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.

Being excluded is tough – too young to go to kindergarten with your best friend, too short to go on the rides at the fair, not being chosen for the team, the rejection letter from the job you’d already decided at the interview you wouldn’t take if they offered it to you – the list goes on. It never really occurred to me that non-Catholics would find exclusion from Communion in the Catholic Church hurtful. It had never occurred to me to feel that way about communion in another denomination’s communion service. I wasn’t “in communion” with all of their beliefs, so it would have made a travesty of what we each believed to share communion with them. My logic made perfect sense to me. I was blind-sided when I first learned from some of my friends how excluded they felt at not being able to receive communion when they were at Mass. Some are merely confused or mildly offended and chalk it up to a Catholic “us and them” mentality, but others are hurt to the point of tears.

Their pain was palpable. Worse, I had no idea how to ease it. I’m not and never have been an apologist; even if I were, I instinctively knew nothing I could say would explain or ease the sense of exclusion. I’ve struggled with the inadequacy of explanation. How do you bridge a gap between a reality and its emotional impact? I’ve never really found a comfortable solution to this dilemma. Then this year on the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time I heard the reading from 1 Samuel 3:3b – 10 in a way that I think may help me live in the gap. Homilies and expositions of this text usually focus on Samuel’s listening skills and ready response. What I came upon instead that day was a valuable revelation on Eli. It struck me that there isn’t an indication in the OT text that Eli gets irritated at Samuel for coming back to wake him up all the time. It is stereotypical that parents lose their patience with a child who comes to them because of monsters under the bed, a frightening thunderstorm, or to ask for a glass of water. It’s almost illogical that Eli doesn’t get annoyed. I could see Eli telling young Samuel , “Stop bothering me and let me get some rest. The next time you think I’m calling you, just roll over and go back to sleep, but don’t disturb me again.”

Instead, Eli seems very patient and not at all ill-tempered. Eli’s gift in this story was to listen less to himself and more to what was going on around him, all around him. Drowsy and even, perhaps, irritated as he was, he still listened closely enough to hear the Spirit moving. Am I to be like Eli? Since having this gap between reality and its emotional fall-out present itself to me, I’ve focused on my discomfort or the discomfort of my friends. Their pain and my discomfort are no less real but I’ve broadened my view: when something bothers us in our mangled churches perhaps it is a call to ask if we are listening more to ourselves than to the promptings of the Spirit waiting to reveal God to us? I don’t have any answer to the pain of exclusion and the hurt I feel for my friends; I can’t explain away that gap between heavenly and earthly realities. I just keep trying to listen in patience and in humility.

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read the post before this one, here.

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Eileen Bentsen

Eileen Bentsen is an Associate Librarian at Baylor University.  As a digital immigrant, Eileen doesn’t blog but prefers to have long, rambling conversations concerning just about anything except politics.  Preferably with a group of friends over a pot of tea, or, better yet, the dinner table.

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 church is not an institution, the church is not a building, the church is not a programme, the church is people”.

It is often said in various forms, in different contexts, with different intentions. People however are a problem, a problem for which Christ is the solution, but that solution is very much a work in progress.

My own faith journey could be read in a number of ways. Baptised in secret as a baby (something I discovered in my twenties), grew up in a non-practicing home but in English Christian Schools where we prayed and worshiped every day, a vocational call at 13 (although I had no idea then what it meant), commitment and adult baptism at 16, five years in a Reformed Charismatic congregation, then a few more in something more Pentecostal.

And then people happened. I had seen it before, the church I was part of in my teens had a break down in relationships between the eldership, but by then I wasn’t involved enough to be hurt by it. In my mid-twenties it was different, I was involved. What happened isn’t so important, the why maybe more so.

I suspect that often in church we get caught up in an unhealthy Paternalism (and Maternalism). Expectations are placed on those in positions of responsibility that are unrealistic and in turn unrealistic demands are placed on others by those in positions of responsibility. Relationships become parent-infant, and when one party falls short the relationship can become toxic. Children rage at their pastors, parents emotionally discipline their congregation, pastoral colleagues fight over the children’s love. Sadly I have had folks tell me they want to be treated like children at church, I have heard ministers describe their flock as children, and I have seen congregations mercilessly turn on pastors when they admitted their mistakes – breaking the illusion of parental perfection.

I wish I could say that it was a problem only in churches with strong leadership, a charismatic spirituality, or an evangelical theology, yet although more hierarchical church groups can sometimes be insulated against it, they are not exempt. Jesus confidently said to his disciples ‘I have called you friends’, we find these words a far greater challenge.

