Shiny Modern Churches

Most of the churches I've attended are "Modern Churches." They come from a modern era mind set. Because Modernity is about the pursuit of ever-increasing levels of order, modern churches are always on guard against anything that might mess up the order they've created.

For them, the raw reality of an unfiltered life is often far too candid and outrageous for polite conversation. So the unpredictable, the uncomfortable, the socially awkward (See Basement Ministries: Anyone under 18, the chronically disenfranchised, those with “issues,” anyone that is an uneasy fit or requires “extra grace”) are more tolerated than embraced.

As a group, Modernist Churches tend to classify things in terms of opposites. (churched, saved, faithful verses unchurched, unsaved, backslidden), whatever the terminology or label, what is subtly meant, is often acceptable/unacceptable.

Modern churches, seeking to order things end up defining (and sometimes even creating) the "anarchy and disorder” - they attempt to stand against. Given their "either/or" world view, the disorderly and misaligned are a forgone conclusion, the polarity through which they see the world creates it. Often without realizing as much, this practice is more about helping the group know who they are than anything else.

As the group self-defines in this way they can assert the superiority of their culture over that of others. The efforts made to correct the disorder they see around them are called "Outreach Programs." However, the truth is, outreach ends up being more of an effort to homogenize any new comers. It is less the life long journey of salvation that starts and ends with God, than it is making the newcomer more like the group.

Participants in a modernist church quickly learn the accepted "way and values" (See Metanarrative) and conform to it - at least outwardly, so they will belong. Rather than honestly living in Christ, with the Bible, in a caring community, they just look to the glittering head man - the Master Pastor for the cues.

It’s just way easier to get the short hand - the Cliff notes of the Christian life from him. Tidy scripted sermons are far easier to digest and organize than an eye to eye shared life. (“Just keep it to three or four-“fill in the blanks” would ya Pastor? I’ve got a busy week ahead”)

So predictably, the wheels fall off - the group looks aligned and ordered, but the truth is we’re all a mess, a broken mess. And the hilarity of it all is that who we are on the inside, won’t be sated by the shellac the right dress, the right answers, right whatever tries to provide. Like plants that poke through the cracks in cement, our true selves won't be denied the light of day - who we really are will squeeze its way out into the open eventually.

In the end these churches cultivate a subculture, the “church answers” become different from real answers - and the distance between real and "churchy" grows. Who we really are and who we pretend to be at church becomes less and less similar.

There are those who are still getting what they want from God in a modernist church setting - may the Peace of God be upon them. As for me, I’ve had to move. I need a faith family that can handle my lack, my daily grind and my big questions without me having to pretend to make others more comfortable .

Like Mike Yaconelli called it in Messy Spirituality “ I have been trying to follow Christ most of my life, and the best I can do is a stumbling, bumbling, clumsy kind of following. I wake up most days with the humiliating awareness that I have no clue where Jesus is. Even though I am a minister, even though I think about Jesus every day, my following is...uh...meandering."

I need to be in a church that can just sit with a question and let it be a question. I need fellows who can hear me rant, swear, or worse, and see I’m still on the journey. I need to be among people who have an approximately equal intolerance and dislike for the shellac dripping off so many of the shiny Modern Churches.