Things I Learned From Church (That Didn’t Prove True) And What I Am Learning Lately: a synchroblog

Glen Hager has started this snychroblog - so feel free to join in if you want :)

I have been around church all my life, so that is 32 years of learning. 

I have learnt a lot that has proven helpful and as far as my experience and that of the wider church community across time and traditions has also been true.  I've found my life transformed, dramatic healings of my psyche, divine encounters and an ongoing narrative of the Kingdom of God which constantly challenges the dominant narrative of our western culture that life is about chasing what makes me happy!

I also recognise that faith is a process, that I have been wrong in the past and no doubt what I have learnt up to now that I consider good stuff may actually turn out to be not quite so true in the next 32 yrs…

So what have I have learned and started to unlearned:

Church is not all about me - it's not a social network, a support group, a place to wow an appreciative audience etc.

Church is not about becoming a doormat either - appropriate and healthy boundaries need to exist and one of the lessons I had to learn was saying "no" to things.

There is no perfect church - it's full of broken, hurt, confused, stressed, tired, busy people, like me, all using a range of coping strategies - we get to see each other at our best and at our worst.  Normal healthy church experience will encompass both the best and worst of times and I will inflict best/worst of me on others and receive best/worst in return.

There is no perfect way of doing church - it takes all sorts of different churches to reach all sorts of different people in all sorts of different ways/places - to try and hold up one way of doing church as the way or even the best way is to ask everyone to be the same as me [and we've established that church is not all about me already].

It is ok to admit that there is not a perfect church or a perfect way - to give people permission to be honest and different - it is even better for me to stop focussing on others faults and start on my own - honestly sharing my failings and frustrations and involve God and God through others in them.  It's very freeing to allow people to talk honestly about me and to be honest about my life with people who care enough about me to accept me and challenge me to go after the best God has for me.

Church is God's idea - Jesus and the Holy Spirit are doing it to bring glory to the Father and invite me to take part/join them/be co-mission.

My theology continues to expand, my understanding of God, myself, the world, church, life, the universe and everything does not stand still.  That experience informs learning and learning informs experience/practice.

Jesus is the Truth in which all the truths in all other realities and narratives make sense/find coherence.  As Jesus is Truth I can have a relationship with truth but not own/possess/claim that I have the full truth.  The best form of relationship I can participate with the Truth is a communal one, across time/traditions/cultures/contexts.

It is normal to have times when God feel very close and faith is very experiential and times when God feels distant and faith very faint and hard. 

There is no substitute for spiritual practices of prayer, reading the bible, worship, giving, fasting, serving but no prescribed way that works for everyone.  However it is far easier to do these things communally/as part of a community rather than as a lone spiritual ranger. 

The kingdom of God is bigger than church, the Holy Spirit is at work in the world, the mission of God is gather a people who will bear both his name and his likeness - an ongoing work that goes on until God restores our full humanity in our resurrected perfected bodies/natures…

Not every prayer is answered in the way that I want it answered, when I want it answered.

God cares about my character as much as my actions and beliefs .

Being right is not a fraction as important as being loving, kind, generous, gentle, gracious and reconciling.

Things I am learning...

following God costs me my life and is an ongoing struggle between acceptance and resistance.

I am more self centred and individualistic than I realise - I am addicted abstracted consumer!

church can often reflect that dominant narrative of our culture rather than the dominant narrative of the kingdom of God because it is full of people like me who struggle with that same battle.

church history/experience across time and traditions can help reveal what is cultural and what is kingdom.

critique is often valuable and prophetic - whether from within the church or from without. It is worth listening to our critics carefully.

there is not always one answer/solution/way and in fact  the process of talking about these issues can be more important than everyone agreeing on a single resolution
That I need to listen/hear the voices of the global church, particularly the 2/3 world as a critique to my own western-centric theological orientation.

the emerging conversation is often highly therapeutic, incoherent and therefore is often very polarised/reactionary/confusing to anyone listening in.

what I do reflects/tells a lot more about what I believe then what I say I believe.

I need to take myself a lot less seriously.

What are you learning/unlearning about church???

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Fellow synchrobloggers:

Erin @ Decompressing Faith: Think Of It As “Agapeology.”

Alan @ The Assembling of the Church: Here I Am To Worship.

Heather @ A Deconstructed Christian: 15 Things I Learned From and Another 15 I Am Learning Lately

Jim @ Lord, I Believe; Help My Unbelief : Some Ecclesiastical Paradoxes

Lew @ The Pursuit: It’s A Grace vs. Works Thing

Lyn @ Beyond the 4 Walls: Learning To be “Proper”

Sonja @ Calacirian: Losing Her Religion and Keeping Her Faith

Benjamin @ Justice and Compassion: Pithy and Provocative

Julie @ Onehandclapping: Faith, Certainty, and Tom Cruise

Comments

[glenn]

Paul...

Thank you for being a gracious voice in this conversation!

I liked:

"Critique is often valuable and prophetic - whether from within the church or from without. It is worth listening to our critics carefully."

"The emerging conversation is often highly therapeutic, incoherent and therefore is often very polarized/reactionary/confusing to anyone listening in."

I have long thought that something so important as church should be carefully critiqued, but the resultant polarization always bothered me. I believe the critique must continue, especially as we move into a time of experimentation, but relationships must be treasured and the truth must be wrapped up in love, because love wins!