So in my twenties I found myself hurting and cast adrift from the church that had sustained me for years. I wandered into somewhere very different, an ancient building, one with pews, robes, bells, smoke, standing and sitting, ritual and liturgy. I slowly fell in love with the richness of ancient shapes and forms of worship. At the time I hadn’t read the early Fathers of the Church hadn’t had the change of perception to see the liturgy of the ancient church crying out in the pages of the New Testament, and I hadn’t come to any theological conclusions. It was very much a shift of experience.

The table was at the centre of this new experience, this new way of worshiping. Holy Communion, the Offering, the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, call it what you will. It was Jesus’ table that he shared with his friends. The depth of this was brought home to me one night in the Garden of Gethsemane, the garden of betrayal and pain.

Every Holy Week, the 7 days before Easter, the journey of Christ’s Passion was shared. On Maundy Thursday evening we celebrated the Last Supper as if we were there with the disciples, the ministers washed people’s feet and we shared Christ’s presence in bread and wine. Then with Christ we would go to the garden. The garden was just a side chapel, a table with a few flowers and plants. The bread and the wine blessed at communion were placed here and we were invited to watch and pray, just as Jesus had asked his friends to do. In John’s Gospel the Last Supper is described starting with the bread shared with the disciples and ending with the blood and water pouring from Jesus’ side on the cross, the last cup. So the bread and wine set aside in the garden, the body and blood of Christ, would be shared again on Good Friday as we gathered around the cross.

The strangeness of this practice for one whose experience of worship had been worship songs and uplifted hands was significant. But in a spirit of exploration, I gave it a go. I sat in the garden that Maundy Thursday night. ‘Just one hour’ I thought. At the end of the hour I intended to leave.

Over the years I had been in some fairly remarkable meetings. I had seen the Toronto or Father’s Blessing break like waves over the British church. I had experienced laughter, floor time and tears. I had expounded that this was a bursting forth of the Fruit of the Spirit, Love, Joy & Peace. But like others I had also grown suspicious, noticing the similarities between the supposed manifestations of the Spirit and the work of skilled hypnotists, unsure of the evidence of transformed lives. Faith may be emotional, even ecstatic, but we must never confuse a human experience with the Holy Spirit.

There in the garden there was no space for laughter, for shaking, for lying on the floor. There was no-one to blow on us, to lay hands and pray, to cry ‘more Lord’. There was just the table, the bread and the wine, Christ present. After the hour I went to get up and I could not, I am unsure if I could even move. The sense of the intimate presence of Christ was overwhelming in a way I had never touched upon in even the most charismatic of meetings. But it was also simple, free of hype, judgement or expectation. Whilst others came and went, Jesus had me wait and watch.

This was not the end of the story; eventually I was ordained in this small corner of the global church, the Church of England. Here too I have seen people hurt as I saw before, seen people struggle with faith and I almost lost my own. I am still in the Garden of Gethsemane; where we let one another down, betray one another, and tears of blood are wept. Yet at the centre is not building, institution, not even people as we have sometimes understood it, but rather the table.

The table were Jesus met with his friends and shared his body and blood, the table where he meets with us still and shares his body and blood when we gather around Him.

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read the post before this one, here.

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Rev. Edward Green

Edward Green is a rural priest working in diverse communities in the UK. Spiritually at home in the Anglican-catholic tradition with a background in alternative worship and emerging forms of church. Married to a Christian children, youth and families worker. Enjoys blogging at  http://www.future-shape-of-church.org and listening to 80′s post-punk onwards.

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 respect people who have intellectual reasons for walking away from the church. Not because I agree, but because I can empathize and grapple with questions, too.

But then I dig deeper, and usually the reason people have left the church, faith, or organized religion comes down to one thing…

People. 

But, as my dad always taught me, people in the church can hurt us because it’s often the only place that says, “Welcome, all sinners!” The church attracts people with deep problems whom many other organizations may stiff-arm. Those people get involved as volunteers and end up rubbing their fellow pew-sitters the wrong way. Jesus also warned against wolves in sheep’s clothing. Sadly, some people end up getting bitten by these wolves and then claim the sheep did it. The wounded then leave the church.

Often I hear myself apologizing for the church and how screwed up we are. (And we are.) So instead, I would like to highlight people who come to mind as reasons why I love the church. It will be from a child’s point of view since the people who first came to mind were from my days growing up in Michigan and attending the church my father pastored. Our family lived in the parsonage, which connected via sidewalk to the people who worshiped within the four walls of Trinity Church.

There were many good people at Trinity and a handful of bad. To those listed below, I simply want to say thank-you for living your life in a way that reflected the good and kind Christ whom I love. When I look back one day on the film of my life, I hope as an adult I was as generous with my time as you were with yours and that I care for the people in my church as you did.

