Cracking the church conundrum…

So I went to a church for the last two Sundays, on 12th February and then a week later on 19th February.  The thing is, I have experienced lots of frustration before at churches. It got to the point where I had basically decided that I would not go back. This blog for the last few years, to my shame, has been essentially a rantfest against all the unlovely behaviour I have experienced from supposed “Christians” and various instances of church. Many years ago I wrote a post, which I turned into a short ebook, which argued that churches should not have to advertise themselves as churches, as the lifechanging power of God present within the church should be the only necessary advert. I argued in that book that if Jesus was alive as a Man on the earth today, and operating from within a church, the whole city would know it. In fact, in our days of social media, the whole world would know it. His miracles, and His power and His lifechanging truths would advertise themselves, and knowledge of Him would pass lightning fast through word-of-mouth and every other avenue, and invariably, a few details would get garbled along the way, and there would invariably be a measure of controversy even when someone is incontrovertibly doing such good things. Some people would automatically denounce it, even without looking into it, even supposed Christians; other people would leap to copy and/or rip off the name.  Because that is just how human beings are. That is how we behaved when Jesus was walking on Earth as a man. That is how we as humans have behaved with every other notable phenomenon – but Jesus would be the one most notable example in history.

So to go back to churches, if the power of God was as present in these churches as it was was present with Jesus, then equally we would have heard of these churches in exactly the same way. If then we have not heard of these churches in the same organic way, through a surge of power that undeniably advertises itself, then it is simply because the power of God is not present to that extent. So then, advertising your church is a tacit acknowledgement that the power of God is not present there.  Since then I have thought a little bit more about this, and especially considered what counts as advertising.  By advertising in this sense, I mean especially paying money to a platform like Facebook or Twitter, and for instance, calling yourself a “friendly” church, in the hope that people would see the advert and be persuaded to give your church a try of a Sunday. In that case, people would have to believe the advert. However, if you simply showed what happened in your church, then they would not have to believe your own spin, but they can see with their own eyes. For instance when Jesus performed any of His miracles, that was kind of “advertising His ministry”, but the idea that He would ever have had to pay money to get people to know about His ministry was unthinkable. That is, He literally “advertised” His ministry by showing what He could do, and the wisdom that He possessed, and that was the only advert that was ever necessary.

So I wrote that post years ago, and by that token, even then, I knew that there was no church, at all, walking in the kind of supernatural power spoken of in the Bible, in Edinburgh where I was living then, and likely not in the rest of the UK either, otherwise not only would I have heard of that church, we would all have heard of it! And I mean literally everybody, on earth whether or not they are a Christian or subscribe to any faith whatsoever. (I do think it is a bit like an earthquake, or indeed a fire, in that around the epicentre, or where the church is based, knowledge of the church would be greatest, but then with increasing distance from the church, knowledge would slowly attenuate/whatever the word is!) In my book, I said that even dead people would know it if Jesus was walking the earth, because many of them would not stay dead!  There are some churches which have achieved a certain kind of notoriety, but off the top of my head that is not because of the palpable presence and power of God, but rather because of the scams perpetuated by their leaders, or the gracelessness with which they try to hammer people who disagree with them. And some churches have manipulated social media to show themselves for instance giving lots of money to poor people, which left me with a distasteful taste in my mouth. (I was thinking recently, many times these “generous” church leaders are exactly the same people who would campaign against increasing the living wage, and also campaign against having any kind of affordable housing in their neighbourhoods…so these recorded displays of generosity and largesse are basically sheer hypocrisy.)  Anyway, long story short, I have not heard of a single church which is consistently walking in that kind of power, please correct me if I am wrong!

So I published this as an ebook almost a decade ago. So I have known that no church is walking in that kind of power for at least that long. And yet, I have carried on going to church in much of that time. Because here is the truth:  supernatural power is just one facet of life as a Christian. The Christian Gospel is so powerful that even where such a facet is completely cut away, the Christian Gospel remains utterly compelling for many of us Christians. So long story short, we do not need to demand that our churches to be walking in supernatural power, because church still fulfils so many of our other needs!  These are a few of the things that faith, and specifically attending a church contribute to my life:
– A sense of fellowship
– A sense of belonging
– Community
– Social life
– A chance to get dressed up once a week
– A sense of structure to the week

