Have you ever played church?
You know where you (if you attend a more formal church) put on your best Sunday suit/dress or (if you attend a more postmodern, casual church) you put on your best tshirt/jeans. You also end up putting on your best “everything is great” smile and casually work the room only to see everybody else’s “everything is great” smile. Playing church is where you are content with showing up for an hour, getting your God-fix, checking off another Sunday of perfect attendance, and leaving without really connecting with God or another person. It’s where the church stops being the body of Christ and becomes a building or a service. Playing church is putting God in a two hour a week box (or a three hour a week box if you are really hardcore). It’s where you ask people “How are you?” without really caring to listen to the answer. Playing church is when your Sundays look a lot different from your Mondays through Saturdays.
I must confess that there have been times when I have been guilty of playing church.
Over the past few days, God has been stirring something inside of me – a real discontent with playing church. I have been searching God’s Word for what the body of Christ – known as the church – should look like, should act like, and should love like. The Lord has led me with fresh eyes to read the book of Acts again. Here is a beautiful description of the early church from Acts 2…
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as they had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
I have been in a lot of churches in my life. I have yet to be in a church that looks like that. Does your church look like that?
Now this post is not intended to blast and tear down the American church. Rather, it is intended to raise awareness to the fact that maybe, just maybe we have messed church up a little. This is intended to raise curiosity to the possibility of there being more to this thing we call church. What if our churches started to look more like that Scripture? Would you want to be a part of a community of faith like that?
I am tired of playing church. How about you?
Same here bro. i was even a fundamentalist protestant seminarian for a year. so i retained the doctrine but not the church. so don’t ever feel guilty. that’s what plastic christians wants you to be.
Brian. Excellent and true post. I too have been looking very closely at what “church” is over the past year and believe God has woken me up through his Scriptures to what it is and what it is not. I will never settle again for how our culture defines church.
Paul explains in part what the church is in 1 Cor 12 as he uses the analogy of a Body:
12The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.13For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
14Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
21The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
After the encounter with the Rich Young Ruler in Mark 10 (which by the way, freaked everyone out because they had no idea who could get into heaven), Jesus comforted his disciples by telling them the vision of his church:
29″I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
Do you see that??? Jesus vision is overflowing abundance for the church! When someone becomes a Christian, do we see this? We need to work hard to be an interdependent people who can share resources and provide this type of blessing.
I believe the analogies that scripture use to define church are a far cry from what we see today in most instances in America’s church. Family??? Body??? These are extraordinary powerful comparisons. As BC was saying, 2-3 hours a week just doesn’t cut it. To be a Body, I believe the following things need to exist.
1. Self Awareness
2. Unity of Vision and Purpose
3. Interdependence – if you stub your toe, your whole body screams, not just your toe. Interdependence would allow you to respond to needs or rejoice quickly (not once a week but all the time)
4. Diversity – many body parts
5. Equality of Value – every part is equal and needs the other
The kind of interdependence you see in Acts 2 and 1 Cor. 12 doesn’t happen unless we reject our society’s lie of independence. Our culture says to “pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Make it on your own.” This throws away the immense blessing that Christ gave us in the church. We need each other. We need to be an interdependent community of believers. We need to fight the lie of the American dream which has independence from others as the ultimate prize. Otherwise, we are just one single body part flopping around.
Let’s have a bit of a quiz. What’s wrong with these statements:
- I had lunch with school.
- I am going to celebrate Christmas at family.
- I am going to worship at church.
Need help?
1. People have been replaced with a place.
2. Place has been replaced with people.
3. Place has been replaced with people.
The Bible never calls church a place!!! As defined by the scriptures, the church is a people. Our culture has yanked the word “church” out of the people category and has placed it in the place category. Whoops! So therefore we say – “I go to school. I go to work. I go to church.” Wrong! You are the church! It’s such a part of our vocabulary that the above #3 doesn’t even feel wrong. We need to break this. We need to realize that we are the church. We need to fight for becoming a Body and a Family. I have some thoughts about our current structure which I believe won’t allow this, but I’ll save that for another world’s longest comment.
BC, thank you for being fed up with people who play church and commenting on it. I pray that I wouldn’t offend anyone in this post, but that the Scriptures would speak for themselves.
Much Love –
Manyo
[...] December 2, 2008 by manyo3 Great post by my buddy BC about “Playing Church” found here. [...]
Just want to make this point very clear: this isn’t another blog post written to bash churches. I think it is way too easy and convenient to blame the American church without acknowledging that you and I are each part of the church. That means we should take responsibility of the state of the church.
That’s why I think we should take responsibility and start making proactive steps to stop playing church.
I’m not about bashing all churches (heck, I feed my family because of the church) and bailing because things don’t look exactly like how I think they should be. I believe my mission is to do my part to transition the church into what God wants her to be.
Manyo, great points. Thanks for sharing your heart. It shined brightly through your words.
Come across your link via a connection to mine – the Where are we link… anyway, I just wanted to drop by and comment.
Exactly… church with a capital C… not a little c. To me, church is not about what the little c church is doing, rather it is about how the little c church is connecting to the Big C church. How we are connecting and becoming the Big C church. How we are following God, reading His word, and listening to His direction. To me, it is about spreading out and trying to do amazing things with help from God, using the talents He gave us, and changing lives.