Returning to Church

I live my life as an ambassador of the Kingdom of God holding a job as a manager of the front end of a super market. There are about 50 people in our department. I've held a job among these people for nearly six years. I know them, they know me, and we're comfortable among each other to the degree that we let our guard down from time to time and are honest about our lives.

Recently, an older woman who works with me and her husband began to "go to church," after many years of staying home on Sundays.

This event has generated some revealing conversations among my coworkers.

Here are some things I've gleaned from the conversations.

1. The returner, call her Sherry, thinks of going to church as an important spiritual act. Not surprisingly, to me, at least, I've yet to hear her talk about Jesus, or God, but the preacher shaking her husband's hand, and hers as well, was a very important moment which she analyzed very carefully and described precisely.

2. Sherry's return to church has inspired several pointed conversations among our coworkers who are either current or former churchgoers. I'm shocked, if not surprised, to hear accounts, from Sherry and others, of becoming disgusted with church over preachers speaking in a monotone or mumbling during sermons. The stunning thing in this is that it seems to be acceptable, among many people, to give up religion altogether over mumbled sermons. Fierce anger over mumbled sermons is accepted by many as being justified.

3. One coworker who attends the same church appears to bear fruit of an actual faith in Jesus, has protested that simply going to church isn't enough. I'd love to ask him what he thinks is, but I'm waiting for a moment to have a productive conversation.

These realities create a spate of powerful emotions in me, all negative, included among them, gut twisting sorrow and anger.

Sorrow because, as I see it, these are the very people who will one day say, "But, Lord, when did we see YOU hungry or thirsty or a stranger...?" "The preacher mumbled, Lord, what did you expect me to do!? Strain my ears?"

Anger, at the people whose participation in the institutional church's consumerist culture leaves people with the lesson that being a Christian amounts to the whether or not the preacher shakes hands and how firm that hand shake is and how clearly the preacher articulates his sermon.

Sherry and the people who share these values didn't form these ideas in a vacuum.

These beliefs are widely held. And, they are still being conveyed in the churches these people attend.

From what I know, the church Sherry returned to is a pretty good church by the standards institutionalists in my world use. It preaches the Bible, even if words may be mumbled from time to time. I think it puts on a pretty good Sunday morning show which keeps people's attention.

Still, Sherry's never uttered the name of Jesus, as far as I can remember.

That makes me sad for her and mad, well, probably, at you.