“Ask Not What Your Church Can Do for You...”
On the limits and lessons of transactional spiritual community.
If this was ten years ago, I would’ve strongly promoted the admonition to “show up and serve” the institution of the church. This is what I was taught as a pastor-in-training and this is what I parroted back.
Before I say more, I should preface: there are some congregations who approach the idea of service (or volunteering) and attendance relatively healthily.
Having said that, I have encountered so many embedded hazards and half-truths when churches (via its leaders) push volunteering and attendance. Here are three:
“Church Consumers”
This is a popular rebuke directed at churchgoers, but not a helpful one. It places the burden on laity to ‘get involved’ and sign up for service opportunities, but it rarely if ever acknowledges an institution’s propensity to consume its members for self-serving purposes. The difficulty is that sometimes an organization’s unhealthy or exploitive treatment of people is veiled in language of “serving God’s kingdom,” which is hard to challenge. If consumerism is a problem, it’s a problem often directed to the wrong group. People should avoid being church consumers, but churches should fess up about being people consumers.
“Orbiting the Org”
For many of us who grew up in church, the organization—its buildings and programs— functioned as the sun our faith and life must orbit. Sure, there were some benefits to this. A church property can provide resources, provisions, and gathering space. However, the centralization of institutions as the primary locale for ‘ministry’ can also push people way beyond their capacities, as well as lead them to believe their everyday presence and integrity to other domains of life is not enough. This often leads to another, adjacent fallacy.
“Awarding the Able”
Centering the institution can also mean centering the people most capable of working for its prosperity—the able-bodied, the successful, the educated, the models of economic stability. With little subtlety, it is easy for an organization to undermine the defining hope of Christian spirituality—that God comes to us in our present condition, not merely when we show up to the service or display our able-ness in concert with an organization.
Beyond the Walls
If ‘church’ is to embody hope for all of us, then churches must commit to love freely, with no hint of transactional hospitality, pedestaling the strong, or commodification of human dignity. Church is not primarily an address, a membership roster, and a worship service. It is also the sacred we encounter every day. It is the tables we set with both the devout and the unreligious, as well as the tapestries God reveals to us in quiet, in kindness, in our worthy weakness.
Maybe you should ask what your church can do for you. If they are to be trusted they won’t rebuff—they will eagerly meet you in your place of need or sorrow, with no expectation of return on their investment.
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The gravitational pull of the organization can be so strong but feel natural for those in it. There's a tendency to judge those who aren't as close to the center and withhold social connection from those who aren't as 'committed.'
This made me think how, in my experience, when congregants lament that they don't feel connected — often the first response is, "Volunteer! Lead!" Relationships become transactional, rather than simply just generous — "We're just glad you're here."