WHAT DOES CHURCH DO FOR YOU?

WHAT DOES CHURCH DO FOR YOU?

If you step back from un-faced assumptions about the necessity of what you are doing, and ask this question with a modicum of self-honesty, you might be surprised at your answer.

Let me ask you a couple of more questions along the same line, while I am at it.

What does your church do for you that any other non-religious social group could not do? This is a tough one for most of us. And there is a strong need to fudge a bit on this question, and there is because we don’t like changes to our lives and especially our social lives.

What does your church do for your connection with God? Does it only add to your doctrinal knowledge base or your set of ideas about what constitutes a good set of values, or do you experience real changes to your state of trusting closeness with God? This question will generate an answer that will probably be the most surprising to you. You would have thought church did way more for your connection with God than it actually does, and now you see clearly that it’s actually kind of superficial in its impact on your relationship with God. If you had not gone to church for the past ten years, your relationship with god would not be all that different. If you go to church for the next ten years it will not be all that different.

Church has come to be less about our relationship with God and way more about our relationship with people (and their preferred dogma and values). And this relationship with people fostered by church has become one that is, contrary to what church leaders thinks it is,  more and more selfish, less and less selflessly committed to the well being of the group and those within it. Look around you at your church. This is not terribly difficult to see.

That thin veneer of social interaction and service to others by your church members hides a huge amount of selfish preoccupation with their own comfort and desires and emotional feelings. It is mere lipstick on a pig. Something to make us feel good about our godless, selfish lives.

And here's the oddest, the most shocking thing of all. I find very few people in Church that want the presence of God. I miss being with people that want God, and want Him passionately. Instead, they want to be good Christians, or good leaders, or virtuous souls, all of which are not bad things, but few just want to be with God. 

It is only the actual experience of God that ever produced and genuine love for others in me and anyone else. This militant disinterest in experiencing the presence of God is the most painful reality of all that I have had to face about the current spiritual state of Christians in a Church. 

Yes, this is some hard stuff to face. These unpleasant realities continue to cause me pain so deep it almost feels physical. But not facing it has allowed things to deteriorate gradually over a long period of time without us noticing it. And that’s why it is so painful to face up to now.

I have experienced churches in the midst of a move of God's Spirit, when God was doing miraculous wonders in the lives of people and the whole community of believers was abuzz with the glory of The Lord in their midst. And although God was doing wonderful things, actually lots of them, the level of viable spiritual community was still very low. The Elders were vying for dominance, and the Pastor was too fearful to call them on this behavior.  And our lives were still very isolated from one another's. 

So, in bringing this up it should be clear that I am not saying I miss God doing miracles, and wonders. I want to be with people who want God, want to be wholly intimate and one with God. Pretty much any Christian will say they want God, and they probably do, but they clearly want other things way more. And I still want some things more than I want God, so I am not suggesting I am without this sin. But I want to be with those that want to want God more than anything else. And that is what's so rare these days.

The Church in my youth that experienced a powerful move of God's Spirit was the best of my time with a Church over my 67 years. Mostly my experience of church involved way less of God's presence and doings, and never any Spiritual unity, never any communion of souls wanting to want God. The only thing that even gave me the idea things could be different were those gatherings that unfolded by God's instigation outside of the Church system. 

In those little gatherings there was genuine integration of our lives by means of the love God gave us for each other. The trust He gave us, in His willingness and ability to use us in each others lives, was a lavish gift to us.

These days almost no one in Church has had an experience of waiting on God with others. We don't know what collectively waiting for God to do or say something is. We just fill up the space and time with us, with our doing, and then sewing God's label on our lifeless motion after the fact.

Churches are nothing more than Christian Moose lodges and self-help coffee klatches. And I say these hard to hear things while believing that God is going to fix this terrible state of our collective and individual relationship with Him. And yes, I can tell you what needs to change in us, but we all kind of have always known what needs to change. Knowing what needs to change is important, but as we all know, that never gives us what we need to change. That comes from God’s work in our heart via the painful stuff he takes us through.

So, we are all in this boat together, trusting God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. 

God, save our wretched lives. We are Your children, whose ransom from the clutches of shame and pride was paid with the greatest price of all. I am a human who cannot trust You nearly enough, and I know my closeness to You is constructed on trust. Save my wretched life. Heal my heart darkened by shame and fear, and the pride those woes stir up in me.

© John Brusseau, 6/19/2025