The Meaning of Gathering Together, Part 3 | Embodied Celebration

The Church is a strange thing. It's like an electron, where it's here one moment and then another moment it's gone, but it's never actually gone. The church's ability to break paradigms, to show up in unexpected places, to show up in expected places, and to give hands and feet to a spiritual reality is its greatest strength.

Jesus said it this way, "The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3:8)

Basically the Church has a spiritual existence, which isn't necessarily always visible, but it also has a physical presence. If I were stranded all alone on a desert island, I could be comforted by the fact that I was still part of the church, a part of the Body of Christ. I wouldn't be any less a member of the Church than when gathering with others on a Sunday morning. At the same time, the Church has the ability to take on this amazing and unpredictable embodiment whenever its members gather together in the Spirit. BOOM! It shows up suddenly, like an electron jumping from place to place around a nucleus, giving substance to the entire atom! Energy is present in a new way. The church becomes EMBODIED.

In our culture we tend to focus on knowledge, ideas, and beliefs – these concepts are usually differentiated, but have similar implications as far as how we live our lives. In the church this focus on mental ascent can lead us to frown upon or downplay bodily experiences – pleasure, feeling, sensation, joy, physical presence, or connection. We separate our existence into spiritual, mental, and physical realities, when being human entails a complex interaction between these realities. God himself testified to the importance of embodied truth when he sent Jesus Christ to the world, and the WORD became FLESH.

In my opinion (and personal experience) the emphasis placed by the mainstream church on having all the "right" beliefs is one of the reasons many people are abandoning institutional church and other Christian gatherings. After all, if having the "right" beliefs is more important than living meaningful and authentic lives of faith and community, then what's the point of going to church or gathering with others? As long as I have the right beliefs, then I have everything I need. Following the same logic, if I can't find a church that believes everything I believe, then what's the point of participating?

I think we underestimate and shy away from admitting how important experience is to living out meaningful human lives. We are physical and spiritual beings. Besides just knowing and believing things, we need to experience and feel things. The power of gathering on a Sunday morning is the experience of hearing the music, singing songs, seeing and participating in worship with other believers in unity, taking communion, listening to someone share their testimony, holding someone's hands in prayer, and sharing hugs with other brothers and sisters in Christ. These experiences are just as important as what we learn and know from books, sermons, and podcasts.

TASTE and SEE that the Lord is good.

As people, we crave experiences. This isn't a bad thing. We learn, remember, and hold on to embodied experiences. It is all about finding balance, learning and living what it means to be fully human. We experience God's love as we love others, we fully learn truth when we act it out, and faith becomes real when we make ourselves vulnerable to others.

Kierkegaard put it this way, "Take a thinker who erects a huge building, a system of thought, one that encompasses the whole of life and world history. Turn your attention to his personal life and you will discover to your astonishment, like among so many others, the appalling and ludicrous fact that he himself does not live in this huge, high-vaulted palace, but in a shack next door."

Admittedly, an institutional church gathering on a Sunday morning is only one way to gather and just the beginning of what it means live as the Body of Christ. Still, a Sunday gathering remains a valid and important way to gather when done so in faith. If we don't gather in faith, we inhibit our ability to experience goodness, because we return to a limited mental construct of what is possible.

Allow yourself to taste and see that the Lord is good. When you gather, expect the unexpected. Believe that anything is possible. Rest in God's love so that you can worship the one true King with others, free from comparisons or judgements. Look for God's image in everyone you meet, anywhere you go, and be prepared for God's love to show up in new ways.

Jesus said that true worshipers worship Him in spirit and in truth. Paradoxically, when we do so, we allow God to meet us in person, wherever we are. 

The Beauty of His Created Ones

We long to escape and revel in the beauty of God’s glorious creation: to hike through the majesty of mountains, to soak in the restorative power of the ocean. How many poems have been written, how many photos taken or memories savored of the nature that surrounds us? Are we not also His creation?

Jesus said the crux of following him is to love God and love others.  If I am honest, I find the first commandment much easier than the second. In fact, I find loving the Earth much easier than loving the other people who inhabit it.  I can usually find kindness in my heart for another person, but true, genuine love? I can’t remember the last time I sat in wonderment at the beauty and miracle of another human. (Other than my adorable one-year-old boy. When he’s sleeping. Let’s be real.)

