Church Service

(LONG BLOG 1 of 2)

Service.

The word sounds a bit stale, doesn't it?

A soldier serves his country. A tennis player serves a ball. A waitress at Chili's serves you a glass of Coke. A murderer serves a sentence in prison.



Where do you go to get gas? A service station. How about terms of service? Cell phone service. Customer service. Funeral service. Wedding service. Secret service. Postal service. National Park Service. Internal Revenue Service...and you don't want them serving you, trust me.

Or maybe this. When I picture a servant, I have the classic stereotypical image in my mind of a "butler": full tuxedo, at attention, looking like a well-aged, ripe and sexy Antonio Banderas. Or maybe an indentured servant: some poor seventeen-year-old from the mother country with freckles and a malnourished body, working as an apprentice until he can get-the-heck-outta-dodge and find himself a new career. When I think of a servant in the religious sense, maybe--just maybe--I see Jesus: Jesus, the white man in a white robe with a groomed beard and combed shoulder length hair (Jesus has very good hygeine), a towel wrapped around his arm, washing the "dirty" but still manageable feet of the disciples. Mmm.

Maybe. But that's not my first image. And why not?

I want to say it's because "service" has become so very sterile and clean and tidy. It reminds me of tax forms or hospital rooms or the government. When people say, "serve your neighbor," I think...hm. That could mean a lot of things. Awkward things.

And its strange how we've turned "church" into a service, too. Just like the weather service or the postal service, its a "church service" that we attend on Saturday (Sunday) mornings. Many Adventists go to church embracing this attitude of filling up the tank for the week: getting their weekly worth of hymns and holiness stuffed into their little hearts and ears. In return for the sermon and their dose of spiritual supplement, the constituents offer some money here, a handshake there, a potluck dish or two (vegetarian, of course), and their valued opinions--which usually become the hotbed of Friday night conversations.

"So, do you think that rock-in-the-face had anything to do with Ellen's prophecies?"

"Her visions are from God, you idiot."

It's a catering deal: I scratch your back, you scratch mine. You come to the church, and the church will serve you. That's the attitude. And, frankly, it sucks.

OK. So before you brush me off as the worst Adventist EVER, just let me say that:

• I'm just as guilty as anyone. I'm in the boat, too. Me and T-Pain.
• I'm walking on Berrien soil here. Better watch my back.
  
• There are a lot of good things about the church that I'm not mentioning.
• "The church is like the ark. It's stinks something awful, but if you leave it, you drown."
  
• I believe Ellen White was a lady of God, but I'm a tad skeptical of her writings.
  
• I'm too cynical - working on that.
  
• I know I'm overgeneralizing things. Mostly.
• Some people might find this offensive. That's not my intention.
  
• I suck at being diplomatic.
• And I should probably take into account the whole Romans 14 thing. But I want to vent. Publicly. And these things NEED TO BE SAID. At least, I feel that way.
  

Disclaimers aside, I think that the modern church (both the SDA institution and the whole enchilada--that is, the Christ-following body of believers) has a twisted, narcissistic view of service. Our culture has rendered service to be an act of utilitarianism and employment: you serve, therefore, you get a paycheck. You serve, therefore you deserve.

Even more harmful, most of the time, the service rendered is emotionally and mentally detached. When we serve people outside our tight-knit (Adventist) social circle, the service is too often devoid of love. It is without connection, without soul - without face or name.

This is very serious.

For service without love is nothing more than a gas station. It's nothing more than a spiritual tax write-off. SERVICE SANS LOVE is a clanging symbol. It's just noise. You can donate all the money you want...to all the charities...in the Ronald Reagan "trickle-down" I-get-rich-so-you-can-get-off-the-streets sense, but it doesn't do a lick of difference to further the cause of Christ without LOVE. This is because people don't need more money, they need more love.

I would say if TRUE COMPASSION was the driving source behind helping out your neighbor, then service would look a whole lot differently. It would look like family helping out family--instead of a fast food job, instead of a lock-and-load, hit-and-run, one-time-only event. Imagine if we actually liked the homeless people we were feeding. Imagine if we liked talking to them and were genuinely interested in their well-being, instead of patting ourselves on the back for a Matthew 25 job well done. Imagine if we actually loved the people in the pew next to us--and knew their names, asked their stories...knew their favorite foods and their favorite songs, to know the things that move them to tears. Church would be a beautiful place of friendship and family. It would feel like home, because people want to know who you are at your core, and they want to love you with all they have. That's what all of us cry out for, in the innermost of our broken souls: to be loved by other people and to be loved by God. We want a place to be safe and secure. We want a place of refuge from the scrutiny and anonymity and the judgment outside. We want community--dangerously vulnerable community--full of grace and love and tension, the stuff of beauty and the stuff of songs and the things that prop up our very hope in God.

But church is no refuge. Not now.

Without love, the church is a country club. It's a membership. It's a weird fraternal organization. It's a business, with plastered smiles and nice suits, good haircuts, and mounds upon mounds of sober, thick judgment--slow to love and eager to fix. And we wonder why people aren't standing at the doors, begging for seats in our cold-floored, cold-hearted sanctuaries. We wonder why the kids stop going to church. They find something more exciting than Friday nights in youth groups--and without an emotional connection, they have nothing to mourn. No love, no reason to stay.

Today, church is a show. It is a program. It is a service(!) Complete with lights and sound and words on the screen, a good motivational talk, and minimal--yet oh-so-very strange--social interaction.

For this reason, I say our ideas of service are royally screwed, and I mean that in the most polite way possible. The prompt for this blog asked, "Is giving money to an organization enough, or is there intrinsic value in helping out other people yourself?" In response, I would suggest that there is plenty good done with redirecting cash flow toward groups of people who have means and methods to help. By all means, give money! Volunteer! What better is there to do with your time? However, just because you knock off a tenth of your income and mail it to OxFam doesn't mean that your soul swells with the purpose and spirit of true, Jesus-like service. And just because you dirty your hands in a soup kitchen doesn't mean that your heart beats with compassion and love for your neighbor, either.

Service should never come out of a place of obligation--whether direct obligation or sublime, guilt-trip-like persuasion. When it is, it too often looks like a charade. We are performing an act of love without the love. We become Hollywood actors and actresses in front of our church members and in front of the people we are helping. Do we think that people are so stupid that they can't tell our motivations? Far from it. They know what they're being served. They know what we're dishing out to them--fake compassion and fake friendliness--from a bunch of hoity-toity Bible slingers who don't drink and don't cuss and think they're the healthiest and holiest bunch of people since the pope. They think we're hypocrites and we're fakers. They think that we think we are better than them. This is what happens when we "serve" people in the name of Love, and have not love.

True service only stems from true compassion and care and humility. It comes from admitting we are just as effed-up as everybody else....and that we have addictions, closet sins. That we battle demons and lose. That we hold on to wounds and barely keep it together. That we're sick of our jobs, our churches, of human experience in general. That we don't hear God when we pray, that it hurts when people play pretend church. That we get annoyed, and frustrated, and angry, and that death and sickness rips us to pieces. Only then, from acknowledging our human commonality, embracing the tears and the laughter together, that we can eat at the same table comfortably. I think this is where Jesus is and where love abounds. For the sick and mentally ill, we find Christ in them. For the addicted and broken, we find Christ lodged in their suffering. For the poor and the starving, Christ's stomach is writhing and distended. For the oppressed, Christ hangs on a lonely, splintering tree. The story becomes clear, why Christ had to suffer and die, in light of the brokenness and darkness we are closed inside.

And because his heart bleeds when a soul suffers, so should our hearts bleed. For that is what it means to love others.