Some thoughts on returning to church, or maybe we like attending online after all

A pastor friend posted the above cartoon on Facebook about a woman who came back to church in her robe and slippers.

I sent him a private message in reply.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I like Zoom church. I might never want to go back in person regularly again. I wonder how many others feel the same way.” 

“Lots,” he replied. “But they need to relearn the value of face-to-face community.”

I said: “What if we prefer not to relearn that?” 

Hey—I get it. This is a challenging time for clergy. For centuries they’ve known basically one way to do church: People come to where they are at an appointed time, usually Sunday mornings. 

But that script has been flipped on its head during the pandemic. 

Not only did people not go to church in person, they had the option, in many cases, of watching a recorded service whenever they wanted—no more appointment church. 

We learned a new way of doing church. And you know what? Many of us liked it. We liked not driving to services, especially on cold winter days.

We enjoyed relaxing on the couch with a cup of coffee. We liked being able to do other things during the sermon (instead of surreptitiously glancing at our phones). 

That doesn’t mean many don’t want to go back to in-person services.

Polls by Pew in the U.S. and Angus Reid in Canada found a majority of people are looking forward to returning to worship services—although not for the singing or the sermons. 

What Canadians missed most, in order of importance, was a feeling of community, having social interactions with others, visiting before and after services, and being in a sacred space. 

(People who attend Roman Catholic and other churches where the Eucharist is a main focus of worship missed the ceremonies and rituals.)

What they didn’t miss about in-person services included getting there (number one), followed by the pressure to socialize (14 per cent — we found the introverts!), the need to dress up and, for parents, getting children to services.

While expressing an interest in returning to services, half of respondents in Canada said they hope their places of worship will continue to offer online options when the pandemic is over—hybrid services.

Yes, they want to go back to in-person services. But they also want the option of staying home in their pajamas.

Or, to put it another way, over the past 19 months people of faith learned they could do church differently. 

I know I did. And many of the people I talk to say they did, too; they no longer see in-person services as the most important way to practice their faith.

So, with all due respect to my pastor friend, it seems to me if there is any relearning to be done as the pandemic begins to draw to a close it might be by clergy who will have to adapt to these new ways of doing church.

To my pastor friend's credit, he gets that. He understands what people miss most are what he calls the "parking lot conversations." And he knows this will be a challenging time for him and other clergy as people express a desire to do church differently. 

There's a lot of learning to do by both groups, clergy and members. And one thing my pastor friend and I could agree on is: The end of the pandemic will be an interesting and challenging time.

Furniture and Faith

First story: A few years ago, we got a flat screen TV. That meant our old entertainment unit, with its deep, square TV opening had to go.

At first, we thought we'd sell it. We quickly found out there was no market for old entertainment units. 

In fact, you couldn’t give them away. (We tried.) Even thrift stores didn’t want them.

So out into the backyard it went. A few swings of an axe and it was nothing but pieces of wood on the ground.

Second story: We have a buffet and hutch. (It was the kind of thing every newly married couple needed after the wedding.)

It contains our china, wine glasses, special dinner plates, some awards and mementos.

We asked our kids if they wanted it when we move. Their answer (paraphrased): “Are you kidding? No way.”

Why not? Not because it isn’t a nice piece of furniture. It just doesn’t fit their lifestyle. 

Like others of their generation, they will likely move a lot and live in smaller places. Plus, they likely won’t be collecting china or knickknacks.

What does this have to do with faith?

Organized religion today is like our old entertainment unit and buffet and hutch.

Like the entertainment unit, parts of organized religion are becoming outmoded and unnecessary today. 

For a long time, it served well. But it no longer meets current needs. 

This could include things like traditional forms of membership, Sunday morning services, putting money in an offering plate, and sermons (long expository ones, at least).

It’s also different ways of accessing information about faith.

As John Seel noted in his book the New Copernicans, which talks about the ways millennials are changing Christianity in North America, many younger people today reject analytical and propositional ways of seeing faith.

Instead, they are more intuitive and imaginative, preferring story over exposition.

They also reject a binary approach where things are true/false or right/wrong. In it's playce they have a more exploratory, non-judgmental and inclusive approach to faith.

Like our buffet and hutch, the way church is done today represents a heavy, bulky and hard-to-move form of faith.

Intellectually and spiritually, younger people are more mobile, venturesome and lighter on their feet. 

An old type of faith that is fixed in place (spiritually, doctrinally and physically in church buildings) just doesn’t suit their lifestyle.

To be clear: this doesn’t mean there is anything inherently wrong with the way faith has been done for so long—just as there was nothing wrong with the entertainment unit or buffet and hutch.

In their time and place, they served useful purposes. Those purposes just aren’t needed any more.

All this reminds me of what Phyllis Tickle wrote about in her book The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why. 

In it, she wondered if the time hadn’t come for reform in western Christianity, similar to what happened during the Great Reformation of 1517.

Tickle posited that every 500 years the church has a garage sale—a time of upheaval and transition when it gets rid of things it no longer needs.

The last garage sale, she said, was the Great Reformation. If her idea is true, we are due for another reformation today.

Just like out old entertainment unit and buffet and hutch have come to the end of their usefulness, maybe the same can be said of organized religion.

Time, as they say, will tell.

About Responsive Readings, or Repeat After Me: Moo!

A couple of months ago I came across this Unitarian Universalist meme about responsive readings. (See above.)

Leader: You don’t like responsive readings.

Congregation: We don’t like responsive readings.

Leader: Responsive readings run contrary to everything you believe in as a Unitarian Universalist, because of instead of formulating your own thoughts and opinions in your own unique way, you simply repeat words I have chosen for you.

