A few weeks ago I was reading an article in The Echo that detailed a one student's desire to quit church. The headline intrigued me and as I read, I found myself nodding my head in agreement. Why was he quitting? I don't remember exactly, but it had something to do with being fed so much at chapel and having the Taylor community, it seemed overkill to also go to church on Sunday. I'm probably slightly off base and impressing my own feelings upon the article, but that was what I got out of it.
When I think about my week, I am absorbing an incredible amount of spiritual information. First, there's chapel 3x a week of which I am a faithful attender and note taker. (Shout out to go follow @TUChapel! ) Then, I have small group once a week. In addition, I'm involved with the ministry called One-on-One. Sometimes I go to a Calvinism discussion and Selah, which is my floor's devotional time. There's also daily Bible Reading and devotionals. I also live with talkative roommates who enjoy talking over Spiritual things as well. All of which are awesome things.
And now you want me to be fully involved with a church? I'm not saying that we aren't to have every aspect in our life immersed in God, not at all. But the problem that I see is that there's very little "doing" happening. I do a lot of listening, absorbing, and talking, but what am I really doing with my life? Honestly, just my homework really.
Well, that makes me feel pretty inadequate.
I'll give you a little time to make fun of me.
But look at that! Church is roughly 4 hours of my life every week. That's a lot of time I could be doing something. Something like programming a new mobile app for a mission organization; working on website for churches, designing things for churches, working on someone's house, spending time at a coffee shop and talking to people. I don't know. Just doing something.
Then I began thinking about life after college. Thinking about the average American Christian's week, they work 8-5ish Monday - Friday, hopefully spend time with their families in the evenings, and catch up on life with bills, cooking, cleaning, chores, errands, etc. Weekends are reserved for fun and church. Let's face it, the American Christian rarely has an actual Sabbath. Furthermore, when do we have time to do things? We are so exhausted by life itself that even thinking about joining a ministry or organization or volunteering in our church sounds hard.
But what if we made that church time our volunteering time. What if, a whole congregation could band together every other Sunday during their regular church time and do something for the world? Things like taking care of our church building, going out to someone's house and doing a deep clean for them. Serving at a soup kitchen for the afternoon. Picking up trash around our community.
I think it could be awesome. In a truly God awesome way.
I know. I'm messing with our current church paradigm of worship, fellowship, donuts, sermon, offering, go out for lunch. But I'm not sorry. I'm restless and tired of just listening about being the church. I want to be the church.
I don't really know what this means for me right now. I'm not inclined to be all radical right now because I have a lot of life happening to me right now. I only have a few more weeks at my church here at school and I don't want to give that time up because it is so short. But it's something I'm thinking about and I want you to struggle with it too. It's something I'm thinking about implementing with I move to Texas. If you want to do it with me, I hear housing is cheap in Texas. ;)
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