Perhaps these are not six distinct things, perhaps the first five things are all different ways of saying the same thing! And yet, this is so crucial for life, for mental health. There has been lots of talk recently about a loneliness epidemic. Well let me tell you this. From my years of attending church, I can tell you that a way of solving loneliness is to have a regular activity that you attend that is also attended by other people, where the people attending it regularly are more or less consistently the same people, (obviously people will be born and people will die and people will move away, there’s no helping that.) For this activity there also needs to be a sense of commitment from all parties, and then you get to know one another over a period of time, and then you can build on those initial acquaintances to make them stronger. And for the sake of getting to know people it is better to see these people as often as possible, but ideally at least once a week! I know this because I tried going to meetups to resolve my loneliness as an entrepreneur. And the problem with meetups is that different people would come every time, and the meetups themselves tend to be held less frequently, usually once a month which I did not find sufficient to build and maintains bonds with other people. Church, on the other hand, fulfils these criteria perfectly. School and work are also great places for meeting people, however with school you’re often too young to know who you are and what you stand for, and work is so loaded with different factions and agendas, and people are primarily there to make a living, not to make friends. So when people are feeling lonely, I can’t help feeling that that is partly the consequence of a society rejecting its God.  (On editing, I’ve realised that a good marriage also fulfils these criteria! And yet, sadly, many people also report being lonely in their marriages.)

So I have continued going to churches, even though these churches are not walking in supernatural power. But I have experienced so much nonsense in churches, so much spiritual insincerity, that I have come to the point of realising the following:  while I do not actually need a church to be walking in self-advertising spiritual power for my requirements, from henceforth for commitment to a church I am going to insist on that anyway, because that is my only clue that God is actually, truly ruling that church, rather than oversized human egos. The truth is that many people start churches, not ultimately for the sake of honouring God or promoting His Kingdom, but rather for the sake of making an income for themselves and making a name for themselves. This seems to be especially true of Africans, that church seems to have been accepted as a valid way of making money, even big money, and acquiring power and status and prestige. And then of course, the “industry” of churches is untaxed and completely unregulated, beyond the requirements of setting up a charity. This means that anyone can set up a church, literally at the drop of a hat. All they have to do is hire a hall, print out flyers, then find people who are desperate enough to be exploited with grandiose promises of God’s imminent blessings – and boom, they’re in business. This in itself wildly contradicts the Bible. The idea of making money through the ministry is so different to the example that Jesus gave us. The Apostle Paul stated that ministers of the Gospel should live by the Gospel. However many people seem to be in it not for the sake of having their needs met or having enough, but rather living flamboyant lifestyles of material excess which far exceed the lifestyles of their ordinary members. And these excessive lifestyles will be maintained by shamelessly extorting their members to give as much of their hard-earned funds as possible, sometimes not even earned funds but bank loans. This is not of Christ. I mean seriously? Come on Church. This is not of Christ.

So if you were to go into one of these churches, you will not genuinely find Christ there.  Rather you will find shameless twistings of the Bible to legitimise these unbiblical viewpoints. Even in churches where pastors do not aim for excess, even where their lifestyles seem more comparable with those of Jesus and the early disciples, even there the accepted structure of church in our times is so different from that demonstrated in the Bible that I was recently thinking that the church would invariably still be deeply flawed. In the Bible, the model of church was one of eldership, a body of elders presided over a small group of believers. That meant that there was not too much weight or pressure or responsibility on any one individual. In our days, a single pastor will preside over possibly hundreds, sometimes thousands, or tens of thousands of members. And then that one person will hear from God, and interpret the Bible on behalf of those thousands of people, almost inevitably leading that single person to be treated almost as if they are on the same level with God. This is instead of each individual member being fully empowered to walk in their own God-given power. The modern pastor is essentially a business man, making business-oriented decisions for his church. And he spends so much time doing this that he just cannot have sufficient time to truly spend in God’s presence, hearing from God, reading the Bible. And then he will bring what little he has been able to glean, and bring that to feed a whole church of possibly thousands of people, teaching dependence on his own teachings and viewpoints, instead of encouraging his members to develop the spiritual maturity that might empower them to not need the pastor’s teachings any more.  Because if they were so empowered  case they might walk away from that church to strike out on their own, and thereby act to reduce the pastor’s status. So it is not remotely surprising that even where a typical pastor does have a huge heart of spiritual sincerity, still the modern church is overwhelmingly a powerless place. And then pastors complain about how stressful the job is, when the situation is entirely of their own collective making.

What has truly affected my own experience though is this: modern Christians just do not spend enough individual time with God to truly develop Christlike character. Perhaps a study needs to be done, if it has not been done already, asking modern Christians just how much time they give to dedicate to the things of God on a daily basis. Life is increasingly busy for all us, there is simply no denying that. I often wonder to myself just how much time other people spend with God. Here is the thing. You don’t want to get legalistic and start assigning lengths of time that people need to be praying every day. I know from long consistent experience that it can be all too easy to go through the motions of prayer while your mind is anywhere but on God. However if we were to say that someone spends half an hour with God every day, and that half hour includes everything, that would probably still be above average. But if that half hour includes everything, then that would have to include reading your Bible, praying for yourself and other people, interceding for the world, and bringing your heart before God. To be brutally candid, I just don’t think most Christians do bring their hearts before God. By this, I mean saying “Lord this is who I am”, or doing some deep introspection and identifying your negative characteristics, reading the Bible and identifying strategies to deal with those characteristics. I just don’t think that many Christians pause in silence before God, listening out for His voice, His direction. Even if you wanted to, half an hour a day is just not enough. No, what Christians do is that they instead “snack” on Christian content: Christian TV programmes, Christian radio, Christian music, Christian videos online – and hope for the best.

