The Church Experiment

The last 6 months have been a really interesting experiment in church for Jaime and I. The journey we are on, I would not recommend for most people, but for us – this is a unique time in our life and we feel that God is showing us some things, teaching, and preparing us to be effective in the current reformation of what it means to be “the Church” in our changing culture. I thought I would begin to chronicle my observations so far. If you hate long blogs skip down to the point form stuff below. I’ll distinguish between the church that I dream for, and the “church” that we often have on Sunday morning by using quotation marks.

First of all let’s back up… In January of this year, I resigned as Youth Pastor at Sidney Pentecostal Church, a position I had held for over 10 years. For a host of reasons we would not attend the church we left (nothing wrong with the church or the leadership) we simply knew that in order for us to move on emotionally, and for those we pastored to do the same – we must be absent. We attended various churches over the next few weeks, but soon came to the conclusion that we were still so emotionally attached to our former church that we were not able to open ourselves to new relationships, at least not yet. Sunday mornings became increasingly frustrating, we were merely going to churches to avoid people, sing songs (not collective worship), and hear a sermon. We realized that for a time – we needed to… stop going to “church”. This was hard for us to accept at first, after all, we had both grown up believing that skipping “church” was bad. Thus began a very interesting journey.

The first thing we decided that we needed to find a temporary way of learning (other than sermons). So we began to read more than usual. “Blue like Jazz” “Velvet Elvis”, “A Generous Orthodoxy”… books that would challenge our thinking of church. These choices were unintentional at first but now we see the hand of God in it. Secondly we decided that we needed “Community”. So we reached out for a few close friends that we could connect with on a deeply significant level (“Koinonia”). This has been harder to do, and we’re still working on it.

So far I have had a lot of revelations from “the outside”, and seen things I had not seen before. Namely…

1.Church is both about learning and about community, BUT not in that order.
- I used to assume that a good church was one where you came to learn the Word first, and experience community as a secondary thing. This is not entirely biblical.
- I’ve come to believe church is supposed to about deep relationships at least as much as it is about preaching the word.
Spiritual learning is the responsibility of each disciple for him/herself, NOT the pastor. The shepherd guides the sheep to good pasture – he doesn’t “feed” them.
Koinonia relationships spawn learning experiences and conversations automatically. Good teaching, while valuable, does not spawn relationships.
- Jaime and I have found that in the absence of deep relationships – Sunday morning “church”, has lost all life for us.


2.Church really has nothing to do with Sunday morning.
- I know that sounds scandalous, but really Sunday morning worship has been a recent development in the life of the church (at least our version of it).
- Showing up, shaking hands, singing songs, listening to a sermon, then going home is not church. At least not by itself.
- Add to the above, deep relationships and personal involvement in ministry and you may have something.
- I dream for an amazing church that has no Sunday morning service – just to break out of the mold! Relationships, serving and accepting others (inc. the lost), real community, worship, learning, good coffee… Ahhh…


3.Community is more than seeing someone once a week!
- The coolest part about my time with Sidney Pentecostal Youth was that we’d see our friends 3-4 times a week – we could actually JOURNEY TOGETHER!!!
- If your lifestyle does not allow you to connect more than once a week with close Christian relationships – then you should change your lifestyle to find a way, or - give up on trying to have real church.
- Our busy culture is custom designed (not by God) to keep us from experiencing real church – we must change that.


4.(Minus the deep relationships…) I don’t want to go to “church” on Sunday, and I’m a Christian! – How on earth can I expect a non-Christian neighbor to want to come!
- If I’m not in deep relationships with others in my “church” – I have no business inviting anyone!
- Otherwise I’m modeling dull religion not life giving community.
- It would be far better to invite them to a BBQ with Christian friends, and really BE FRIENDS!
- Alpha rules! – Many churches should quit Sunday morning and just do Alpha.


Well… I’m sure I’ll finish these observations at some point, but that’s the extent of our experiment thus far. Jaime and I are praying that this transition time will end soon and we can settle into a new community of believers and put down roots.
Until next time…

Be part of the solution- not part of the problem!