Childhood Church Cast

Mr. Smith: He was a janitor at our church, and, for whatever reason, I was fascinated by the large sweeping dry mops. They were as wide as I was tall, and turning them felt like I was moving a dead body. Mr. Smith would assign me a long hallway (hello, child labor) and then take me to Burger King. Sounds sketchy, but it wasn’t! He loved our church community by keeping it clean, and he loved me through Whoppers.

Dave Achterberg: I loved Dave because he treated me like an adult. We had this big printer at our church to make the bulletins in-house. It was legit! Dave had to lay down all the different ink onto the plates, and my little eight-year-old mind was blown away by the process. Dave would let me hang out and show me what he did step-by-step. After that was done, I think we probably talked about quantum physics. I was probably like an annoying little female version of Dennis the Menace, but Dave never let on.

Mr. and Mrs. Horst: He was a janitor, and she worked in the office. Every Christmas season, they would invite me over to their house to spend the night. Mr. Horst would swing by at 5 PM after work and take me to their home. Mrs. Horst and I would always make a craft. One year we even made a quilt. And by “we,” I mean Mrs. Horst did and I watched. Not sure why I spent the night (my parents couldn’t possibly have wanted a night without me), but I did. And the last year I stayed over I wet the bed. I might have been too old to wet the bed, and I might have been too embarrassed to tell them. I made the bed and went down for breakfast. That might be why it was the last year I was ever invited over.

Mrs. Wilson: She was in charge of missions at our church. She had little trinkets and maps from all over the world in her office. She would let me sit, talk, and ask questions. I never thought as a kid, “Oh, I want to travel when I get older,” but I wonder now if Mrs. Wilson whetted my appetite for the world with her stories and passion. One memory I had of SNAP (which stood for Sunday Night Activity Program; creative, I know) was when there was a pretend airplane made out of a huge dome of plastic. Huge square floor fans* kept it inflated as we “traveled” to another country. When we “arrived” and left the plane, the basement of the church was transported into another country. Mrs. Wilson died a couple years ago from cancer, and, as I read online about her last mission trip, I couldn’t help but continue to be inspired.

Mr. and Mrs. Achterberg: Yes, they are related to printing-press Dave. These two people were probably the coolest couple at our church. Mr. A was a veterinarian and pretty much always figured out how to have the best time possible, such as hay rides at their house in the fall or amateur hours where they convinced the staff to put on comedy routines for the church. My grandma, dad, and I all did a dance together once. Ask my dad. It’s true. Wherever the Achterbergs are right now, I bet they are scheming up something fun.

Mr. and Mrs. Harbison: OK, they might tie for coolest couple. They had two boys and a girl who were similar ages and genders as the three kids in my family. Mr. Harbison was a pastor on staff, and Mrs. Harbison was a full-time mom. I may or may not have asked my mom as a kid why she couldn’t be more like Mrs. Harbison. Ouch. Mrs. H let us watch movies and always made mac and cheese or ordered pizza. She let us dress up in her old wedding dress and laughed a lot. She thought we were funny. I was into that. Mr. Harbison had a killer mustache that he probably still rocks today. At least I hope so. Whenever he would pick me up to go play with their daughter Beth, he broke the speed limit. As the little legalist that I was, I would keep my eyes on the speedometer and call him out when the needle passed 25. But secretly I loved it.

Support group: I don’t know how it started, but basically it was a number of families in our church who “did life” together. I can remember as a seven-year-old being exposed to the still-mostly-segregated South as we went to Mississippi with Habitat for Humanity and built homes. We also (and still to this day) spent every New Year’s Day together. Food covering every inch of table space; football being watched and played; ping-ponging mixed with ceaseless laughter, conversations, and bloating.

I could keep going.

While this was probably more fun for me to write about and reflect on than for you to read, writing this gave me an idea for you…

For every person in the church who has hurt you, try to think of two who have been kind. Who have tried to be like Jesus, even in the midst of their humanity. Start there; it may not make you hit up a church this Sunday, but it might change your perspective on what the church can be through the all-star yet simple cast of everyday people. And, who knows? Maybe one day you will join the cast, and a child in the audience will grow up and write about your performance.

From my heart, 

Joy

*The ones that you put your face behind and say, “Luuuuuuke, I am your Faaather.” Just me?

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read the post before this one, here.

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Joy Eggerichs

Joy serves as the Director of Love and Respect NOW. She began her journey in ministry as the Love and Respect Conference Coordinator for her parents, Dr. Emerson and Sarah Eggerichs. During these live events, she would hear couples say over and over again, “I wish I knew then what I know NOW.” This inspired her to help her generation, of 18-35 year olds, avoid that very feeling. You can follow Joy on her site www.loveandrespectNOW.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/loveandrespectNOW Twitter: @joyeggerichs and @loverespectNOW

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.