Instead of finding that place in my spirit where I can truly praise God for another person, especially one who is not friend or family, I find myself in comparison and judgment.  Let me tell you, comparison and judgment are the opposite of love. Living in that place is awful. As I know God’s commandment and desire to love His created ones, I have tried to stop those thoughts.  I’ve listened to sermons on contentment, confidence, and killing comparison, but do you know how difficult it is to stop doing something you’re focusing on not doing?  Don’t eat that cookie; don’t eat that cookie. Dang it, I ate the cookie.  Don’t compare yourself to her, don’t.  Therefore, I instead have to focus on what I do want more of: love.

When I realized that I have more praise in my heart for the redwoods than for the person standing in front of me in line at the supermarket, I grieved. Yes, God created the redwoods for His glory and for our joy, but how much more than the redwoods does He love His child, the one who is standing in front of me at the supermarket? A parent’s heart is so happy when someone else also loves and celebrates her child.  Can we love and celebrate God’s created ones?  Can we revel in the glorious wonder of another human? Of another human who doesn’t look like we do?  Of another human who disagrees with our perspective? 

So now, I practice. I practice imagining how God thinks of His child, the one who is standing in front of me at the supermarket.  I imagine how her Father loves her smile, and I smile back.  I worship God for her uniqueness.  I ask her a question and listen intently to what she says because her voice is important and what she has to say reflects her beautiful mind.  I practice hiking through the majesty of humanity.  I practice soaking in the restorative power of another individual soul.  Through practice, I have a new palate to savor the most beautiful nature that surrounds me.

The Meaning of Gathering Together, Part 1 | The Journey

In the last 16 years or so, wrestling with the meaning, importance, and "how to" of "being the church" has been one of the most significant journeys in my life. It's also an area I've recently experienced some of the greatest growth and freedom in, making it a natural topic to start my first post with.

I've gone from leading worship and youth group, to not wanting anything to do with institutional church, to reluctantly attending, and, most recently, to joyfully participating. I know I'm not the only one from my generation to experience frustrations and confusions with this mystery we call "church", so I hope some of my personal experiences and revelations will resonate and encourage you in your journey, wherever you are along the way!

As a close friend to several pastor's kids and as a pastor's kid myself (in addition to my own gluttony for punishment), I've had the opportunity(?) to be part of five different church plants in the last 16 years. During that time I've experienced the rewards of growth, the monotony of packing and unloading equipment and chairs every Sunday, the disappointment of seeing personal interests prevail over the influence of the Holy Spirit, the frustrations of low attendance, and the pressure of needing to appear "on" every Sunday, even when my heart wasn't in it.

I've experienced God in powerful ways on Sunday mornings, been encouraged by amazing words of truth, and enjoyed significant prayer and fellowship with friends (not to mention fantastic potlucks and church picnics). At the same time, I've been betrayed by imperfect pastors (go figure), disillusioned by church politics, and turned off by the rituals and religious nature of it all. At some point in my experiences with church, the later began to outweigh the former. I started to question the point of it all. I started asking if there was a better way. What did Jesus really want us to do? What did the author of Hebrews mean when he or she said not to "neglect our meeting together?" (Hebrews 10:25).

In order to find the answers to these questions, I regularly pestered God for direction and clarification, had discussions with friends that had similar questions, looked to the scriptures, and read books. I genuinely wanted to be true to what it meant to be the body of Christ but didn't know what that looked like anymore or how to get there. I knew I needed to gather with other believers, but I was confused and frustrated.  

There had to be a particular leadership hierarchy, organizational style, location, vision statement, and meeting schedule that was the "God ordained way" to do church, and I was determined to find it! Maybe it was just to throw all the old notions of church out the window and turn to something completely "organic." Maybe it was to go to the other extreme and join the Roman Catholic Church, the oldest Christian institution in existence. In the next post I'll share the greatest revelation I received about it all and how that revelation led to new freedom as a member of the Body of Christ, as well as a number of other exciting discoveries!

-Jared