Welcome to #ATLT, At the Lord’s Table: A Conversation, a series of over 50 posts from varying authors about the beautiful, mangled Church. Look for at least two new posts every Monday through Saturday between January 25th and February 22nd. Join us in the conversation? See you in the comments.

I have always loved church.

I agonized over how to begin this post on church, going through a few hooks that I thought were wonderfully artistic before realizing that telling my story of church had to start with this most basic of statements.

I literally don’t remember life before church choir and bible school. I took great pride in knowing more than anyone else in CCD (I was a deeply unlikable child!), I snuck old missalettes out of the back of the church so I could go home and “play church”, banging out the melodies of my favorite songs on my Casio keyboard.

Looking back, I recognize how lucky I was to have this time to fall in love with my holy, beautiful, broken church. I didn’t know the deep divisions not only among Christians but among my particular subset of Christian, Roman Catholics. I did not know how banged up Catholicism could get in the media. I didn’t know how often we deserved it.

What did I know? That when I was in church I could sing, and loudly. I knew that when people in my family died, or were joined in love, that was where we went. Holy ground was the site of our holy lives. Liturgy was magical, and we all did it together. The stories of our religious tradition were rich enough to satisfy my curiosity for forever and a day. I knew that I was learning from my family, that this was something special we shared.

So I became proud, not in an arrogant way, but proud in the sense of knowing who I was, and liking it. I was Catholic. I am Catholic, and not by chance or luck or even choice but by passion.

In addition to my institutional church, my church has been many people over the years. It has been classmates, neighbors, roommates, coworkers and friends. Usually we shared a religion (hey, I live in the northeast, everyone is Catholic up here). But that wasn’t what made us church. Neither was it the secrets we shared, or the way we loved each other. It was the shared sense of mission, the unspoken agreement we had that we were going to try to do the right thing, that somehow, some way, holiness was our goal.

This is what I write about, when I write about church, because this is what matters to me. Regardless of what I am “supposed” to care about, this is where my heart lies: with people, with liturgy, with stories, with history, and with the church, which I can never fully understand but which I love desperately, nevertheless.

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read the post before this one, here.

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Margaret Felice

Margaret is a self-described “religion teacher by day and opera singer by night”. She blogs from Boston on spirituality, scripture, family, performing, politics and whatever else crosses her mind. She loves humor, food, and liturgical music. Margaret blogs here and tweets here.

Welcome to #ATLT, At the Lord’s Table: A Conversation, a series of over 50 posts from varying authors about the beautiful, mangled Church. Look for at least two new posts every Monday through Saturday between January 25th and February 22nd. Join us in the conversation? See you in the comments.

The television show Friends remains one of the most watched shows ever on television. Running for 238 episodes over 10 full seasons the show is one of the few over recent history to have such longevity. I’ve often wondered what sets apart certain television shows from the other. What madeFriends such a raving success compared to other shows of its time?

In Friends we see a community of otherwise unlike people (though not really diverse either, I admit) come together in order to share life with each other. Outside of the show being fairly funny (admit it, Joey and Chandler made you laugh), I believe its success comes from an interior desire of all of us to be able to share life in a similar, intimate way. I’d argue that on the deepest of levels we were made for life in this way. Lost in the recent debate of relationship vs. religion is that truth that relationship with God thrusts us into religious community for the sake of our faith journey.

It’s common today for people to say they are “spiritual but not religious.” Being religious has a stigma that goes with it today. Much of this is due to the crimes of religion in the past. Christians often have a relationship with Christ but do not practice religion, or so they say. Let’s consider for a moment how a relationship with God IS a religious practice due to the communal nature of the relationship.

Our Triune God defines Himself through the relationships between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Godhead. The three persons are the being of God, and therefore, as the Body of Christ, we should be defining ourselves through our relationships with God and each other. The church is called to echo or reflect the relational reality found in the life of our Trinitarian God (credit to John Zizioulas). Just as God finds His identity in relationship between the Father, Son, and Spirit, through our relationship with God we are enabled to reflect this relational identity of being in our world. We show our God for who He truly is by serving and loving each other and the people around us, just as God loves and serves within His being.

By valuing anything before the communal aspect of church, we have severely misunderstood the nature and character of God. If our God does exist as one God, in three beings, it must also have implications for us as people seeking to make God real in our lives and in the lives of others.

Church membership, attendance, and activity is much more than simply a religious practice as often think of it. The community of a locally gathered body is the very being of God. The community of God’s gathered people is an instrument of His presence infiltrating our lives with skin and bones.

In the almost universally accepted (among Evangelical Christians) Westminster Shorter Catechism, the question of, “What is the chief end of man?” is answered by saying: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” And while I have no intention of disagreeing with the statement I would imagine that I, along with many others, read this and wonder…

How do we do that?

In light of this discussion on the Trinity and the importance of community in formation of right relationship with God, it would stand that we bring glory to God by forming our lives around relationships of love. This is what God has done within Himself. The Trinity directly contradicts the self-focused nature found in our world today that seeks the best for ourselves before others.

