KINGSVIEW

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THOSE WHO DON'T GO TO CHURCH–AND EVEN FROM THOSE WHO DO

Michael A. King

As my poor congregation is probably sick of hearing, I suspect God called me to be a pastor because otherwise I wouldn’t go to church. I find it all too easy to grasp the appeal of not going to church and often harder to actually want to go to church as opposed to feeling a duty to go to church. In the end, I do affirm churchgoing. There are all kinds of biblical and theological rationales for "not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some" (Heb. 10:25 NRSV).

Still I get in my own bones why this can be a discipline hard to commit to, so I want to ponder what can be learned from those who don’t go to church as well as from those who do.

I haven’t done it again, except on vacation, which somehow feels different, but about two years ago I took a sabbatical Sunday. I worked out with my congregation that on this particular Sunday I simply wouldn’t be at church. I could have gone to another congregation, but I didn’t do anything with my mini-sabbatical except stay home and drink coffee and read the newspaper. The rest of my family went to church. I stayed home. And loved it.

There was something about those peaceful hours I don’t remember fully experiencing any other day of the week. Sunday morning is different. You don’t have to go to work. You don’t have to do chores. You pretty much are free to do what you want to do to catch up with yourself after the week’s frenzies. This, I think, is why so many people sleep in Sunday mornings. Or hang out in pajamas. Or take long walks, birdwatch, go fishing, or in one way or another worship in the temple of nature.

So I get it, I hope. I get why so many people, even committed Christians, so often skip church to meet God or the peace for once present in their own souls on this special morning not like any other. And I think we who go to church or who help shape and lead congregational life need to get it. We need to work at understanding in our own bones that many people don’t skip church just to be ornery or disrespect God or demonstrate their preference to go to hell rather than heaven.

Oh, I’m sure there are people who don’t go to church to thumb their noses at everything holy. But they’re not who I want to focus on; I want to ponder what we learn from people like me, from us who may not always be able to get ourselves to church unless it’s our job.

The first thing I suggest learning is that this temptation not to go to church is not automatically a sign that we’re spiritually dead or disinterested. In fact, it may even be a sign that we’re spiritually hungry but not always able to get the food we need by going to church. Don’t, so to speak, criminalize us. Instead, maybe even consider admiring us.

And that leads to my second suggestion for dealing with sporadic churchgoers. If we have understandable reasons for not going to church, then the church can learn from those reasons. From those who find spiritual nurture other than by going to church, the church can learn more about people’s spiritual hungers and whether or not the church is helping to meet them.

For example, many of us hunger for spiritual food that feeds who we really are rather than encourages us to put on church selves that hide who we really are. In a recent issue (Winter 2006/07) of the Leader, a Mennonite worship resource, Joel Short tells of how Pasadena Mennonite Church has worked at this:

My first Sunday at Pasadena Mennonite . . . I started crying during the congregational prayer time as a woman named Nancy prayed. Hearing the sweet humility and simple faith in her voice, I felt free to truly enter into worship. Months later, in a membership class, I heard . . . then-pastor Jim Brenneman declare, "At PMC we don’t want to play church." I knew what he meant. My participation at Pasadena Mennonite confirmed the suspicion I had formed that first Sunday as I prayed with Nancy, our prayer leader: a commitment to embodying sincere, authentic, and humble worship guides this worshipping community. (p. 2)

So what then is key to Pasadena Mennonite worship? Short says,

In practice this means that PMC’s services are not slick or flashy. They don’t even always start on time. Our community often tries new things because we know, as Worship Commission Chair Melba Moore says, "There is no one right way to structure a worship service." (p. 2.)

The Pasadena goal, then, is simply, depending on who’s leading and who’s there, for God’s presence to be celebrated in whatever ways fit that particular morning and group. Not playing at church—but bringing our true selves into contact with our true God. That does strike me as a lesson we can learn from the many who skip church not to skip God but to really meet God.

But now let me flip my comments, not against those who skip church but to ponder—including for the sake of my own tempted-to-skip-church self—what may be lost as well as gained by skipping church. Yes, I think the church can learn from those of us who skip church. I mean that. Still those who skip church can also learn from those who go to church.

So what are these learnings? And what are they if we focus on the human benefits of going to church, since often simply quoting Scripture or doctrine, important as such teachings are, is not what motivates trying out church attendance?

Well, one thing that kept haunting me as I thought of the person in me who loves not going to church Sunday mornings is the suspicion that Sunday mornings are special even when you don’t go to church because those who do go to church have carved out that space as special. I suspect that if one day everyone in the world stopped going to church, it wouldn’t be long before Sunday morning as a time that feels wonderful for sleeping in, reading the paper, taking walks would feel less special. Because all the things that crowd in the rest of the week would little by little crowd into that Sunday morning space.

We already see this happening Sunday afternoons. They once were mostly set aside for not working or shopping—but now are less and less so as blue laws that kept businesses closed on Sundays have been abolished and a great place to see your fellow churchgoers after church is at a local supermarket, Wal-mart, or restaurant.

So what I’m saying is that those of us who don’t go to church risk getting a free ride off those who do. Do we cherish the special feel of Sunday mornings? Then at least sometimes, to do our part in preserving the specialness, we do need to go to church. This is a key thing regular churchgoers can help teach us.

A second key thing they can teach, I believe, is the importance of putting something in the piggybank for when you need it. Many of us who don’t go to church often are just fine not going; I mean it when I say that often enough people don’t go to church because they rightly sense that their spiritual hungers are for food better than church offers. Still I can’t overemphasize how often, both as pastor and person, I’ve seen non-churchgoers suddenly find themselves in deep trouble with nowhere to turn—because they never put anything in that piggybank called having a supportive spiritual community.

When loved ones die, when our own lives fall apart, often our non-churchgoing ways of finding spiritual food don’t satisfy. Now we need to wrestle with where God is or isn’t and do so not alone or only with friends or family but also with a larger community. And not just any community, but one dedicated to learning about who God is by regularly assembling together and learning about God through scriptural teachings, singing God’s praises, and sharing each other’s spiritual journeys. Often then we wish we had been all along putting money in the spiritual community support piggybank so now we’d have some to take out.

So let the churchgoing saints not forget to learn from the non-churchgoing saints what more nurturing food the church may need to offer. And let the non-churchgoing saints not forget to learn from the churchgoing saints that there are reasons to assemble together and keep Sunday mornings holy.

—Michael A. King, Telford, Pennsylvania, is pastor, Spring Mount (Pa.) Mennonite Church; owner, Cascadia Publishing House; and editor, DreamSeeker Magazine.