Church Marooned

As I drive around Dallas with my job, I get to see a lot of churches. Dallas, in case you didn’t know, is the mega-church capital of the world. There are more mega-churches here than in any other place in the world. One street I drove down the other day had four mega-churches within half a mile, two on each side of the road. Of course, in a town with lots of mega-churches, there are also a lot of non-mega-churches. So there are a lot of churches.

But whether a church is mega or not, I love to read the “signage.” I’m not only talking about the reader boards in the parking lot, the banners draped across the buildings, and the posters plastered along the fence, but also the way the building and grounds are kept and maintained. All of these things say something to the person driving by, and I often try to imagine how these things are perceived by someone who is not a Christian.

I’ve come to believe that most of us Christians are marooned on an island. We have so cut ourselves off from the world, that we have become isolated. And what happens to someone who becomes isolated from everybody else? Like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, people who are in isolation start talking to themselves.

I think the same thing has happened to most churches. Most church buildings, in my opinion, are designed for the people who already attend there, not for the people who do not yet attend. We’re talking to ourselves. Most sermon series and Vacation Bible School ideas seem to be designed for people who already know the Bible and want to follow it. Even churches that try to be “seeker friendly” come across as somewhat disconnected from reality to the average Joe and Mary.

Try this little experiment to see for yourself: As you pull up into your church parking lot tomorrow morning, try to absolutely clear your mind of everything you know about God, the Bible, church, Christianity, and Sunday Services. Try to put yourself in the mind frame of some guy who was out drinking beers with his buddies last night, and is coming to church just to appease his wife. He knows nothing about God or the Bible, nor does he really want to know. Instead, he’d like to be home putting more beer in the fridge so he has plenty for the football game. 

How does this guy view your church building? How does he view all the people at the door who want to shake his hand, but nobody else in church really seems to care that he’s there…except the pastor, who just came up and hugged him? On the other hand, does he really want people to know he’s there? What does he think about the music, with people waving their arms and crying? And what about that prayer time, with all the requests for God to “bless the outreach” (what is outreach?) and “be with Joe” (How is that going to happen?). Then comes the sermon, with Pastor Hug-a-Lot talking about how God wants to hug you and wipe away your tears. Finally, the “service” (though no one really served anything) ends with passing a plate for tips and everybody holding hands while the pastor “sends them out into the world.”

I know that all of this is a bit of an exaggeration, but the truth is that most churches are like alien worlds to most non-Christians. Even if you go to a church where the service is “primarily for believers” the average Christian in your church  probably speaks and behaves rather strangely for the average non-Christian. Many Christians probably think this is what it means to be “in the world but not of it” but I tend to think most of our behavior is neither in the world nor of it. Nobody, as far as I can tell from the Gospels, ever rolled their eyes at Jesus. Instead, everybody (except for the religious people) wanted to hang out with Him.

I think we can have that effect on people too…but we are first going to have to make sure we are “in the world.” And the only way I know of to do that is to begin making genuine friendships with people who are not of our church, not for the purpose of converting them, but just to be friends. Unless and until we do this, we will probably find it next to impossible to see church through their eyes and hear what is said through their ears. Until this happens, we’re marooned on an island, talking to ourselves.