Questions

I'll admit it: I'm a fan of Desperate Housewives. And there's an episode in Season 4 that has stuck with me for a long time.

In it, Lynette has just overcome cancer and nearly lost her family in a tornado (but they were fine). And she has questions about God's goodness. And about why she survived these things when so many others don't. So she decides to turn to church.

She'd never been to church, not even as a kid, but she went with Bree. And when the preacher was finishing his sermon, she raised her hand and asked her question. And started dialoguing with the preacher.

Well, Bree was mortified and told Lynette that church isn't about asking questions, it's about listening for the answers. Lynette wasn't satisfied and sought another church.

But I think Lynette was on to something. She was making church into an active, participatory experience.

Because if faith isn't meant to be passive, why is it that the crux of communal faith (church) is so passive? And what does that do to our natural tendency to live a passive faith in day-to-day life? To sit in our metaphorical pews and watch someone else live out faith? How does our church model discourage thinking for oneself about faith, and instead teach us to blindly accept the words of the "experts"? (What could we have to offer when we've got a seminary grad on stage?)

And what if I had the courage to raise my hand and ask questions in church like Lynette did? Ah, but I wouldn't. Because I've been going to church long enough to know that's not how it works. Unlike Lynette, I know that church culture is to sit obediently and listen, maybe throwing out the occasional "amen" if your denomination is OK with that or you're really brave.

I went to church yesterday. The sermon was about godly words. One of the points was that godly words are few, and I found it ironic that someone could talk uninterrupted for over half an hour and part of the talk could be about having few words.

He also said something about "attending church" as a mark of Christianity. And I thought about that phrase, "attend church." We use it so often, so casually, we don't think about it. But what if the verb that goes with church wasn't "attending" like you do with a play or a class, but experiencing? What if we could truthfully say we "experience church" every Sunday?

I've talked to numerous people at Group about my frustrations with this passive thing we call church. Many of them share my frustrations. Thom Schultz, our founder and CEO, blogs about it often. (I had a link to his blog, but it looks like it might've been hacked today.) I think it's because we know there's a better way to learn. To discover. To explore. And we're frustrated that no one is doing it in "big church."