Where is the "church"? (Have I blogged this before?)

Well it has taken me three weeks to figure out how to write this. With my emotions all over the place it has been hard to discern how to convey where I am right now. But maybe this cathartic exercise of blogging will help straighten these emotions out.

For many years now God and I have been wrestling over the question, "What is the church?" In the Christian sub-culture we tend to reference the "church" by whatever building we happen to wind up in on Sunday morning. I call this iChurch or the Institutionalized Church. It is where the "body of Christ" comes together for corporate worship (singing), hand shaking (fellowship) and trivial information sharing (or gossip). In the Christian sub-culture the more people you can get to come and do these things at "your" building, the greater the success you can boast about. Sure, some bitterness maybe setting in over my current situation (which I will get to latter), but all in all, I doubt very seriously that the time and effort placed towards producing (and I do mean that in the Hollywood form) our Sunday morning experience, is what God had intended for God's church. No, I know it isn’t. Reading the first four chapters of Acts gives a very clear look at some of the things that iChurch is not doing. The first century church was first and foremost not institutionalized. It was however: hospitable, loving, generous, kind and thoughtful.

So where have I seen this church? Amazingly enough it's been in places where most devout Christians would never look. I have found the church on TV. At place called 'Extreme Home Makeover', ironically enough which airs on Sunday nights. During this hour-long program hundreds of people gather together to lovingly and generously take a week of their time to help a family better it's standing in life. This is done by the complete remodeling of their home. It's incredible to see how people without any tie to the family can put so much thought and energy into making someone else’s life a little better. I was honored last spring to see the church at work in Thailand when I went to help with Tsunami relief on a little Island. It wasn't the church because some Christian missionary relief organization had set up shop to help with the efforts. It was the church because hundreds of young and old people from all across our planet came together for one common cause to help others with no benefit to themselves. Neither of these sightings of the church where labeled "Christian", but both fully represent what the church should be.

Maybe that is why I don't see the church in iChurch. Very little of what is done in the name of Jesus on Sunday mornings is done selflessly and, as the book of Acts puts it, "of one accord".

Tuesday morning I awoke to an astonishing email from a youth pastor friend of mine who I will call "Nel". In his short message he communicated that the day before he had been, "let go" by his current iChurch. Nel's background in ministry is very impressive. He graduated from a prestigious southern seminary. He has written numerous articles in "trade" magazines for youth ministry . He is a well-known speaker at local and national youth ministry confrences. And he even has a nationally published book on the market. Nel and I met over the Internet two years ago, when both of us where headed for transition in our then current ministry positions. We laughed, cried and supported each other during these transitions. Nel's took longer then mine. I moved from one position to another, while it took Nel almost eight months to find an iChurch that he felt called too. Nel moved his family literally half way across the country to, at the start, a part-time youth ministry job he wasn't even getting paid for (or at least very little). After three or four months the iChurch started paying him and then four months later told him his services where no longer needed. Nel was told the iChurch needed to "go in a different direction" (this will become eerily familiar soon). When you peel away the excuses, the bottom line reason for Nel's departure was that in less then seven months he had not built a youth ministry of 50+ kids. Instead he had spent that time build relationships, which given the proper time, would have developed into a solid foundation for numerical growth. But in this era of big business iChurches, healthy relationships are sacrificed for numbers, which gives the inaccurate appearance of a healthy growing ministry.

Nel's story is, unfortunately, not uncommon amongst the ranks of youth workers all across this land. At Dead Youth Pastor and other blogs you can hear this same story repeated over and over again. My friend the "Dead Youth Pastor" recently wrote:

"why do you bother to email me at all? I'm as lost as you are, and honestly it would do my head a lot more good if you'd all calm down with the oracle-styled questions about "what do you think of..." and "how do you respond to..." ...

because honestly i'm so under-qualified as far as youth ministry, being the former youthworker of 4 churches in 8 years; that I'd feel better about the climate of professional youthworkers if they didn't trust me as far as they could throw me. Which is not very far, apparently."

iChurch produces this pain, not the true church.

As you can guess where this is going, three weeks ago I was forced to resign from my position at the iChurch I was working at, with the reason being their need to, "go in a different direction". There were a couple of excuses to why I was asked to leave, but nothing so serious that through the grace of God, things couldn't have been worked out. I had suspected that it was coming so in response I wrote my own letter of resignation. It asked for my continued employment for two months, so that there could be a healthy transition for the congregation, students and their parents. The response back form the committee in charge of hiring and firing was, "drop off your keys by noon and have your office cleared out by 4:00pm."

Nel's email made me feel better. It just wasn't me. The iChurch spreads its pain around pretty evenly when it comes to abusing youth pastors. I've known this for a long time, but kept feeling that there had to be an iChurch out there for me. But there isn't.

I'm not bitter. At the base of some of this iChurches excuses and reasons, I was not a good fit there. I recognize this, so I'm moving on. No, I'm moving where I should have three or four years ago. As of September 15th, I will be a full time Executive Team Member of Emergent Leadership Institute. This is a secular nonprofit a long time fellow youth pastor, Neal Gore (not Nel, yet!), Renee and myself are starting from scratch. I've learned a lot about IRS forms over the past three weeks and am looking forward to getting to the meat of what we are doing. But just becuase God "works all things to the good, for those that believe", does not release those that made ungodly and non-Jesus like descisions from the responsibility of their actions.

All that said we are going to be the church, not the iChurch. We are going to care for peoples needs and love them unconditionally, all the while being of one accord. That is where the church is, inside of you and me, and the relationships we have with one another.