What should church be like? How might it be different after the current COVID-19 lockdown
Back in November 2008, while on the way to speak at a Christian conference in Brazil, I took the opportunity to visit a church pastored by a good friend. It is in “downtown” Dallas not far from where President Kennedy was assassinated.
What I saw in the service I attended stirred me to ask, “why haven’t I encountered a church like this before?” The congregation of about 400 people was from all walks of life from cardiac surgeons and millionaire property developers to ex-drug dealers. It was also multi-ethnic.
The testimonies given by members of the congregation were honest and open. They obviously felt that they had nothing to fear from those that were listening to them. ‘Honest’ is perhaps an understatement for the teenage girl who thanked God for protection and the support of Christian friends as she told how just a couple of weeks before she had tried to commit suicide.
‘Fear’ is a strange thing. At one level it has a guarding effect but at another it can paralyse and be destructive. On the positive side, I don’t put my hand in a fire because I don’t want to get burned, I don’t drive too fast around a corner because I don’t want to lose control of my car.
So, we could say ‘fear’ restrains in a good way. Fear might also encourage me to ask for help. I know I can lift a box but it weighs just about as much as I can manage. So if I need to get it up a ladder into the attic, I ask a member of the family to help me.
I know the limits of my strength and all my grown up sons are now stronger than me. I don’t pretend I can do the lifting on my own. I am happy to ask for help. I want to avoid being hurt. Love and acceptance in the family means that they will join me and I have nothing to fear from them and nothing to prove to them.
So why, if church is God’s family, does it seem so often that the love and ‘standing alongside’, that I value and enjoy with my sons, is so often missing. The answer is the way fear can operate in a negative way. If I feel I will be judged for my weakness I may keep going and try to lift the box into the attic even though I am in desperate need of help and support.
I have a friend who once asked for help from fellow church leaders because he was sensed he was weak in a particular area. Instead of being helped, protected and given an appropriate accountability structure he was thrown off the leadership team and isolated. Fortunately he had a network of support outside the church and he survived the judgemental response and his ministry has grown, but it could so easily have been destroyed by those who should have known better.
Do I fear the response from fellow leaders or members of the congregation to the things I am ‘carrying’? Would I feel able to ask for hep if I needed it in order to live cleanly and openly before God and my fellow believers? Or would I feel judged and rejected by other members of my house group or congregation.
While visiting my friend’s church in Dallas, I had an overwhelming sense that it was a “safe place” and that people from every background, whatever they were facing in life, felt welcomed and accepted, that there was genuine help given.
As I reflected on what I had seen I began to ask myself what does my participation in church here in London contribute to how safe, loved, or otherwise people feel in the congregation of which I am a part?