Twenty-Two Reasons Not to Give Up on My Church

I’ve read plenty of Internet stories lately that explain why fewer and fewer people--including one-time Evangelicals--go to church. In response, I offer a few reasons why you ought to consider going to (liberal!) Lawrence Park Community Church (LPCC) before you give up on religion altogether. 

• Yes, we think there is a gay agenda, and we’re for it. Gay—or trans, or bi, or whatever—all sexual orientations are definitely welcome at our shop.
• Not married? Living together? Nice. Welcome. 
• Evolution is a theory like gravity is a theory. Get over it.
• Neither Eve nor Adam committed an original sin. And I am not guilty or condemned before God on account of any such mythic sin. This is as theologically dense as I’m going to get in this post.
• Most LPCC members believe in God. But all members of LPCC are deeply impressed by Jesus' life and example. We don’t know how God and Jesus are related, exactly. We do enjoy wondering about that question, however. 
• We don’t play any of that faux rock music known as Christian Contemporary Music. We do traditional church music with organ, piano, and an incredible choir. We mix in jazz, real rock and roll, folk, and even country and western occasionally. (Okay, country and western just once). 
• A lot of people at LPCC are pretty well-to-do. I don’t criticize them for being capitalists and then go ask them for money when we need it. Our well-to-do members, after all, are trying to figure out how to be authentically Christian just like everyone else. They merely have their own unique challenges. No need to scapegoat them for that.
• A lot of people at LPCC are barely getting by from paycheque to paycheque. Life in Toronto is expensive. We don't hound such people about tithing or anything like that. We do encourage everyone to be generous with both time and resources when they can afford it.
• Sermons are short. Twenty minutes max. You’re in at 10:30 and out by 11:30—maybe 11:35. Why? Because I never met anyone at the door, after church, who said, “I wish you had gone on longer."
• Still, lots of people come before 10:30, and stay long after 11:30. The coffee is good and the company is even better.
• We don’t insist that members attend every Sunday. We have a saying at LPCC that goes like this: “We’re glad to see you when you come. We bless you when you’re away.” 
• A lot of my preaching is about inspiring people to love their neighbours, doing social justice, and imitating Jesus. I’d love to see everyone plant a bit of Shalom whatever they do, wherever they go. At the same time, I try not to guilt members into it. 
• We’re curious about theology, and like to hear occasional sermons that explore the great themes of Christianity. We don’t shove doctrine down anyone’s throat. Theology should be fun, like a playground.
• We think the Bible is pretty neat. The Bible also makes us, at turns, angry, incredulous, happy, and confused. 
• Not all sermons are from or about the Bible. We have four coming up this spring based on Les Miz, for example. The choir will be singing the texts, too!
• Last Halloween about half the congregation came to church wearing costumes. The sermon was about death. I won't even get started on the Sunday we decorated the sanctuary as Oz, and I wore red slippers. Aunt Em's potluck, after, was delicious.
• Hockey hero and Evangelical Paul Henderson, who most certainly doesn’t agree with most of what passes for theology in our church, preached here last year. So did Maria Toorpakai, a world-class Muslim athlete. Both preached during a four-week series on Sports and Spirituality. This year we’re doing a January series on Social Media and Spirituality.
• Our motto is “United, Unlimited, Unorthodox.” We’re not really sure what “unlimited” is supposed to mean, anymore, but we’re having too much fun to worry much about changing our motto. Ambiguity can be good.
• The pope suggested this past week that birth control is really bad. At LPCC we don’t think so. And I’ve never warned members not to breed like rabbits. 
• The Youth Group is studying the Spirituality of Star Wars this semester. They go on retreats. Lots of pizza and fun.
• We support community causes with generous gifts and volunteer hours: Out of the Cold, New Circles, and Camp Lake Scugog come to mind. We encourage people to give time and money to other causes than just church.
• We had a three-day art show this past year that included a worship interview with one of the artists.  

And I’ve only just started. If you’re wondering about what you believe, if you want to be with other people similarly curious, if you admire the example of Jesus, if you want community, if you want great music, if you want people trying hard to be honest and good rather than hypocrites, if you want to go to a cool church, you ought to check out Lawrence Park Community Church, a United Church of Canada congregation that meets at 10:30 am on Sundays at 2180 Bayview Ave. in Toronto.

A Unitarian with Trinitarian Tendencies

           I’m getting used to being a pastor in the United Church of Canada. This denomination is clearly much more liberal than the Christian Reformed Church I spent most of my life in. My particular congregation, Lawrence Park Community Church, sort of puts an exclamation mark behind the “more liberal,” by describing itself on its webpage as “united, unlimited, and unorthodox.”

