My Spiritual Consumerism?
For 7 years prior to moving to KC, I attended a church in Minneapolis where I felt increasingly uneasy and out of place. As I prayed and wrestled with God about what to do, I felt a clear calling to stay at this church. Finding church to be a peaceful and joyful home was something I was content to live without.
I have never imagined that I would find a place so fitting with who I am as I have found at Jacob's Well. It is hard to make it through a Sunday night worship without feeling profoundly blessed by God to be in the presence of a church family that I feel understood by as well as authentically challenged to follow Christ in all things reguardless of the cost.
I could not picture myself leaving Jacob's Well as long as I am in KC. On many levels, Jacob's Well is how and where I want to do life, for the rest of my life. I had never been able to envision myself feeling a deep personal connection with a church on the level that I feel with Jacob's Well. Yet I feel an internal unease;
My heart is also captured by a vision that runs counter to the racial, cultural and economic divides that are unusually strong in Kansas City. I live in east KC just off of Prospect and 28th. Yet when I go to Sunday night worship service, I feel almost as if I am abandoning a part of my neighborhood. I want to be deeply involved in Jacob's Well because I feel spiritually filled, nurtured and simply joyful to be there each week. How can the family I love be in one geographic and cultural place while the people and places I live with are in such a different geographic and cultural place? I can not invite my neighbors to meet my family without instigating a feeling of distrust and an affirmation of the very divides that the kingdom of heaven overcomes.
I have a theory that one of the greatest detriments to the new modern church has been the consumerist approach to church. We church shop, and by this we self select churches that have people who are like us. This is after all, much of my joy in finding Jacob's Well in KC. I am in a church where theologians such as N.T Wright and Jürgen Moltmann, or perhaps creative thinkers in the fine arts are not viewed as entry points to heresy, but rather Christians with wonderful gifts to challenge our family of faith. In a sense, I like Jacob's Well because the people at Jacob's Well are Christians in a way that is more similar to the way that I am a Christian than in other churches I've found.
But isn't this more of consumerist Christianity on my part? Am I not guilty of participating in the voluntary segregation which has wretched havoc in Christendom with increasing force?
Each Sunday morning, I also attend a small mostly non-white Episcopalian church where the average age is likely over 65 yrs. I feel totally out of place and alone there. I do not know how to interact. Few people there read things I enjoy. I do not watch the same movies.
My flesh desires similarity. The love of Christ is clearly a love of those who are uneasy to love. Christ asks reconciliation between His people, and that this is not a request made to just some special Christians, but that it is essentially woven into following Christ for all disciples to be reconcilers in the way of Christ. Am I turning my self away from Christ and His call of reconciliation by driving to Westport each Sunday night to be with Christian who are easiest for me to love?
Perhaps there is nothing wrong with venturing out from SantaFe neighborhood to Westport for a night of spiritual fellowship?
I could accept this, but to do so would require me to view Jacob's Well and this family of faith in the Church through the very compartmentalized lens of 'church' and 'real life' that we at The Well seek to avoid.
How can I be both a part of the faith family in Westport as well as a part of the Santa Fe neighborhood without compartmentalizing church from 'real life'?
I have never imagined that I would find a place so fitting with who I am as I have found at Jacob's Well. It is hard to make it through a Sunday night worship without feeling profoundly blessed by God to be in the presence of a church family that I feel understood by as well as authentically challenged to follow Christ in all things reguardless of the cost.
I could not picture myself leaving Jacob's Well as long as I am in KC. On many levels, Jacob's Well is how and where I want to do life, for the rest of my life. I had never been able to envision myself feeling a deep personal connection with a church on the level that I feel with Jacob's Well. Yet I feel an internal unease;
My heart is also captured by a vision that runs counter to the racial, cultural and economic divides that are unusually strong in Kansas City. I live in east KC just off of Prospect and 28th. Yet when I go to Sunday night worship service, I feel almost as if I am abandoning a part of my neighborhood. I want to be deeply involved in Jacob's Well because I feel spiritually filled, nurtured and simply joyful to be there each week. How can the family I love be in one geographic and cultural place while the people and places I live with are in such a different geographic and cultural place? I can not invite my neighbors to meet my family without instigating a feeling of distrust and an affirmation of the very divides that the kingdom of heaven overcomes.
I have a theory that one of the greatest detriments to the new modern church has been the consumerist approach to church. We church shop, and by this we self select churches that have people who are like us. This is after all, much of my joy in finding Jacob's Well in KC. I am in a church where theologians such as N.T Wright and Jürgen Moltmann, or perhaps creative thinkers in the fine arts are not viewed as entry points to heresy, but rather Christians with wonderful gifts to challenge our family of faith. In a sense, I like Jacob's Well because the people at Jacob's Well are Christians in a way that is more similar to the way that I am a Christian than in other churches I've found.
But isn't this more of consumerist Christianity on my part? Am I not guilty of participating in the voluntary segregation which has wretched havoc in Christendom with increasing force?
Each Sunday morning, I also attend a small mostly non-white Episcopalian church where the average age is likely over 65 yrs. I feel totally out of place and alone there. I do not know how to interact. Few people there read things I enjoy. I do not watch the same movies.
My flesh desires similarity. The love of Christ is clearly a love of those who are uneasy to love. Christ asks reconciliation between His people, and that this is not a request made to just some special Christians, but that it is essentially woven into following Christ for all disciples to be reconcilers in the way of Christ. Am I turning my self away from Christ and His call of reconciliation by driving to Westport each Sunday night to be with Christian who are easiest for me to love?
Perhaps there is nothing wrong with venturing out from SantaFe neighborhood to Westport for a night of spiritual fellowship?
I could accept this, but to do so would require me to view Jacob's Well and this family of faith in the Church through the very compartmentalized lens of 'church' and 'real life' that we at The Well seek to avoid.
How can I be both a part of the faith family in Westport as well as a part of the Santa Fe neighborhood without compartmentalizing church from 'real life'?
posted by Post_Fidelitas at 11:06 PM
2 Comments:
For sure, it's a real problem that we have such blatant de facto segregation within the body of believers, but I think you may be stressing yourself out a little bit too much about it. In some respects, I think the consumerist attitude is just a consequence of having freedoms like the ability to drive to a different neighborhood in a gas-powered car. Furthermore, although "comfortable" is a state we are all too often in, we still have to remember that the opposite is not necessarily true too: just because something is uncomfortable doesn't make it the right thing to do.
As far as solutions go, and I'm sure you've already thought about this, but how about inviting Jacob's well into Santa Fe, or Santa Fe into Jacob's well, and get some sort of community mixing? Maybe I'm oversimplifying.
Oh, and go Twins!
Chris
Yes, I do agree that the freedoms to choose my neighborhood residence and place of worship are a result of the cars and our present age developments. Is this ability to choose what midieval people would have called one's station in life a new question to wrestle with for todays' Christians. Previously, my church would have been the geographical parish I lived in. My social/economic station was typically something I was born into. If my father was king, I would have been challenged by the gospel to be a Christ like king inside my geographical parish. If I were a peasant, I would have worshiped in the same parish and would have been challenged to be a Godly peasant. However today, I have more freedom to choose where I live and worship, as well as whether I work toward being a peasant or a king.
So I think I do agree with you that the issue is one of choice. But now, what does Christianty have to say about this choice we are confronted with?
Go Twins! (The Royals only hope is in a future reality which they are powerless to bring about)
P.F.
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