{Many Questions and Few Answers Along the Never-Finished Journey of Faith}
Why Not?
This past Sunday I attented a community event in Macon, GA called Second Sunday. Basically it’s an event geared toward building community through entertaining. It was my first Second Sunday and I must say it was a great time. We sat in lawn chairs and on blankets and ate picnics and enjoyed music.
Somewhere around the cover band’s rendition of Sittin on the Bay I happened to look around and scan the crowd. To my amazement I noticed something very unique. In this crowd of folks who were busy talking and singing and dancing I noticed something else present. Thhis crowd was made up of young people, old people, middle-age people, black people, white people, rich, poor, in-between, gay, and straight. Looking around we looked like the most hodge-podge group ever assembled. And yet, there were no evident signs of ill will, malice, or even hatred. It was just a group of people enjoying a 90 degree evening filled with music, food, and community.
It made me wonder: why doesn’t the church look more like this sometimes? Why do we seem so homogenous when we worship and yet when it comes to living life in the greater community many of us are able to exist and even thrive in situations where the diversity is as normal as 90 degree heat at 7pm? If God is truly God and Christ died for any and all then why is it we seem to only align ourselves as communities of faith along seemingly homogenous lines? If we look close enough I think we might actually find we share more in common than we think. We all experience pain and heartache. We all need to be loved. We all do better when a part of a community than if we were left to our own solitary devices. And, if we believe in the Gospel we say we do, we all need the life-giving and life-transforming love of a God who knows exactly how we feel. So why not the church be the place where all can find this abundant life?
I’m not really sure where to go or what to do about this. I wish we could work to create churches where all people find a place and a home no matter what superficial characteristics might seem to make them different. But I just don’t know how to help make this happen. What I do know is, somewhere along the final chorus of a familiar Otis Redding hit I looked around and I think I caught a glimpse of the Kingdom of God.
3 Comments
Leave a Reply
Ben Gosden
I am an Associate Pastor at Mulberry Street United Methodist Church in Macon, GA. This is my very first pastoral appointment. Much of what you read here will be musings and thoughts I have as I venture on the journey of being a pastor in a post-modern world. The main purpose of this blog is that I have more questions than answers about God, faith, the Church, life, etc. For more about me check out the "About" link at the top of this page.
this post sounds a bit similar to a UM ad campaign I saw recently…
(what if church were more like basketball?)
just kidding. good thoughts. I will join a church that plays Otis Redding music.
hmmm– how were the groups gathered at second sunday? big events in atlanta will get a lot of diverse people out, but the people are still segregated by who they came with and sit with.
now if we want to talk about the multicultural church, i’ve thought about that alot. here’s one angle: i’d suggest most of us want our churches to remind us of home. just this past sunday, a young family mentioned they picked our church because it felt like home. and this idea has some biblical warrant (household of GOD, etc). but when we reproduce our family environments at church, then we get segregated churches. personally, i’ll never feel quite as comfortable at a georgia UMC church as i will at a chinese church.
for the church to get diverse requires people to be uncomfortable, to compromise. not sure how many people really want that.
A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt.
He said, “I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart.
One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one.”
The grandson asked him, “Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?”
The grandfather answered: “The one I feed.”
~ Native American Story ~