What if...

A recent conversation with an agnostic friend of mine had me enthralled, defensive, challenged and embarrassed all within the space of a decent coffee break.
Brought up in a catholic system he discovered a plethora of reasons why he should be disillusioned with the church. Like many before him he found church to be irrelevant at best and has spent most of his life philosophising why the world and the church don't seem to get along any more.
With a healthy appetite for investigation he spent a number of years checking out the other brands of god religion only to end up with no religion at all except a wry sense of humour and the ability to debate the various brands with just about anyone on the planet.
As our conversation turned to what I was doing as a part time pastor thinking of planting a missional community in a densely housing commission populated burb within the Sydney landscape, I found he had plenty to say, and I could do very little but listen and learn.

"I hope your not going to build a church like all the others" were his first words of challenge, and I was immediately on the back foot not wanting to have to defend the wider church, yet somehow glad he asked the question, as I too had hoped this church might be a little different.

I grew up in the church, my father an evangelistic preacher/church planter who had moved us as a family all over the nation of Australia from Melbourne to Adelaide, from Darwin to Launceston and Sydney and although it was always very exciting to be apart of growing churches I discovered along the way that the church isn't as fantastic as I was lead to believe.

For one thing it's made up of humans, and we tend to mess things up everywhere we go. It is also carrying the baggage of bygone eras which it has found very difficult to shake off.
For many years the church was heavily influenced by secular organisations and fraternities as many of those who rose to church leadership were schooled in such a way that traditional forms and structures were the norm, and church was run very much like a club for the faithful. Church services were formal occasions where you would stand and sit with the arrival of the president and his parade of helpers and the minister was merely an employee who had to do what he was told.
Thankfully much of this has changed over the past 20 - 30 years, but club culture within the church is still alive and well especially with the emergence of the mega church model while denominational-ism is also a issue amongst the majority smaller congregations scattered throughout the west.
There are however many churches who are doing great things throughout the world, and some of these mega churches are quite clearly leading the way in this. But it is very rare to come across a long established church, large or small, that has managed to throw off the restraints of establishment and really begin to engage the community they are planted in.

Hence I was ok with my friends first challenge. I did however try to explain that we were infact attempting to be a missional community that engages the wider community. This of course fell on deaf ears as he somehow knew that I would likely have some very rigid ideas of what that might look like.
"What if..." he said, "I were to come into your church", he went on to ask me how he might feel if after a little while he didn't like it. Would he be free to leave? Would he feel comfortable walking out?
What if church were not held in a building which looked and felt like a church? What if people were free to come and go as they please, and they weren't pressured into putting money into a plate, sit in rows or wear nice clothes? What if church was in a park under a tree, with a bbq cooking in the background and kids kicking a football around and the music was relevant and not religious, and there were no loud sound systems and the preacher talked about real issues? What if it was more about relationship than religion and God was the centre of that, and rather than giving handouts which people become reliant upon you actually shared meals with people where you engaged in real conversations that build trust and respect?
What if...?
I was attempting to absorb all that he was saying, and was intrigued that he, claiming to be an agnostic, had so succinctly summed up what our real mission on earth was. But he didn't stop there, as if he had read my mind, he said, "so what if people don't come? So what. If they don't come it's because they don't want to be there."
I responded with "yeh, but what if it's really cold or raining in winter who would want to come out to meet in a park. How would you keep them warm"
He said "why do you have to keep them warm? why do they have to come at all? To make you feel better? It's not about you."
OUCH!
To say I had been challenged would be an understatement.
To say I had a lot to chew over would be a fair comment.
To say I have a lot more to learn would also be true.

What if church wasn't about me?
What if rather than trying to build God's church for Him, or trying to get Him to build a church for me, I let Him build His church.
What if I were to get on with the task of 'being church', rather than getting so caught up with 'doing church'.
What if...?