Changing the way we do and be

So I heard a great line today... "We need to lower the bar on how we do church and raise the bar on how to be church." Have you ever asked yourself how am I supposed to do church? I don't think many of us do, though if you have ever been thrown into a position that required you to plan a worship service that is probably the first question that runs through your mind.

In our American Christan culture today there is a lot of emphasis on how we do church, and if we are "doing" church correctly. Did we follow the correct steps, did we say the right words, did we sing the right songs, and so on and so forth. We have gotten a church service down to an art form. Well for the most part. Many people who grow up in the church end up memorizing the order and often the words in a church service. And quite often these are the ideal church goers. They know the steps and don't need anybody to guide them through a service. This repetition is often comforting to those who have done this all their life, but I think this idea that there is a certain way to "do" a worship service can breed a perfectionist attitude and culture.

This is very evident in the church culture in America today. We put on our smiling faces and best clothes on Sunday and pretend like everything is alright for a few hours. Then when we get home its back to real life. To me this is wrong. Christians are not supposed to be the people who act like they are perfect. Quite the opposite. Christians are supposed to be the ones that admit their faults and lean on one another to stand tall in Christ.

So what does it mean to lower the bar on "how we do" church. What if things changed once in a while, and people messed up and admitted their faults. What if church became less of a place and more of a people. Most Christians see a church as four walls and a roof. A church building does not reach out to the community by existing. It is stationary and its only use is to gather like minded people once or twice a week to worship God. So to lower the bar on how we do church means to loosen your expectation on how a church service should go.

So what does it mean to raise the bar on how to be church? The Church is the body of Christ. The people who strive daily to be like Jesus and lean on each other in their times of need. Instead of putting on our perfect masks and pretending everything is fine all the time we need to become more transparent and let people know what is going on in our lives. When we are down we need to let people know it is ok to be down and when people are struggling we need to let people know that we are there to catch them when they fall. The Church makes sure people are not alone in their trials.

This is why in Paul's letters he rarely talks about what should be happening in a worship service and instead focuses much more on what a Church body should look like. When 2 or more people are gathered in Christ's name He is there. There is our bar for how to do church. How to be Church takes much longer to learn and figure out and we need each other to help us when we get lost.

So lets raise the bar on being the Church. Lets act more like a group of believers than believers in ritual. While some ritual is good, it does not make a church service. The Church makes a church service.