By John W. Fountain
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| A South African woman at a well, the only source of water for hundreds in a township, fills her bucket Photo: By John W. Fountain |
For weeks, a little chocolate girl named
Brenda and I climbed the stairs of Sister Betty's house to practice for our
church play. A Sunday School teacher and Bible enthusiast, Sister Betty drafted
us for a dramatic interpretation of a passage of Scripture: St. John 4. I was
about 10 and Brenda about 7 or 8. I was Jesus. She was the Samaritan woman.
Over and over again, we rehearsed our
lines with dramatic inflection. Brenda had a mean set of pipes and routinely
did recitations in church, her voice bellowing like a megaphone: "O clap
your hands, all ye people . . . "
We were both budding thespians, good
kids from good church-going families with praying grandmothers who loved the
Lord. We arose on Sunday mornings fully aware that - barring serious illness or
the Lord having returned on a cloud to rapture the church - Sunday School, and
nearly all-day worship service, was inescapable.
As a boy, I vowed, braving the risk
of saying it out loud: "When I get grown, I ain't ever going to church,
ever!"
"As a full-grown
man, especially as of late,
I have made no secret of my absence,
or defection,
or defection,
from the institutional church."
It wasn't church
per se. Some things about it I liked: singing in the choir, the music, the
funny way people sometimes danced in the Spirit. I liked Sunday School and
learning about Jesus. But even as a child, there seemed something very
isolating about the whole church experience.
Most kids I knew didn't go to church
and our religious circle seemed seldom to connect with anyone beyond our walls.
Oh, I heard powerful testimonies and saw what "the saints" claimed
were the myriad manifestations of the Spirit. But all this paled in comparison
to the manifestation of darkness and evil that encompassed my neighborhood,
where thieves even broke into the church, stole offering plates, choir robes
and tambourines.
Even
back then, there seemed a fixation with "going to church" more than
on "being" the church.
As a full-grown man, especially of
late, I have made no secret of my absence, or defection, from the institutional
church. For I find in it no place for me. And in some ways, I realize now that
in some ways this is the way it has always been.
The other day a "friend" on
Facebook wrote, "If you scared, go to church," then he quoted Hebrews
10:25, which urges that believers "forsaken not the assembling of
ourselves together."
I "liked" the comment, then
responded: "But may I ask, my brother, does to assemble together as
believers really mean to go to church? He has said wherever two or three are
gathered in His name that He is in the midst. And when he re-plied to the woman
at the well when she inquired whether Jerusalem or 'this mountain' is where we
should worship, he answered not by telling her where, but in what manner to
worship: In spirit and in truth.
"What if the church is broken,
no longer a healing station, not a shelter from the storm, insensitive,
misguided, puffy, stuffy, insincere, hurtful, dysfunctional?
"Should going to church be our
focus, or going to God in prayer, in our homes, in our cars, assembling with
our friends in coffee shops, parks, rented facilities, street corners and
wherever the Spirit leads, admonishing, warning, urging and encouraging one
another?"
I never heard back. Instead, my Christian
brother responded by promptly "unfriending" me and removing himself
from contact.
In some ways, that is what “the church” has
done.
And I might be lost
were it not for Sister Betty, little Brenda and my knowledge of an encounter
another outsider had with the Savior more than 2,000 years ago.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
