Stop Texting in Church

This weekend I enjoyed some really good conversations about church. We were discussing how relevant a Sunday service is to what the Bible talks about as church. Think about what you have encountered when you have walked into a service on Sunday mornings. If you grew up Catholic, like me, you would most likely have heard the Liturgy and progressed to sharing the Eucharist or communion with songs intermixed. If you grew up Protestant, well, you may have many different experiences because there are more denominations than I think I can reasonably count. Yet, it was either like my Catholic experience, or it is a barrage of people greeting you at the door, standing and listening to songs, maybe raise your hands, and then listen to about an hour long message from a preacher hopefully, pertaining to the Bible.

I have to ask you, do you really think this is what God intends for his church? Paul likens the church to a marriage relationship when he calls the church the "bride of Christ." If we explore what that means, we discover that there is this deep relationship that God has with his church. It is a relationship where questions can be raised and answered, ideas are brought forth, and love is bursting at the seams. When you walk into your church, do you experience this relationship? If you say no, I ask you to please change something.

In our church, we have community groups. These are smaller gatherings of the church on a weeknight. Food is often shared, prayers are offered, scripture is read. This is the time when the church of the bible appears very evident to me. We can stay for as little or as long as we would like. We can cry, laugh, be extremely irrational, and no one judges us. I love my community group! We dig deep into the parts of peoples' hearts we would much rather not go. Yet, it is a genuine place. A place where no one is trying to people please, or if they are it usually does not last long. It is a place where Jesus is worshipped above all else. Yet for some reason, we think of this as less church than Sunday.

Community groups are church. Being with a fellow believer in Starbucks and discussing life and the Bible is church. Praying for a friend when you know that they are tettering on the edge is church. Church is not passive behavior. Church is not waiting for something magical to happen. Church is in the nitty gritty relationship details of life.

I liken our current American church services to text messages. Although a good, quick way to communicate, they lack the personal expression of a phone call. Stop texting at Church! Pick up the phone and dial. Dial into your relationships. Explore the hurt, the joy, the peace, the suffering. Sunday services are not only about taking. They should be mostly about honoring God, honoring one another, and growing in relationship. Let's move from passive church to active and alive church. We can do it, only if we try.