You deem me due to clean my view and be at peace and lay. I mean to prove I mean to move in my own way.

The title today are lyrics from the Fiona Apple title track to her amazingly strange latest album Extraordinary Machine. Click the title to go to NPR's top ten of 2005, where this album ranked 10 but should have been 6. If your computer's not a dinosaur you can listen to a track from each album.

I am supposed to be preaching on February 19 at a buddy's church in Wisconsin on the subject of A Young Person's Relationship To The Church, as part of a series on relationships. I guess it makes sense that they wouldn't ask me to speak on romance or marriage, but the church?! Now?!

If I have a relationship with The Church it is at best a supervised visit these days. She cheated on me with Politics and Selfishness and I am ready to be divorced for good and go out looking for my next spouse. I want to say to these kids
"Run! She's a heartless lover, easily manipulated and seduced!"

But that doesn't seem to be a very uplifting message.

So here's my first crack. I am not too pumped about it.
I'd like some feedback.

I picture a boat, filled to the brim with people and supplies, traveling west across a vast ocean enduring storms and squalls. I see a hundred passengers with eyes full of hope that they travel to a place of new beginnings. I see men of courage and women of strength gazing from the deck of a ship at the growing land they are sailing toward. I see them land in a new world and begin to make it their new home. They fell timber and build cabins, they hunt and they gather, they plant and they harvest. But from the beginning they have compacts with one another, prayer meetings and sermons, and before long meeting halls. These are the earliest churches in this new world and they will stand for years in the middle of little villages that will become booming cities, turning these meeting halls into towering cathedrals of limestone and marble.

I picture a wagon train. I see a dozen families with all their worldy posessons loaded up in a covered wagon, limited food, staggering obstacles, thousands of miles, many days and often weeks bouncing west with those they'll form a community with. And I imagine that moment when they come over a hill to a piece of flat fertile land near a brook, sheltered to the west by mountains and their wagons stop at their new home for the first time after a long journey that some did not survive. I imagine them gathering resources, finding food, building homes, and planting crops, and raising children. And once they've built shelter they begin to build a community and so they build a church. It stands in the center of their town, a simple glowing white chapel where they'll worship, hold meetings, cast votes, host parties, have weddings and funerals. Later there will be a saloon and a general store, maybe a doctor's office or a bank, maybe a street will run through a town, and perhaps later even a railroad. But first they'll be a community and then there'll be a church.

I picture a town, this town, just after a second world war. The men have come home and rekindled interrupted romance, the country has reinvented itself into a manufacturing and military superpower. There are new babies and new opportunities at every turn, but the lessons of the lean days have not been forgotten. At the center of each neighborhood is a church. There's a German Reformed Church, Italian and Irish Catholic churches, a Lutheran church, and a Methodist church. Most folks see the same people at church, at school, at family gatherings, and in social settings. There's radio, and this new medium TV. There are cars, but only one per family. There is a phone in the home. There is mail by mail carrier. There is milk and ice the same way still in most places. A week is full of chores, family meals, family outings, and ofcourse church with a big extended or adopted family.

I picture today, a world thrown apart by our conveniences-cell phones and cars three or four per household, suburban sprawl and subdivided neighborhoods. We can snail mail, email, instant message, and text message. We post profiles on myspace and blogspot and carve out a little chunk of the universe for ourselves. We have jampacked schedules that we manage with microsoft programs, pda's and personal assistants. We have 300 TV stations, high definition, digital cable, and TiVo. We have satelite radio and iPods. We spend less time at home and when we do, most everyone has a room to themselves with at least two electronic devices to pass the time by. There are ten gaming systems that I can name and the last one I owned was a Sega Genesis. Few families sit down to a meal together, most because they don't return home until much later after a day of work and school and afterschool activities and extracurricular activities, commitee meetings, clubs, games, practices, and competitions all weeklong. We are exhausted. Tired. Stressed.

And somewhere in the background of this world is The Church. It's not the foundation of our community as it was for the Pilgrims. It's not the center of our community as it was for the frontiersmen. It's not the center of our neighborhood as it was for our parents and grandparents. The church has become a backdrop, a subplot, an ought to in a world of have to's.

And while the world has changed few churches have.

Oh, there are churches that look and feel different. Some with stages instead of altars. Some with bands instead of organs. Some meet in garages, bars, clubs, homes, schools, and parks instead of steepled buildings. We cycle buzz words like contemporary, praise and worship, emerging, seeker, purpose-driven, even evangelical. But while the world has changed few churches have.

For a long time church was for the lost to come and seek answers. Church was a place to hear the wise explain how to live and how to act as a Christian. There were answers, but little room for questions. There remains little room for questions. In a fast-food world most churches are a State Dinner; place settings, multiple courses, formal attire, dinner conversations, and assigned seats.

I don't believe that this is what The Church is supposed to be any longer.

I believe the church of Jesus Christ ought to look like the Christians of Jesus Christ. Church ought to be an experience that grows out of us. That literally is us moving and working and worshipping as we live in this world so different than the worlds of our forefathers. As someone once said,
“Church isn’t where you meet. Church isn’t a building. Church is what you do. Church is who you are. Church is the human outworking of the person of Jesus Christ. Let’s not go to Church, let’s be the Church.”

This is where my brain crapped out. I have other thoughts whirling, but I wanted to take a first pass. Too much history, not enough meat-that's my conclusion. Stay tuned for developing news!