When Is a Church Not a Church?

            When is church not a church? When it is SoulTable.

            First some background

            This morning I read yet another article in the Washington Post about how Millennials mostly don’t like church, leave churches, and don’t go back (http://tinyurl.com/y6j6sfhq). This trend is even more pronounced in Canada, which has always been a more secular country than the USA (“Canada to lose 9,000 churches over the next Ten Years” http://tinyurl.com/y2rrguzt).

            Of course, not a few of these articles note that the trend is not quite as pronounced among Evangelicals. This isn’t saying much, since Evangelicals are also sticking by President Trump, which doesn’t suggest a high level of spiritual discernment or cultural insight among this group. It’s an old Christian mistake. Align yourself with power, because that makes you powerful! But when that power turns out to be oppressive and evil, the church will get painted by the same brush. 

            So, churches are dying, everywhere. Or setting themselves up for a massive comeuppance.

            Does this matter? Well, I suppose your answer will depend on whether you go or not. I go. In fact, I am a Christian minister in a liberal church (our motto: United, Unorthodox, Unlimited). The members of my church certainly lament the aging of our congregation, the small Sunday School and Youth Groups. I love traditional church music (even if I rarely agree with the theology), and the warmth of my congregation. Though aging, it is slowly growing too. I love the good things my church and its members do in the community and the way the children of this congregation have been taught to be responsible, caring citizens. 

            Beyond my personal feelings about church, there certainly are greater cultural losses as the church declines: loss of community in an increasingly lonely society, loss of cultural depth when it comes to understanding how Christianity has shaped the literature, philosophy, and values of the West, for example. Imagine reading Margaret Atwood’s Madadam trilogy, or The Handmaid’s Tale or her new Testaments without a good grasp of scripture. You’ll miss a lot. In fact, lots of readers miss most of it.

            On a more positive note, the waning of the church also means that it is being stripped of the coercive power that has embarrassed it so often in the past. 

            Sure, the church has done good things too, but it has also been a dependable champion of those in power, of the status quo, of sexual repression, of sexual exploitation, a supporter of residential schools, a racist institution that happily relegated non-whites to ghettoes and prisons, and so on. And all that is just in the past 100 years. Dig a bit deeper and you get Crusades and Inquisitions and Indulgences and pogroms and moral justification for any empire the church ever found itself in. The American Empire is merely the latest.

            But the same critique that I just made with respect to the church could be made for just about any powerful historical institution of the past few thousand years. Whether political regimes or banks, corporations or guilds or invading hordes of Steppe Tribesmen, when humans work together they tend to do both good things and bad. The church is not different. Which is a disappointment of historic proportions. 

            Still. There is the gospel! There is the good news! If you can believe it. The church’s (as, perhaps, opposed to the Bible’s) singular focus on salvation and life eternal has more often served as an other-worldly reward than motivation to redeem this world. I love the moral exemplar that Jesus is, especially considering his context. I am inspired by it. But I will make no claims about virgin births or children raised from the dead or resurrections or Trinities. (Not anymore, that is. There was a day.) Millennials, for the most part, find this sort of stuff unbelievable too.

            At Lawrence Park Community Church we’ve watched all this happen with some sorrow, some regret, but also count ourselves as part of the resistance. We want our church to grow, to make a difference in the city of Toronto, to inspire people to be good neighbours, to act on climate change. We want to inspire people to be more like Jesus.

            So, SoulTable. I’ve written about it before, and promised an update. SoulTable is a weekly gathering in our church’s large community hall. We launched on September 22. The format is meal/contemporary secular music (with a spiritual angle)/and a TEDx type speaker on a topic that we hope will accomplish our goals. We serve wine and beer, devote a good amount of time to discussion, and don’t pray much or read scripture much (not that we’re against it, but there is a lot of other good stuff to reflect on out there too).

            On Sept 22 we launched with 160 people in attendance. They were there to hear Neil Pasricha, author of The Book of Awesome. Attendance has ranged, since then, from 35 (Thanksgiving weekend) to about 80 or so. On Sunday we listened to spoken word artist Micah Bournes (from LA) riffing on race, justice and freedom. Next week Gretta Vosper (the United Church of Canada's atheist minister) will speak about how she approaches death and dying, funerals, and families all over the faith map.

            SoulTable is not really church. It’s an event built around Biblical themes, with music, striving to be community, and encouraging people to love like Jesus did. Or is that church?

            It’s radical. It’s different. Naysayers will laugh or complain that we’ve caved to culture,  that we don't treat scripture as authoritative or infallible or inerrant. We don't. Millennials, of course, just say “no” and leave the naysayer churches. Anyway, we’re investing our church's endowment into this. We’re trying to be relevant  and inspirational. 

            Check us out 5pm, every Sunday, at Lawrence Park Community Church, 2180 Bayview, in Toronto. We’re just south of Lawrence, and across the street from Glendon College and Sunnybrook Hospital. We have (Sunday only) free parking across the street. We’re trying something different, and so far, it seems to be working!