{"id":1910,"date":"2011-10-19T01:20:40","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T06:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markdroberts\/?p=1910"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:36:09","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T20:36:09","slug":"1910","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markdroberts\/2011\/10\/19\/1910\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Do People Get Their Ideas of Church? Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Part 3 of series:
\n<\/a>What is a Church?<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Where Do People Get Their Ideas of Church? Part 1<\/h2>\n

People today have a wide variety of ideas about what a church should be. If you ask a dozen people you\u2019d probably get a dozen different answers.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite answers to the \u201cWhat is a church?\u201d question came during a children\u2019s sermon preached by a young seminarian. This story was related to me by someone who was in the congregation that fateful day. For those of you unfamiliar with this genre, a children\u2019s sermon comes in a worship service when the folks twelve and under are brought forward for a sermonette by the pastor or some other church leader. Often the sermon begins with a question like, \u201cWhat is God?\u201d The preacher gets a bunch of funny \u2013 and incorrect \u2013 answers, and then offers the right answer, usually with a visual aid.<\/p>\n

At any rate, a young man was doing his seminary internship at a church. As the low man on the totem pole, he got tabbed for the children\u2019s sermon and decided to talk about what the church really is. He gathered the children together in the front, and began with his question: \u201cSo, boys and girls, what is a church?\u201d He fully expected that the kids would say a church is a building and a place to go on Sundays and so forth. He\u2019d get to wrap up with the correct answer, that the church is not the building but the people. As soon as the seminarian uttered his question, one of the boys shot his hand into the air.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d the young preacher said, \u201cwhat is a church?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe gathered assembly of believers in Jesus,\u201d was the boy\u2019s answer.<\/p>\n

The seminarian was speechless, not knowing where to go from here. The kid had stolen his punch line. From the seminarian\u2019s point of view, there wasn\u2019t anything more to say about the church. So after a few seconds of embarrassed silence, he thanked the boy for his answer and dismissed the children. (What the seminarian did not know was that the theologically-precocious boy was the son of a seminary professor in the congregation, and should never have been called on first!)<\/p>\n

Most people don\u2019t get their ideas of church from their seminary professor fathers, however. Rather, then get them from a wide variety of less sophisticated sources. Let me suggest a few obvious ones.<\/p>\n

1. People get their ideas of church from their past experience of church.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Indeed, this is surely true for people who have spent some time in church. These days, more and more people come to church with no religious background whatsoever. But most folks still have at least some prior history of church, even if it\u2019s limited to weddings and funerals. As a pastor, I\u2019ve found that people usually have both positive and negative experiences from which to draw. They want a church to be like what they\u2019ve experienced in some ways, but not like other aspects of previous churches where they\u2019ve been involved.<\/p>\n

People tend to have diverse feelings about their past church experiences. Some come with negative memories. Others look back through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. For example, I\u2019ve known people to complain about some innovation in worship and talk about how wonderful their church was growing up. When I ask if their church helped them to know Christ, to grow as his disciple, or to have a desire to worship God, they\u2019ll say something like, \u201cNo, but that\u2019s not the point.\u201d Looking back, they love what they remember about worship in their childhood church, even though it didn\u2019t help them know God better.<\/p>\n

2. People get their ideas of church from pop culture. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Even folks who\u2019ve never stepped into a church might have seen the television show 7th Heaven<\/em> (about a minister and his family) or The Simpsons<\/em>, which frequently portrays The First Church of Springfield with its lovingly hypocritical pastor, the Rev. Timothy Lovejoy. Countless millions of people have seen the church through the lens of The Da Vinci Code<\/em>, with its deluded believers and diabolical bishops.<\/p>\n

On a happier note, millions of others have read about the exploits of Father Tim, the beloved, Episcopal priest in Jan Karon\u2019s Mitford Series<\/em>. Here, there are no sinister plots in church, only a bunch of ordinary, small-town folk sharing life together in a traditional, small-town church. One of my favorite series of novels, The Starbridge Series<\/em> by Susan Howatch, explores the psychological, theological, and spiritual struggles of religious leaders in the Anglican church.<\/p>\n

Of course there are dozens of other images of the church in pop culture. These often shape the expectations of Christians and non-Christians alike. Unfortunately, it seems that often these images are negative, with pastors and church members pictured as judgmental hypocrites or unthinking extremists. Churches and church leaders can be pretty messed up, I\u2019ll admit, but there are some good ones out there too. So, pop culture may not be the most reliable source of ideas of church, even though it is influential.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow, I\u2019ll consider two other common sources of ideas about church.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 3 of series: What is a Church? Where Do People Get Their Ideas of Church? Part 1 People today have a wide variety of ideas about what a church should be. If you ask a dozen people you\u2019d probably get a dozen different answers. One of my favorite answers to the \u201cWhat is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16470],"tags":[484,16547,16548],"class_list":["post-1910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-what-is-a-church","tag-church","tag-ideas-of-church","tag-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nWhere Do People Get Their Ideas of Church? Part 1<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Part 3 of series: What is a Church? Where Do People Get Their Ideas of Church? 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