The Church

Here's a question for you:

What does 'The Church' mean to you? What should the church do? Why does it exist?

Some of you might know that I'm giving some serious consideration to going to seminary sometime in the future, but before I make that decision I want to do some really serious consideration of what exactly this thing is.

I grew up with a couple of assumptions:

• "The Church" is a building that you go to on Sunday mornings.
• The job of the Church is to teach you Bible stories.
• Church is where you learn what and how to think from a man standing in front of you.

I'm not sure where these rather shallow understandings of Church came from. My parents certainly never saw Church that way.

Here's a quick history of my experience with the Church-- it's rather convoluted, and hearing the story might do a bit to explain where I am on this.

I spent a good deal of my spiritual youth in transit. I was baptized in the Catholic church as an infant, and went to a Catholic school through 5th grade. My family went to a nice Catholic church-- the same one where my father grew up. We knew everyone, and everyone knew us. My parents were the well-loved youth leaders, and the congregation was full of young faces.

But Saint Austin's didn't have much for the younger kids, so my family hunted out another church. We started going to the Church of the Open Door when I was pretty young--before I can really remember, even--because they had a fun program for us kids and a lot to give spiritually to the adults. Open Door is very different from St. Austin's-- when we started going, we met in a high school. Later it was a community center. Now the church has it's own big building in Maple Grove. All along the congregation's been pretty huge--You can blend into the crowd really easily. On the plus side, the preaching is challenging and the worship is engaging.

Although Open Door was great for me growing up, I feel both lost and limited there now. There is very little sense of community, and although the theology of the church is personally challenging and socially conscious, the reality of life there is that it doesn't draw me into engagement with the broader world.

So I'm about to embark on an adventure of discovery in the Church. Whenever I have a free Sunday (not very often) I'm going to try out a service at another type of worship establishment (if you can think of someplace I should visit, let me know!). I want to get a feel for what's out there and figure out where I line up-- are there any denominational traditions that I feel really great about? If something rubs me the wrong way, why? Where do I fit in this thing called "The Church?"

Here's my preliminary thoughts on what I'd love "The Church" to be for me-- I'm expecting this to change as I learn and explore...

The Church should be a space where...

• Everyone is known
• Unique gifts are lifted up
  
• I'm challenged
• I'm held accountable
• The community is open to new ideas
• the community is supportive of its members
  
• the experience of God is not limited
• the community energizes its members for work in the world
• special attention is paid to caring for creation
• all are welcome, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, and creed
• the spirit of God is present

So... what do you think the job of the church is? activism? faithfulness? teaching? to be a moral compass? a community? Why not just worship on our own?