            Being “un-,” has had a bit of traction for a while now—at least since 7 Up branded itself as the Uncola, I suppose. I’m reading a book, now, entitled, “Unmarketing: Stop Marketing, Start Engaging,” by Scott Stratton. Still, before I joined the United Church, it was a stretch for me to think of myself as unorthodox.

            Then, a few weeks ago, someone asked me about the Trinity. What did I think of the Trinity? How would I explain it? And—a bit to my surprise—I answered her, “Well, I’m not sure anymore. I guess I’m a Unitarian with Trinitarian tendencies!”

            I’m not sure where that came from. The person who asked me wasn’t having heart-to-heart conversation. We were playing at theology. But there it was. Very unorthodox. Maybe my church’s billboard fits!

            I don’t mean to be flippant in my comments about the Trinity, even though I do think that theology ought to have something of a playground feel to it. But usually, people take getting it right when it comes to theology much too seriously. Or they want to get it right for questionable motives. Take, for example, Constantine, the Emperor of Rome, on both counts. He convened one of the earliest worldwide councils to settle the question of the Trinity. Christians had been talking about the concept for three hundred years, and had not come to a consensus. The discussion got a bit heated and threatened to split the church into competing camps. Constantine, who became a Christian in large measure in order to unify his empire around religion, didn’t want to see a schism lay his plans waste. So, to keep the peace in his empire, he insisted on a single definition. Constantine then used his political power to force the answer he liked best and got the political result he wanted. Most of the church has held that answer sacrosanct ever since, even though the Empire for which the answer was crafted declined and fell sixteen hundred years ago!

            Anyway, as I was driving home after my friendly discussion about the Trinity, another related question occurred to me. Why, exactly, is it so critical that we get this concept right? The church got by just talking about it, rather than insisting on an answer, for more than 300 years. And what could it matter to God—especially a loving God, if we didn’t get it exactly right? To use an analogy (talk about God is mostly analogical, after all), if someone mistakes me for the father of a young man who is actually my nephew; or if I mistake someone I’ve just met at my Rotary club for another person altogether when I meet her on the street, what real harm is done? None. In both cases, having made a mistake about someone’s identity, we act like adults. We smile, correct each other, make small talk, and go our separate ways.

            What is more, we’re talking about God, here. Mistakes are expected. I learned early in seminary that even if the word isn’t very familiar to us, God is, in important respects “ineffable,” or unknowable. Considering that humans are a single species of life among as many as eight million other species on earth; given that the earth is a tiny speck of a planet on the edge of an unimaginably large cosmos; given that that cosmos is some ten or twelve billion years old and God has presumably been here and there the whole time; given that by most accounts God set all this in motion, and is eternal and omnipotent and omnipresent and on and on, how are we ever going to “get” God "right" anyway?

            So we speak about God using analogies we find in scripture or make up ourselves. He is like a rock, or a mother, or a shepherd, or a burning bush. Or we know something of God on account of the things that scripture tells us God has done.

            But let’s face it. Scripture doesn’t take a keen interest in helping us understand who God is in and of himself. We don’t get much by way of divine ontology. In philosophy, ontology is the study of “being.” It is a big deal. Ironically, most philosophers can’t agree with each other on human ontology. Makes trying to understand divine ontology seem like aiming high.

            Nevertheless, we insist that God is three persons, but only one God. Like a church is many persons but one church. That, at least, is the “social trinity” explanation. There are many others, most judged heretical: monarchianism, adoptionism, Arianism. Even a brief description of these views would involve saying much more about them than the Bible says about the Trinity in any one place (or altogether).

            The Bible, however, doesn’t spend much time on any of this. When it comes to whom he or she (both are anthropomorphic analogies, of course) is, God says, enigmatically, “I am who I am.” Or something like that—the Hebrew is hard to translate.

            So perhaps we ought to take a hint from the Bible on this. It isn’t that important that we get it right. If it was, God would have given us more than sporadic clues—God might have actually given us a book or two or at least several chapters that nailed the matter. But God didn’t.

            So, I’ve given up trying to convince people that the Trinity is exactly this or that. I’ve not given up on the Spirit or on Jesus or on God. But when I talk on how they are related to each other I’m going to give the dearth of scripture and its ambiguity on this topic a lot of respect; I’m going to take a hint from scripture’s lack of interest in the matter. And I’m going to go easy on strong assertions; I’m going to enjoy my conversations rather than pick a fight. I’m going to reread Boethius and Augustine for the fun of it. I’m going to smile at assertions, based on otherwise outmoded classical philosophy, that God consists of substance or essence. I’m going to wonder aloud rather than define terms.

            And when people ask me about it, I’ll say I’m playing at being an unorthodox Unitarian—that is, a Unitarian with Trinitarian tendencies.