Guest Post: Why We Don't Do Church

It's the first Monday of the month and that means Layne is back!
Her previous posts include this one and this one.

If you didn't know, Layne and I had a blog together with a pretty epic cult following. We were known as LaySay. And we had a weekly post called The Sunday Sizzle.

Our life together for those 2.5 years was nothing short of beautiful mix with a bit of crazy.
We lived in Hawaii.
We rode camels next to the Pyramids.
We sat in front of the Colosseum in Rome.
We painted on the wall between Israel and Palestine.
We jumped off the cliff in Santorini.
We swam and had a mud bath in the Dead Sea.
I could go on but it gets a bit ridiculous.

Enjoy yet another post from my dearly loved sort-of-Canadian friend, Layne.

Once upon a time, long ago in a faraway land, I went to church every Sunday…morning and night that is. I went Wednesday nights and sometimes Fridays too. We also had a lot of overnight prayer meetings at church.

I never, ever, Ever missed. If I didn’t feel well, I went to church. If there was inclement weather, we just left earlier. Missing wasn’t an option.

I simply don’t count the one time we didn’t quite make it because my mum tried to get us there after a 3-4 foot snowfall. We and our stuck Volvo made it onto the evening news which was actually quite exciting.

For over a decade I did puppets for kids church on Sunday mornings and went to practices on Monday nights. For a decade I was on the church drama team-we had practices on Sunday afternoons and performed often. I filled in for the pre-school teachers when they were absent and I was on the nursery roster too. The only reason I wasn’t on the worship team is because they didn’t want me-something about me singing in whatever key I could find just didn’t do it for them.

My entire life breathed in and out through the four walls of my church family.

I would go as far as to say that in the first two decades of my life alone, I’ve been to church more than many Christians go in their entire lifetime. This is not a boast; it’s just facts.

I was recently at a friend’s wedding and it was so beautiful to see her parents with their friends. They’d known each other for decades, raised their kids together, and many of them had gone to church together for years on end.

I loved their history.

I craved their deep intertwining of lives.

For what does our life look like? We travel a ton-like over 3 months last year. That does Nothing to help our Perfect Attendance for Sunday School record.

And we work a lot. Like a ton, like 60-70 hours a week when we are home, including most weekends. Over the last 6 months, there have only been two Sunday mornings when we were even in town/at our apartment during church time. This is not an exaggeration.

But, and I will hazard going here, even if we could go to church every Sunday, right now we just wouldn’t.

Jonathan came home a few months ago and said, “I want us to always live radically and love Jesus with our whole hearts, but I am over the whole Sunday-morning-church-thing.”

[At least for now.]

This seemingly out-of-the-blue declaration was a long time in coming and I only sighed in relief.

We’ve spent the last two years of our marriage trying to reconcile our hearts and convictions to one of our local church bodies-they are lovely but it just wasn’t working. The alternative of walking away into the unsanctioned and unknown, however, felt nothing short of terrifying.

Almost all my Christian friends still embrace the beauty of the Sunday morning ritual and some of my best friends in the entire world are pastors.

Going with the flow is always easier.

And awhile back, I had someone tell me with not a little judgment in their voice that God would bless my life more if I made coming to church on Sunday mornings a better priority.

Insert a looooooooooonggggggg pause here. If we go to Sunday morning church more, God will bless our lives more.

Okay.

Let’s talk about this.

Is this, then, how God and Christianity work?

I mean, I get the general philosophy behind this Thou Shalt Go To Church belief-I’ve been a Christian long enough for that-see paragraph #1.

Of course I’ve heard all the sermons about God saying we need to go to Sunday morning church. I believe the verse referred to actually says, “And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.”

And I love that verse. I think it’s awesome. I love me some good meeting together with other Christians who want the deep stuff of God.

It’s arrogance for any of us to assume or act as if we’ve “arrived” at some great spiritual plain and don’t need anyone or anything else along the way.

