Twice last week I was asked the question, “Why do we need the church?” The first time, the question came from someone who was trying to find something to say to her children who no longer participated in the life and mission of the church.
The second time, the question was phrased more starkly: “Do we need the church anymore?” It was asked as a few people struggled with the reasons for declining attendance at a study group about social issues for which they had leadership responsibilities. They had tried a number of things to attract new participants but had not been successful. Part of the discussion had revolved around the reality that people don’t need the church to educate themselves about social issues or to take action on them.
Now that Christendom is over, the answer to the question “Do we need the church anymore?” is often, “No.”
We don’t need the church to provide us with a commitment to social justice. Many people develop commitments about social issues without any recourse to the church’s opinion (which inevitably spans the breadth of stances on any particular issue). They don’t need the church to give expressions to those commitments. There are plenty of interest or focus groups where they can give their time and energy and money.
We don’t need the church to provide us with moral values. For the most part, people no longer look to the church to inculcate moral values in their children. Even those who send (or bring) their young children to Sunday School for that purpose, decide that the church hasn’t much to offer their children past the age of 8 or 9. When their children are bored to death with the simple crafts and moralizing stories, they decide that organized sports provides better training in moral values and character building. Even simply staying home with the family on a Sunday morning seems a more useful alternative.
On top of that, the endless parade of news stories about the sexual scandals involving clergy and priests leaves a lot of people with a pretty jaded view of what moral values the church can instil. Even if they can overlook those embarrassments, they make note of the bad behaviour of people who are active in the church and decide that the church really doesn’t have much to offer in the way of moral guidance.
Most people don’t need the church as a social group either. This was an important function of the church in Christendom. This is where young people went to meet their future spouses. Many older members of the church will tell you how the people they have met in church are the people who have been with them through weddings, births, illnesses and deaths (and golf and vacations –sometimes both at the same time). Most people don’t need the church to provide them with a social club any more. We have a number of young families that have been finding their way back into the church community. I have been asking them what they’re looking for from the church. A social group is not among their replies. They have relationships already. They have people to have fun with. They have busy lives and are not looking to add another social event to that busyness.
Many people don’t need the church for spirituality either. They talk about feeling spiritual when watching a beautiful sunset or when hiking a mountain path. They look to get their ‘spiritual needs’ met in yoga, meditation, journalling, etc. Any number of options are available to them without the inconvenience of being part of a church community.
So, do we need the church anymore? My short answer is that, the life to which Jesus Christ calls me is so demanding that I cannot do it on my own. I need others who are also being discipled by this surprising, challenging Lord to help me along the way. If ‘spirituality’ is defined as something you feel or experience, then you may not need others. However, I cannot learn to love others the way that Christ commands without being in community with other people — some of whom are very difficult to love. I need others to challenge my natural tendencies towards self-pity or narcissism or selfishness. I need the community of the Church, which includes the faithful throughout the ages, to pull me into a bigger, more holy purpose for my life. The church is the community which the Spirit gives us in order to grow into our baptism — into Christ-likeness.
I have begun think, however, that “Why do we need the church?” is not the most important question. The more important question is, “Why does God need the church?” “Does God need the church anymore?” The church, for all its flaws and faults and failings, seems to be the form which God chooses in order to “reconcile the world to Himself”. At the most basic level, I am not involved in the church because I have decided to be in the church. Indeed, if it were up to me, I would have given up on the church long ago. I am in the church because God has met me in the risen Jesus and I live in response to that relationship with him which God offers through the Holy Spirit. That relationship is lived out with other people who have also been met by God in the risen Jesus. Together, we are the church. Its form is changing rapidly and profoundly as Christendom recedes further and further into the past. Nevertheless, God’s Spirit is ‘doing a new thing’ and that new thing still involves some form of the church. The challenge is to respond faithfully to those new initiatives of the Spirit and to be the church God needs us to be.
Christine Jerrett 