp?id=1 produced. It talked about how if Western churches make a move from isolated souls just happening to share the same space once a week, they move towards a 'pastoral' model- caring and loving each other, but that is where it stops. We have to move to a 'missional' model (horrible, horrible jargon) where our relationships show Christ, where we bleed and rejoice together, but where we turn outwards at the same time... so the hungry are fed and the humble lifted high (hmm... wonder where I have read that before?).

I guess when we just look at ourselves and get all pastoral, we end up getting obsessed with stuff that, although important, just doesn't matter in the global scheme of things: worship styles, defining the word 'missional', is this a 'proper' communion?, are they ordained? etc etc etc. Or is this just me? Or is this just one of my dark January rants?