Between the Father, Son, and Spirit we are provided the example of how to bring glory to God:Seek out others through love in order for Trinitarian community to be a reality in not only God’s being but our lives as well. We were created to be servants who give relational love to our world not masters who selfishly take away from it.

Right relationship with God will always result in us pursuing right relationships with others.

The relationship with God and the “religious” community go hand in hand to develop us into followers of Christ we seek after Him in all areas of our lives.

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read the post before this one, here.

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Tyler Braun

Tyler Braun is a 27-year-old INTJ living in Portland, Oregon with his wife Rose. He works full time as a worship leader, while also finding time to study at Multnomah Biblical Seminary in pursuit of a masters degree. Currently Tyler is living the Portlandia dream of commuting to work on a bike while paying off school loans. He has plans to release his first book in August of this year through Moody Publishers. You can find Tyler on Twitter, Facebook, or his blog.

Welcome to #ATLT, At the Lord’s Table: A Conversation, a series of over 50 posts from varying authors about the beautiful, mangled Church. Look for at least two new posts every Monday through Saturday between January 25th and February 22nd. Join us in the conversation? See you in the comments.

Church. For thirty-five years, I think of buildings when I hear the word. I think of white steeples, stiff formality and equally stiff pews, cerebral one-way lectures, that distinctive old-building smell, organ music, neck ties, panty hose, and patent leather. On a rare day, I also think of crisp sunrise services in a park at the foot of the mountains and the aroma of eggs scrambling on camp stoves mingling with perking coffee.

I hear through childhood that Church is people who love God and function in a harmony that mirrors a body, The Body of Jesus Christ. My parents remind me over and over that “Church” is not the building we spend our Sunday mornings inside. It doesn’t matter. I can’t stop associating the place with the word. I can’t wrap my head and heart around the expansive worldwide beautiful people-ness that is Church.

We sweat and bleed through five years in ministry, and church grows heavy with the burdens of expectations, services, and programs. My thoughts of church always drag with them a most unwelcome panic and images of Excel spreadsheets, music and nursery schedules, orders of service, and rehearsals. If I have a minute to pause and think, I wonder, “Where is love and God and grace?

We leave emaciated and wounded, starving for the simple words of Jesus – “wherever two or more of you are gathered in My name, there I am in your midst.”

Almost imperceptibly, the fog lifts. I realize that I am finally seeing where I’ve been this whole disorienting time. Church, the true Church, surrounds and loves and carries us, and has done so for years. Only I didn’t recognize it for it was.

I finally see it. Church can be gathering together on a Sunday morning, certainly. But it is far more than that. Church is every day, everywhere, all the time.

It is bringing meals to the family whose mom is wracked by the chemo dripping into her veins and by the cancer that chemo is chasing.

It is sharing God’s stories of hope in our lives on the drive from the hibachi restaurant to the conference hotel.

It is laughing til our jaws ache as we exchange secrets about happy marriage.

It is crying in the prayer circle, arms around the heart-broken, sopping up the grief of living in a broken world into a sweater sleeve.

It is playing games with the dirty abandoned children of a forgotten community in the hills of the second poorest country in South America and discovering that competition, laughter, and hugs transcend language, culture, and age.

It is spending every Friday night at a friend’s house, feeding her sick baby while the first-time mother sleeps, gifting her with one uninterrupted night a week.

It is bringing cookies to the surgical waiting room and sitting for hours while surgeons cut and sew and parents wait to hear whether their baby’s heart will beat again when it’s time.

It’s a text message sent at 3am saying, “I can’t sleep, so I’m praying for you right now.”

It’s listening to the prompt of the Holy Spirit to pray or call or email or visit a specific friend, instead of ignoring it.

It is allowing someone to help by folding your laundry (including your underwear), washing your dishes (even if they put them away in the wrong place), mowing your grass, vacuuming the carpets, and scrubbing your bathrooms, because they know you are overwhelmed by the circumstances you are facing and this is the only way they can find to alleviate a shred of the burden you carry.

It’s visiting other Christians somewhere else and singing together of your shared love of Jesus and tasting the joy of the worldwide Church united in worship of God and imagining that day when believers from all time and all places will sing together before God.

It’s talking with a friend over a word you used and how they understood it differently than you meant it and how it caused them concern and they cared enough to ask you about it and try to understand.

This is the Church. God’s people. Everywhere. Every day. And I finally see it – she is beautiful.

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read the post before this one, here.

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Joy Bennett

I am a writer, thinker, asker of questions, mother, wife, special needs mom, and bereaved parent. I love Jesus, and I’m very much still in process. I’ve been blogging since 2005, writing on faith and doubt, family life (which is often humorous even with the medical spin), grief, and the depression that I only recognized a year after our daughter died at the age of 8. Views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of me yesterday (or my church). Joy blogs here and tweets here.