If it takes a village to raise a child, then it certainly takes and intentional, dedicated group of individuals to keep us belligerent adults in line too.

We need each other. In Togetherness to pray, to encourage, to love fiercely.

I love the beauty of living in fellowship and constancy with a group of like-minded people. I want to grow old with a group of fiery-minded, big-hearted, courageous souls who dare to live differently, to challenge the status quo, who are in love with God, His kingdom and bringing heaven to earth in tangible ways every single day.

I love spending time with anyone who challenges me, who asks the hard questions, who wants to go to the marrow of the Spirit and of God.

And what, after all, is The Church?

Is it a building, four walls, a Sunday morning service? I hear Christians across the nations decrying, “NO.”

But is that how we actually live?

Where are we putting our money, our lives, our time?

We say we don’t put God/Christianity/the idea of fellowship into the rigid confines of two hours on Sunday mornings…but I am here to suggest that sometimes the ideas are so linked in our small human brains that dislodging one from the other is so painful and scary that we’ve barely tried.

When I was little my mum’s best friend loved God but didn’t go to church and I remember all our feelings and judgments on the subject. Clearly, she was in rebellion and Not Really walking in the fullness of Christianity. We held our relationship with her with tenterhooks.

Really, people-who the hell do we think we are?

Just to be clear, we did not leave the traditional Sunday morning scene

because we were hurt and offended. Sure, as everyone has, we’ve had our share of messiness in the church. But people hurt people-welcome to relationships. That’s no reason to walk away.

because we think we are too good for it. That would only be pride.

because it doesn’t do any good. There are many, many, many incredible churches out there. And if we ever live in Dallas, we will go to church with you A. Or out west, we will go to church with you M & A. And there are many churches in our own city who are doing great and wonderful things. We just don’t have the same DNA as any of them and that’s okay too.

because we were bored of it. Okay, welllllllll…my mum had this philosophy when I was growing up that I had a good brain and should never be bored. I have always embraced this ideal to the best of my ability. Besides, is Sunday morning church for us or for God?

I remember a few years ago, when I first joined YWAM, hearing one of my leaders talking about “having church” at a local coffee shop. I immediately wrote her idea off as sacrilegious and strange.

Almost 7 years later, I still think it’s strange, but I like it.

I’ve had some of the most extraordinary and stimulating conversations of my life, right at the local coffee shop. Or with friends in our apartment over a long dinner and maybe a little wine. Friends and I have explored the deeper questions of life and God as we’ve walked down the road or waited for a train.

And I’m a better person and stronger Christian for it.

So I guess Jonathan and I are just wondering if it is, in fact, possible to love radically, live wholeheartedly, serve endlessly outside of our small-minded, man-made confines.

We think that maybe, just maybe it is.

Maybe Jon and I don’t want to DO church

but we do want to BE the church.

In our marriage.

In our community.

In our job.

In every conversation we have.

It sounds beautiful-and it is. But it’s hard too. Really, ridiculously hard. It means loving people past their uglies-and letting people embrace us past our own. It means getting down in the trenches and getting our hands dirty. It means giving of ourselves, our time, our money even when it hurts. And it hurts often.

It means taking risks, getting out of our comfort zones, hugging humility and giving it our all every single day.

But it’s worth it too. Oh-so-worth-it. We believe with all our hearts this is true. So, Come on church-let’s dare to try, together.

 Layne lives in southern Ontario with her husband Jonathan where they have been running their media company since October 2011.

She graduated from Western Kentucky University in 2005 with a Bachelor’s degree in photojournalism. She interned at newspapers in Indiana and Michigan and has volunteered for PhotogenX since 2009.

Layne co-authored “Act Here. Love Now.,” a culmination of stories, photos and practical ways to impact your own community, city and world. “Act Here. Love Now.” was a finalist in the Multicultural Non-Fiction and Current Events/Social Change categories in the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Their business was recently featured on Wedding Chicks, one of the premiere wedding planning sites.