What this then means is that going to a church with these Christians means that you are going to a place with largely unregenerated hearts, mired in all kinds of basic character flaws. Insecurities abound, insincerity, gracelessness, totally ungrounded gossip, flagrantly made-up lies, racism – even in predominantly African churches. Sexism. Sexual harassment, ie completely unwarranted and untrue speculation about the way I interact with men. These are all things I have personally experienced (and complained about) endlessly in various churches. I’ve even shockingly heard of cases of murder (obviously perpetrated against other people). We’ve all heard of sexual abuse. Every unlovely thing that you would not expect to associate with people who follow Christ. I’ve said it before, and it is as true now as it was then:  Hell is other Christians, if they do not invest enough time to truly develop Christlike character – which just cannot happen on a total of half an hour a day. I’m sorry, but it simply cannot (except if God were to perform a super-duper special miracle on your behalf that He has apparently never performed for anyone else!) And as I say, half an hour is probably at the top end of the time that people spend with God.

So these are all the reasons why I have completely turned off church.  After decades of wading through this…nonsense, I have had enough. And I have said that I am not going to commit to a church until I can see the supernatural power of God at work in it.
However, I come from a very Christian family, and I have discussed all these things, thrashed out and rehashed all my arguments at length with both of my parents. However, they apparently remain worried, that if I were to stop going to church altogether, it would only be a matter of time before I fall out of the faith altogether. So that is the reason why I went to church on the 12th of Feb, because I had just had a discussion with my father, and he reminded me that I had said that I would be visiting X church. So off I went to X church, and I was really glad I did. They were singing songs which I knew, I found the sermon really helpful. And I thought to my myself “I don’t want to commit, or throw myself into the thick of it, as I usually do. But I could be coming here once a month or so.”

And then on the 19th Feb, that is, a week later, I spontaneously decided on the day to go back to that church. And you know I regretted it!  They did not sing a single song that I knew, not a single one, which is something I hate in church. Furthermore the pastor gave a message that I disagreed with. What he said that I disagreed with was that God has given everyone a ministry – I agreed with that part – but that your ministry needs to be ratified “by the [church] leaders”. In so far as I am still trying to find leaders that I myself can confidently ratify, I completely disagreed with that. I honestly hate it whenever anyone in “Christian leadership” acts as if they need to endorse any Christian initiative that someone under their leadership might have. I think that this is arrogating to themselves a power that the Bible does not give them. I would gently remind all my pastor friends that the Holy Spirit Jesus Christ (let’s get our theology correct Tosin!) is the only mediator before God and men, they as pastors are not mediators between God and men, and whatever access that they have as pastors to the Holy Spirit is equally available to their members. If they as pastors were not following such a biblically flawed model of “church” then perhaps that would be a lot more obvious.

Furthermore there is nothing fixed about that leadership, it is not like a marriage. So there is nothing truly compelling me to have to listen to what you say. As per the point I have already made in this post, it is not like your church is actually walking in the relevant Biblical standards of power to endorse your leadership…No matter what levels of reverence your church may hold you in, you are in fact not God… I could literally remove myself from your leadership and just decide to attend another church, or even to go it alone…Which is exactly what I have done. To put this all a different way, having experienced such pain from so many churches, if it is not abundantly clear, I don’t hold many pastors in any kind of high esteem. Furthermore I know that many pastors themselves, just like their members, are not spending sufficient time with God to hear His voice, to walk in His deep direction. (But from experience, they indisputably make time to listen to their insecurities, their egos, their sexist and racist inclinations. I have so many stories. If the existing stories I have previously shared on this blog are not sufficient to make this point then I have so many more to use to back up that assertion. And yes, these are specifically pastors that I am talking about.)  So the thought that I would then submit my various initiatives for their approval is frankly a joke. And I thought to myself that this less exciting second experience at X church  was necessary confirmation: I will be going once a month.  And I will be making a financial contribution to the church every time I go, because I think that that is only fair. But until I find a church that is demonstrably walking in the true power of God, with an abundance of integrity and Christlikeness, man, I am going to remain firmly on the periphery. Even where I do find such a church, my money is going to firmly remain in my pocket, over and above appropriate offerings for the upkeep of the church, and a decent salary for the pastoral team. Enough of being financially manipulated for the seeming sake of squeezing every spare penny from my bank account!