Adam at Pomomusings has written a nice article for Relevant Magazine about church shopping and how we will never find the exact church that we are looking for, but “[i]nstead we need to find a church and commit to it."
The idea of church shopping and moving around to find the church you want always make me think of this poem. Its author is unknown, and the book I have it in (The Best Loved Poems of the American People) was published in 1936, so it is at least 70 years old. Because of its age, the language is not very inclusive, but I like it nonetheless.
IT ISN’T THE CHURCH – IT’S YOU
If you want to have the kind of church
Like the kind of a church you like,
You needn’t slip your clothes in a grip
And start on a long, long hike.
You’ll only find what you left behind,
For there’s nothing really new.
It’s a knock at yourself when you knock your church;
It isn’t the church – it’s you.When everything seems to be going wrong,
And trouble seems everywhere brewing;
When prayer meeting, Young People’s meeting, and all,
Seem simmering slowly – stewing,
Just take a look at yourself and say,
“What’s the use of being blue?”
Are you doing you “bit” to make things “hit”?
It isn’t the church – it’s you.It’s really strange sometimes, don’t you know,
That things go as well as they do,
When we think of the little – the small mite –
We add to the work of the few.
We sit, and stand round, and complain of what’s done,
And do very little but fuss.
Are we bearing our share of the burdens to bear?
It isn’t the church – it’s us.So, if you want to have the kind of a church
Like the kind of a church you like,
Put off your guile, and put on your best smile,
And hike, my brother, just hike,
To the work in hand that has to be done –
The work of saving a few.
It isn’t the church that is wrong, my boy;
It isn’t the church – it’s you.
A couple of years ago somebody from the PC(USA)’s New Church Development division preached in chapel at Columbia. Somewhere he had found a statistic that showed that more than forty percent of the unchurched people out there would go to church if they could just find a church that they liked.
His point was that we should be working hard to become that church; the one that all those people would like, that was the key to growing our denomination.
I couldn’t help but wonder how many of those people defined “a church that I like” as a church that never asked anything of them, that never challenged them, wanted to them do any work, or to spend any time at the church beyond 11-12 Sunday morning.
In an environment of church shopping, the danger is not only that the consumers will set unreachable standards, but also that the church itself will try to give up too much of itself to meet those standards.
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