Controversial Question?

As I was standing and waiting for the bus to arrive tonight, so I could head home from school, I was humming worship songs, and letting my mind wander through a variety of thoughts about school, about life, about God, about church. I'd been reading powerful material all day - stuff about the Puritans, some modern spiritual autobiographies, and a book on worship, and all of these left me with much to ruminate on.

So, I was standing there, and the thought occurred to me - I wonder if the "postmodern", "emerging church" has tricked something out of the importance of church in it's quest for something new? Now, this is not the first time I've had this thought, and I've certainly taken it in any number of directions in the past, but tonight, I was thinking specifically about church attendance.

I know so many people, who, in the midst of being "emerging" Christians, have dropped the priority of a weekly time of gathering from "essential" to "an option among many ways to spend an evening." So many of the people I know have the same background I do - conservative evangelical christian. We are all being told that the "spirit of religion" is a bad thing - and the people telling us that are not wrong. Instead, we're supposed to build "community" - again, an excellent, biblical concept.

My question is this - what if, in our quest to avoid the "spirit of religion" we have forgotten the very thing that community is really about? No, I don't think church should be some sort of mandated weekly activity. I want it to be a vital community - a place of freedom and safety, a place to meet God. But, how can we build community if our members are sketchy in their commitment at best?

If the purpose and stated goal of the community we're seeking is to share life in a way that goes beyond the two hour worship service where you engage as an individual, and then go home, how can we build that if those whom we are seeking to share life with, are only available for that sharing on an irregular basis?

Maybe I ask because I have been so blessed by the small measures of community that I have experienced in the past couple of years. I'm a pastor's kid - I grew up in a church where sharing the questions and troubles of my heart and life were dangerous at best. But, two years ago, I met this group of people, and they invited me to come and share life with them - on Tuesday nights at house church, and on Sunday nights when several house churches come together to worship, be taught, and to share life on a more corporate scale.

I have been blessed by the people whose lives have intersected with mine in this community. It was four people from there that nagged me until I telephoned a counsellor last week. It is people from there that I call on a bad day, or on a good day. It is friends from their that I go to the pub with, and shopping with, and for coffee with. I do these things with people from other places, but when done with the members of my church community, they are full of a rich sweetness born of shared life and purpose. I have had challenges in this community - the people who rub me the wrong way, and the ones it is infinitely hard to share life with.

I guess I ask about attendance because I see its value in my own life. A week where I miss our corporate gathering, or our house church is a week devoid of some meaningful bonds of friendship and love. It is the people who have attended regularly - the ones who know me, and whom I have come to know that challenge my faith, that pray for me, that I love to laugh and hang out with. And I just wonder, why would anyone choose to miss such rich relationships in order to go to bed earlier or to not be "religious"? Maybe a little religion - or better yet, the discipline of a weekly gathering is a positive thing, and we need to rethink the language we use in describing church attendance?