November 15, 2023 – A

I spent the last seven years of my ministry participating in the creation/development of “the church as it ought to be.”

It was called simply, “The 9:20 Service,” because we met at 9:20 on Sunday morning–9:20 because that was late enough to allow the people who needed to sleep-in to feel like they had, and early enough to keep the 11:00 o’clock service undisturbed and in place.

It was started with a gift of $4,000 and a “See what you can do with this” from a person who didn’t understand why more people weren’t coming to the 11:oo o’clock service.

I gathered a group of six to eight people of “like mind” to think out seeing what we could do with it, and agreed to ask all of their unchurched friends, “What would it take to get you to a church service twice a month?”

The answers were wonderfully revealing: No sermons! No prayers, particularly prayers of confession! No bible! No hymns! No creeds or confessions of faith! No organ! No offerings! Etc.!

In other words: “No Church as it currently is!”

“Okay,” we said, and crafted a series of ads in the local paper, paid for with the $4,000, around the theme of “No Bible, No prayers, No hymns, No offerings, No kidding!” with the location, time and place for the first meeting.

We used some of the $4,ooo to hire musicians–local singer/songwriters and individuals/groups who were paid $100 a “gig” to play their kind of music with “no religious music allowed.” We had pianists doing their thing, cellists doing their thing (Solo Cello is super), blue grass quartets, doing their things (Wonder of wonders, this sometimes included Rhiannon Giddens–Laurelyn Dossett/Pole Cat Creek and Steep Canyon Rangers were part of our Saturday Night concerts, but that’s a story of its own). It was a truly magical time over a period of seven years.

The service opened and closed with ten minutes of music. Ten minutes of silence followed the opening act. A time for “community sharing followed that and I followed that with a loose arraignment of thoughts like those I post here. We were done within an hour to make way for the 11 o’clock service and that led me along the path of “re-thinking church,” which I am walking to this day, and beyond.

Which gets me to this: There is nothing to “being the church,” but. There is a catch. We can’t “be the church” and pay the bills. My salary was a significant bill. A building to meet in with heating and cooling, repairing and painting, etc. were significant bills.

The early church for the first 200 years or so didn’t worry about paying the bills. There were no bills. Organized religion came on the scene as a way to “save the world” with a catch, “Organized religion exists to pay the bills!”

It took two centuries for the priests to take over religion and sell eternity for the low, low price of tithes and offerings. And in that moment, the church as it had been, and needs to be, ceased to exist.

So, I’m rectifying that situation by throwing out theology, creeds, doctrine, the Bible, hymns, offerings, etc. and offering in their place the right kind of emptiness, stillness and silence (and music).

I carry in my shirt pocket a few business cards which I pass out to people I feel would be open to the idea they represent. They have a photograph on one side, with my name, my ClickASnap link and nine words: balance, harmony integrity, sincerity, spontaneity, vitality, emptiness, stillness, silence.

I tell the recipients that the card represents a three-fold meditative process. The image and the link are connections to the natural world, and they are a part of that world, and are to explore their own original nature and innate virtues/specialties/interests, the things that are natural and automatic with them, and they are to look through my images on line, and become sensitive to the scenes they walk through each day, looking for what catches their eye, and look closer, examine/explore fully meditatively what is there that attracts them, that connects with what is “in here,” within their own heart/soul/self.

And they are to do the same thing with the words–adding to the nine terms on the card their own words, like beauty, truth, justice, equality, etc. and meditate on the meaning these terms have for them and how they might adjust their living in order to serve/express/exhibit those words in their life.

In following these three avenues/paths of meditation/awareness, they will be opening themselves to themselves and to how their life needs to be lived to exhibit/express the truth of who they are in ways that are appropriate to each situation as it arises throughout the time left for living.

And, in so doing, they will be being the church as it ought to be, without the hymns, doctrine, theology, etc. And they will be creating/discovering their own symbols which will serve them as guides on their path through the sea of life and being. Which is all we need to find what we need to do what needs to be done. Which is all that can be asked of any of us ever.

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