Congregation: Like a store-bought greeting card, responsive readings sap us of the ability to choose the words and expressions that we ourselves would have chosen.

The “responsive reading” went on to poke fun at what a leader could make a congregation do—moo like a cow or bleat like a sheep.

It ended this way:

Leader: Repeat after me: I will never, ever mindlessly repeat words that someone else has chosen for me.

Congregation: I will never, ever mindlessly repeat words that someone else has chosen for me.

I thought about that meme because there was a responsive reading at a church I was at today.

As these things go, it was OK. It asked us to be careful about the things we do and say.

Although it’s a sentiment I can agree with, I didn’t participate. I almost never do.

Why? Because before I start reading the words out loud, I need to know if I agree with them or not.

Sometimes, I don’t agree. Then I am unwilling to publically proclaim an intention I don’t intend to follow through on.

To lie, in other words.

Oh, come on now, some might be saying. It’s just a harmless exercise. Like the sermon, most people won’t remember what they said five minutes after it’s over.

Maybe. But it’s still mighty presumptuous of someone to think they know what I want or need to say to God, or to others in the church.

Speaking just for myself, I think responsive readings need to go. They reflect what the leader, pastor or worship planner wants to say, but not necessarily what I want to say—or others in the congregation.

(This doubly true for confessions; how can anyone know what I need to confess?)

If churches insist on doing them, maybe they need to give the congregation five minutes to read the words quietly, and then decide if they want to say them out loud.

To be clear, this is not an issue for liturgical churches. This is mostly an evangelical thing. The historic creeds are OK by me. They've been theologically vetted and have decades of use and reflection. 

Plus, they are familiar. I know what they say, and have had time to think about the implications of saying them.

But for all you other pastors and worship leaders, repeat after me:

Leader: You will do no more responsive readings.

All: We will do no more responsive readings.

Leader: Unless you give people time ahead of the service to read it, or make it part of the ongoing and familiar liturgy of the church.

All: Unless we give people time ahead of the service to read it, or make it part of the ongoing and familiar liturgy of the church.

Leader: Also, moo like a cow.

All: Moo!

About the Church: Divine or Human Institution?

A Catholic friend recently sent me a link to an article about the church—the Catholic Church, in this case—in which the writer asserted two things.

First, from a Christian point of view, the church “is the only refuge and sanctuary in a world of darkness and sin.”

Second, that the church is “not a human institution.”

My friend asked me what I thought about the article. Here’s what I told him.

I started by thanking him for the query; I have been meaning for some time to work through my ideas about the church—be that Protestant, Catholic or anything in-between.

I told my friend that the author was right on the first point: For Christians the church is a refuge and a sanctuary.

On the second point, he’s wrong, I said. The church, as it has been known it for over 2,000 years, is obviously a human institution.

It was made by people, for people, and reflects the ideas, politics, cultures and history of those who made the various expressions of what we call “church.”

But wait, you say—what about the words of Jesus in Matthew? You know, the ones where he says to Peter “On this rock I will build my church”?

Well, since you raised it (!), let’s take a look at that passage.

As it turns out, there are only two times in the Bible when we read that Jesus used the word “church.”

Both are in Matthew. The passage above from 16:18 and “tell it to the church” (18:17).

In both cases, we have no idea what word Jesus actually used in those verses. 

He most certainly didn’t use the word “church,” since that’s an English word—and as we all know, Jesus didn’t speak English!

Jesus spoke Aramaic, and Matthew is written in Greek. What scholars believe is that Matthew, writing down what others said Jesus had said, used the Greek word “ekklesia” as the best way to interpret what people said Jesus had said in Aramaic.

(Why do I keep saying “what Jesus had said”? Because Matthew was written 50-80 years after Jesus was crucified and resurrected. At best, he is getting his information second or third hand.)

Ekklesia, the word Matthew used, means “the people” or “the assembly.” (It also has a meaning suggesting to be called out of and into a new group of people.) 

Over time, we have come to interpret that word as “the church” or “the congregation.”

As I understand it—and I’m no biblical scholar!—ekklesia means a group of people coming together for a common cause or towards a common goal.

For that group of people to have maximum impact and influence, and to pay the bills (rent, pastor, etc.), it needs to be organized, to become an institution.

And that is done by people.

In other words, what we call the church today is far from what Jesus would have imagined, although he certainly would have understood how the synagogue and temple operated, along with all their internal politics, power struggles and disputes over doctrine and practice.

Which isn’t to say that the church isn’t real, or that God doesn’t use it. It’s just that the forms given to it over time are human constructs—and often very imperfect at that.

The Catholic Church is a good example of this.

Often, when I observe what happens in the Vatican, I get an idea of what a monarchy would have looked like in the middle ages, what with an absolute ruler, edicts, total control over the fate of its citizens, and its court. (Cardinals are called the “princes of the church,” after all).

It even has its own army!

At the end of the day, for me the church is a mystery. It is both human and divine, although all too often the divine part is easily lost in the squabbles, fighting, arguments and occasional criminality. 

I like how Frederick Buechner describes the church in his book Wishful Thinking:

“The visible church is all the people who get together from time to time in God's name. Anybody can find out who they are by going to church to look.

“The invisible church is all the people God uses for his hands and feet in this world. Nobody can find out who they are except God.

“Think of them as two circles. The optimist says they are concentric. The cynic says they don't even touch. The realist says they occasionally overlap.”

He also said the church is like Noah’s Ark: If it wasn’t for the storm outside you wouldn’t be able to stand the stink inside. But we can leave that for another day!