The business meeting I just attended ran extremely well. This Durham church has got to be one of the friendliest organisations I know. It’s full of funky older Christians who have been friends for years and obviously love each other very much. Their meetings are like being at the pub, but without the booze and with some genuine concern for the outside world. Hanging out there is refreshing.
The business meeting ran extremely well. This church is like a wonderfully maintained locomotive. It feels so right. Every Sunday, we will start the engine and we’ll have a little trip in the countryside. It is a wondrous, well-oiled machine and it functions amazingly well. Surely, this is what church should feel like.
The agenda is impressive: “What charity are we going to support this month?” “The regional church office is asking us what we are doing for refugees in county Durham, so guys, let’s shape up and come up with something credible on that front”. “Also can everyone please rack their brains for the funeral service of our deceased friend, we’d like to thank God for the Grace He showed us and the world through the life of our friend, so let’s write something nice”. “Any book recommendations for new additions to our library?”
I’m concerned that we’re really talking about tiny amounts of time and money here. It’s almost funny that we should have such formal procedures for (collectively) sending a hundred quid per month to a charity, or for nominating our newsletter editor*.
But I don’t say anything, I like this church. I like its people. This is the very opposite of a dysfunctional church: these are the most playful, tolerant bunch of folks I know. I wonder what the voice of Jesus would sound like in our nice meeting. If Jesus had anything to say to us lot, what would it be? After racking my brain for most of the meeting, I still honestly don’t know.
Somebody relates a special moment they shared on the train with a troubled kid. The 12-year-old was living in a foster organisation and had been expelled from quite a number of schools. He was back from a day trip in London with his carer and he chatted with one of our church member on his way back. He was starting at a new school and was nervous about it. When he nipped to the loo, the carer told our congregant that she was very surprised, as the kid had never opened up to anyone like this before.
Cool story! Everyone was admirative and expressed hope that this brief chat might be a turning point in the kid’s life. At some point I asked whether our congregant had gotten the kid’s phone number and whether they planned to stay in touch. It turned out that she had sent him a card, wishing him luck in the new school. She was not going to write any more as she did not want to be another person “telling him what to do”.
Fair enough. I still think that an impersonal Hallmark card is in fact rather placating and closes off all dialogue instead of initiating it. Still, I didn’t say that out loud. I had already been the only slightly dissonant voice by suggesting that it was important to stay in touch. That was pretty daring, even though I really don’t think that there was any hint of judgment in my remark.
So really I don’t know where I stand. I like this church and I don’t like it at the same time. I like it because it’s the friendliest thing on Earth, and as far as I can tell, it is one of the most committed churches around. At the same time I don’t like it because it seems a bit complacent, and it might just try to discipline me into its norms. I’m very confused. I don’t want to judge anyone and I absolutely love the tolerant “zone” which this church has created. But I’d also like to be challenged a bit more.
Whenever I walk home from this church, I’m restless and dying for a cigarette. To be honest, I’m on the verge of giving up on this Christianity business. All it does is keep me up at night with prayers, and during the day it makes me even more awkward and weird than I already was before. I’m evolving into a freak of sorts.
I’m still haunted by the blue eyes of the homeless kid in Edinburgh. I can’t believe that I did not think of asking where I could write to him, and that I don’t even know the name of the hostel he sometimes manages to stay in. I feel like hopping on a train and scouting the whole city to find him again. I feel like giving him my mobile phone and opening a bank account with some cash on it. I feel like finding the best person in Edinburgh for him. I feel like acting as I would if it was my actual sibling sitting in the rain (or my actual God, for that matter).
Recently, someone asked me what I get out of prayer. Well, sometimes not much. It feels a bit like in "Life of Brian": Christ is patently there but I’m definitely not getting anything of the message.
And then sometimes -you don’t quite expect it as you walk between the kitchen and the TV room- you sense a rumbling muffled cry, like a father whose child has died and whose grief is beyond words. All you can sense is a growling lament. There’s not a hint of reproach in it, just this huge grief for His child. You realise that the God you pray to is a God who cares, deeply, for each of His children. And that if you can maintain your composure in the presence of His grief, check your pulse, for you might be dead.
Someone would need to go to the places in which people are hurting and dying. Someone would need to deeply care for people there. Someone would need to allow the “muffled cry” to dwell in their own guts. And someone would need to come back to my lovely church, and ask us, in the name of God, not to turn away from our very own family and from the people God so loves.
* Although to be fair, I have no way of apprehending what people commit to in private, i.e. outside of the things we do as a "church". There might be quite a lot going on backstage.
