Dear Subversive Church,

Hi Mike (from Subversive Church),

I thought I'd reply to your comments you left me in regards to my last post by posting them on my blog. I hope to try and put myself in your shoes, bearing in mind that we come from different church and national cultures. My experiences shape my worldview and my identity, so again I see the world for who I am and not necessarily for what it is. For the most part I simply want to paraphrase what you've said so that you can help me to understand where you're coming from. I will leave you with some concluding thoughts and will let you have the last word here. If you like to continue the conversation maybe we can do e-mail or skype, so feel free to contact me through my blog. God bless you as you continue to seek Him in your journey of faith.

Hendrick

Subversive Church says:

"I must press that what caused me to no longer attend an institutional church wasn't hurtful. Far from it actually, as I still talk to many of the people from the churches I have attended. In fact, I went disc golfing the other day with the worship leader from the last church I attended."

So you have good relations with the people you formerly attended church with. Glad to hear that. I made a (reasonable) assumption that there was hurt, as you had mentioned sadness and anger in your having left the church. Losses are felt in many ways over many things; if you became disillusioned with the church then I would say that’s a loss of ideals. Any loss involves hurt, so I wonder how honest you are here with yourself. However I need to take at face value what you said about there being no hurt.

"So why did I leave if I wasn't hurt? Well here is a laundry list of reasons:

For most churches there is a human hierarchical system. I don't think followers of Jesus should be 'over' one another. It breeds complacency. Rather, each person should be working with one another in mutual support. This requires more commitment and active participation than is required in the current model. And that in effect is going to turn people away because they want something easy and handed to them. Think rich young ruler parable."

So I think what you’re saying here is that there should be equality amongst believers, both in authority and in function. Everyone shares the load; no one is “the boss.” It sounds like in your church experience the pastors did the heavy lifting while the people did little. If the pastor actually asked the people to serve in the church it would drive them away. Not sure how the rich ruler ties in here as it wasn’t a parable but a real interaction with a person who trusted in riches instead of God…

"I don't think there should be buildings. Buildings create budgets, budgets require money. In order to generate money, a congregation must be established and grown. This distorts Jesus' prayer to go and make disciples into an evangelical market share mindset."

You’re talking about misplaced priorities here; buildings over people and running the church like a business, yes?

"Tithing as it is practiced today in nowhere near the biblical model of 10%. In fact, it goes against the early church models of everything in community. Tithing is used to support a budget."

I’m unsure of what you mean here, with the way you worded the sentence. Are you saying that tithing is unbiblical? Is it that people don’t tithe, and should? Or is it how the tithe is spent that’s unbiblical? I think you may be referring to how the believers sold their possessions and shared with those in need, like they did in the book of Acts. Am I right?

"Sunday as the primary service. Not only are the origins of moving the Sabbath to Sunday anti-jewish, they exclude the working class. Generally those with weekends off have better jobs, jobs that aren't shift work."

Ok, so I think you’re questioning how and why the day of Christian worship was changed, and that by having a fixed day of worship we have created cultural and economical barriers for those whom God seeks to save.

"Your claim of Sunday being the best place to meet Jesus is not inclusive, which I believe Jesus was inclusionary. It excludes those who live in repressive nations, hostile nations, and even those poor folks who have to work on Sundays."

Did I say that Sunday was the best place? I thought I said that the church was the best place, whether it was on Saturday night, Sunday morning, mid week in a home or over coffee at Tim Horton’s (Do you have Tim Horton’s down there?) Again I think you’re saying here that a fixed day of worship is a cultural and economic barrier for people. Are you talking about this being a social justice issue here too? I’m not sure what you mean about it excluding those in repressed, hostile nations.

"Both the Sunday service and the building lead to a static exsistence. They tie people down and leave them little room to maneuver, which seems an afront to the idea of following the Holy Spirit."

So doing church in a fixed location in space and time creates barriers to what God wants to do in the church.

"The Sunday service and the building are for current believers in reality, but are referred to as a place for non-believers to come. Due to the desire of people to attend something that doesn't require effort (think pew-warmers) any extra time to create something for those curious about the teachings of Christ is right out, so the Sunday service is touted as something for everyone. It isn't. It ends up being stagnant for those who have been believers for longer because the message is never deeper or a Q&A session for fear of those who might be new or curious believers getting turned off."

I think you’re saying that, as Erwin McManus put it, the church has become a refuge from the world instead of for the world. Church-goers ultimately don’t care about the lost, and the church leadership waters down the message in the hopes that this will entice the seeker without turning him/her off. Correct, or am I off base here?

"And the people who might need to hear the freeing message of Jesus aren't going to step foot into a building they deem to hold judgemental people, even if that is a wrong stereotype on their part."

Yes, the church does have an image problem, deservedly or not.

"I can expand more on those, but needless to say I think the model, not necessarily the people, is a flawed way to represent following Christ. And I think that is a vitally important distinction. The institutional church (i.e. the buildings, the titles, the heirarchy, the format) is not the human church (i.e. the people, both locally and globally)"

So how then should we “do church?”

"You yourself said that you meet Jesus in places other than church. Well, what if maybe, just maybe, for others those "other places" are more important?"

What if maybe, just maybe, they’re all important? They’re important at least to me.

"I know that admitting that another way is possible, maybe even better, seems to shake the foundational pillars of western Christianity, but I'll leave you with two examples of other ideas that shook our religious foundations to their core. Jesus verses the Temple system. And Luther verses the Roman Catholic Church."

So… you’re saying that there’s two ways of doing church here: my way and yours? Do we even understand each other’s concepts of how to do church? I think we’re both having a hard time understanding each other (or maybe I’m speaking for myself here). The bottom line is, in spite of all the problems of the institutional church, I’m happy to be there. Why? Because in spite of the mess we all make in the church (myself included) I find that Jesus continues to show up, Sunday after Sunday. I don’t know how having a non-model type of church model feeds you, keeps you accountable or brings you together with other believers in worship. I’d like to know how you manage to grow in your faith; if you can do all these things outside of the traditional church structure then that’s great – for you. All I know is that when I miss a Sunday at my home church I don’t feel guilty; instead I deeply feel like I’ve missed out on something wonderful.

What you’re saying here doesn’t shake me; it simply bewilders me. I don’t feel threatened by your view of the church. Rather, I see it as just another expression of the Reformation, which really has never ended. It goes on today and it looks different to everyone. My wife’s cousin is an Adventist, so I have to be a vegetarian and worship on Saturday. The Pentecostal church I attended when I got saved said I had to speak in tongues. My Calvinist neighbor tells me I’m better off in a Reformed church. Each church has a corner on the truth, and now the non-institutional church has it too. Honestly I’m weary of it, and in the end I may add the subversive church to the list of all the other “true” churches.

Here’s some food for thought. Ronald Wells, in his book “History through the Eyes of Faith” addresses this problem here. He writes that Protestant conventional wisdom is about concern over corruption in the institutional church, which grieves the Spirit (or as you put it is an affront to the Spirit). Therefore if we are restoring real religion we must be supported by the Spirit, who can’t be divided. “If,” Wells writes, “the Holy Spirit did leave the church, and since you seem to know what others do not know, you should tell us when the Spirit left.” (Wells, 80-81)

"To think that we are at the pinnicle of Christianity is to forget our history and act as though God might not have anything better than mega-churches in store for us."

God forbid that any of us should think we have arrived.