We're speeding towards that season when many long-lost folks -- affiliates -- begin to find their way back to church.
And yet, my observation in recent years is that it's a whole lot less predictable than it used to be. The year no longer has its stable rhythms of coming and going. To be honest, I have no idea whether church attendance will be up or down during Advent this year. All I can do is watch and wait.
This reflects a general societal change. Time has no meaning any more. In a thoroughly consumerized culture, every hour and every day are the same. All moments are at our economic disposal -- time for making and spending money. Weeks and months no longer have the rhythm of working, resting and playing that once gave a kind of stable structure to time.
I wonder if one of the gifts churches might be able to give to searching affiliates is a chance to experience times and seasons. I sense that many families are becoming discombobulated by what is happening to our sense of time and routine. Could it be that the church is a place where time is honored and, in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, "sanctified"?
Is this an example of religious mumbo-jumbo that contemporary people can no longer even understand? Or is it a gift of authentic Christian community that God is calling us to use in order to bring blessing to a culture that has lost its way?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I don't think it's mumbo jumbo.
But I do think we are gradually becoming more like the Jews, that our calendar is different than the cultural calendar, and we have to live with, at best, the interplay and, at worst, the conflict.
SOmetimes, like on Christmas Eve, the two calendars meet. So we design our service completely for the public, not our own congregation. It's our "seeker service," only because of our location, it's "classical" music.
Amen and amen
Advent is now here and I also have a new grandson, 7 weeks old now. As I hold him in my arms, totally in awe that my own sweet first born baby girl gave birth to this wee miracle, I wonder why people don't flock to church to give thanks for the miracles in the their lives. But it is not so.
At the small Baptist church I attend (I am still a UCC member), some people always attend at this time of year whom I have not seen before. I go WAY out of my comfort zone to speak to them , if only to let them know that they are noticed. These are all seeds - I am not sure if they will be harvested by me or anyone I know but it is all I can do in this world which seems to have forgotten how come they are even here.
I just left the bedside of a dear friend who is full of cancer and dying. So how do you thank God for that? That is the thing that is SO hard to understand myself - how can I explain that to others? Is it any wonder that people who think that they are responsible for their successes turn away from God when their rusty and rarely used prayers are not answered in the way they want? It is a tough thing to explain, especially in this season of hope and "goodwill".
Well said, Gail.
Gail, when we are told to give thanks in all things, it's not because of all things, it's in spite of all things. Living (and dying) in gratitude to God helps us appropriate the joy of the Lord.
Post a Comment