Thanks for your important contribution, Paul.

[Paul]

thanks glenn, i keep going around in a circle about whether it is more important to be right or to be generous/good - i think listening to critics is one way of doing that and being constructive and generous in our listening is one way of doing this

[rodney neill]

Hello,

I am a fellow imperial civil servant living in Northern Ireland ( we are a strange bunch)! I am a keen reader of blogs, follow the emerging church conversation and have recently come across your blog which i have enjoyed reading.

You have written a very articulate and insightful post which strikes a chord with me. After many years out of church as a disillusioned believer and having had a renewal of faith experience I have recently started to attend a local church regularly which is a big step fo me. The old truism that there is no such thing as a perfect church can sound so trite but it is so full of wisdom. It is so easy to sit on the sidelines and ctricise. I do not find it easy at times but i will try to make a go of it.

Rodney

[fernando]

Thoughtful post. Certainly one thing I've had to "unlearn" is the issue of being "right" practically and theologically.

[Paul]

Hi Rodney, thanks for stopping by and for your insightful comment. It's always good to hear from another imperial emissory ;).

I sometimes liken church to a footie game - it's a lot easier in the stands to tell em how they should be playing and either be entertained or frustrated. But if you're out on the pitch it's not always that clear and often a lot more hard work - esp if you're me with 2 left feet :)

[Paul]

Hi F, you're so right! :)

seriously, i'm still unlearning, so have you got any tips/hints/suggestions that you have found helpful?

[brad brisco]

I am unlearning evangelism as a presentation.
I am unlearning church as an institution/organization.
I am unlearning pastoral professionalism.
I am unlearning ungodly ambition.
I am unlearning living a church-centered life.

[Kamsin]

Lately I'm (re)learning that churches can be the hardest places to feel at home, that welcoming newcomers/ outsiders is always someone else's job.

I'm learning that sometimes Jesus is the last person you find at church.

I have learnt that it doesn't matter what style of music a church has or how good or bad the preaching is, what matters is whether people feel like family, whether you can laugh, pray, sit and do nothing much, with the people and basically be yourself without feeling you need to sound more holy, or be noticed for doing some ministry or other.

I'm also learning that I don't need a church to fill me up spiritually, I need Jesus, sometimes church can actually even distract from having a meaningful spiritual life.

I'm not sure how coherent that list is! Anyway, thoughtful post. Not feeling very pro-church today for various reasons, although I do recognise that churches that work well are awesome things.

[Rupert Ward]

good post paul ... i am now back in the land of blogs and catch up, so a bit behind the times.

I love so much of what you say ... there is so much that i am learning and have learnt.

One of the things that i am grappling with about church at the moment is my (lack of) imagination! I don't think that people in the 50's could have grasped how church was going to change in the 70's and 80's ... or going back further how those living in 13th or 14th centuries could have imaginged what would have been different after the reformation. I think we stand on the brink of church changing dramatically again. I can't imagine what God is thinking about, how he is going to shape church in the future, what it will look like (despite reading some of the books on the subject!). So i guess i am learning that God's creativity and imagination about church is rather bigger than mine ...

[Paul]

thanks brad, sounds some interesting unlearning going on - so what are you learning instead?

[Paul]

thanks Kamsin, why are you not feeling v pro church? No pressure to share if you'd rather not.

I agree with you that church feels a hinderance at times - i keep wondering how far i've made my spiritual journey a personal one, where as the star of the story it is a lot easier to hang out with Jesus when there are no annoying people, jobs to be done, other people needing support, me having to be honest and open etc etc. That's my experience i guess how about yours?

[Paul]

Thanks Rupert, welcome back to the land of bloggers :) Hope you had a good break!

Yes it is difficult to imagine church - i wonder if as my darling wife explained to me yesterday that change is incremental so at the time it hardly feels like change at all and then you get to a place which makes you look back and you think, wow that is different.

I also wonder how fundamentally different church is - i think the danger is not rejecting our heritage and all that God has done before and starting afresh with something new and exciting but not getting so bogged down in where we've come from that we can't or won't imagine any thing changing...

[Rupert Ward]

Good points Paul ... i guess i think that our aims and goals are and will be pretty similar, but our methodology will and should change over time. So we should always be committed to spiritual growth or mission or worship, but what that actually looks like will be hugely different for what it previously looked like. It might be incremental and probably mostly will, but i guess there are watershed moments too, when God seemingly breaks in, and something new emerges. Perhaps another of those both/and?

[brad brisco]

Paul, in contrast to the "unlearning" I am learning:

I am unlearning evangelism as a presentation and learning to be myself and rely on the working of the Spirit.

I am unlearning church as an institution/organization and learning that church is a dynamic, organic, living movement.

I am unlearning pastoral professionalism and learning authenticity and simplicity.

I am unlearning ungodly ambition and learning contentment.

I am unlearning living a church-centered life and learning to live a Christ-centered life.

[Paul]

lol rupert, yes there is still a book out there waiting to be written on the emerging church called both/and :)

I am sure there will be moments where God walks through the room and changes everything in that moment as well as the normal mundane daily living

[Paul]

thanks brad, i'd love to hear more about each of these - greedy i know - maybe i can tempt you to write about your journey in each of them?