It bothers me that in churches, one hears very little discussion of theology or implications of this thing we call church outside of the “appointed” activities and liturgies (and ven then, it is “Pushed” at us, with our very prescenbce being “sufficient” to constitute “participation” and thus, apparently, dialogue-ish enough, in some abstract glorification of ritual. There are , of course, very real positive aspects of the “participation” in our “being there”. But onece there, what formation is happening?

As I “survey” the small clumps of discussions going on in churches, VERY rarely do they have much at all to do with matters of church. They are often concerning the typical “water cooler” discussions at any given place of business. The results or the choice of play calling in the Titans game, the episode of this or that TV show.

It’s very much like everybody there is “making their appearance” there and taking themselves out of there and back into “real life” by discussing things come from being “somewhere else other than here”. Afterwards, everybody shoots out to the nearest brunch spot (I notice that it is very much more “in fashion” to go to early services now, since that affords the luxury of getting to the Brunch spots and getting home to catch the pre-game shows. Whatever the schedule, and whatever the passions guiding us, matters of who we are as a formative community (or he we should be) are extremely rare, even in the more highly charged and intellectually sophisticated churches. Being distinct as a community (in how it “lives as community) is disturbingly rare.

I may well be going back to Owensboro late this month to go to a class reunion, and I find myself realizing that I would much rather have a reunion of the high school youth group at my church, but nobody thinks or suggests such things. Why is that? That set of people were so much more formative of me, and were those with whom I had an insataible appetite to be with.

I feel such a quandry with this feeling of “suffocation” I have regarding the church. I don’t get much of any sense that there is any intention or desire to know me in any siginificant way. There just isn’t time, it seems. There is a palatable resistance to the idea of engendering any in-depth accountablity structure. “We might exclude those who aren’t ready to make such a commitment”. Yeah. We might. There is a distinct difference between being “set apart” and how we relate to those FROM WHOM we are set apart.

I continue in my reading of A Community of Character. I think I want to read “With the Grain of the Universe” next in my Hauerwasian curricula.