Becoming the Church

When my current church opened a new location in a building that wasn’t too dissimilar from the church building where I had attended as a kid, the memories of potlucks in the basement, post-service fellowship on the lawn in the summer, and thinking it was so cool to sit in the balcony, were all ones I remembered with fondness. As I got older and started making decisions about church more for myself, I never seriously considered if I’d go, but rather where I’d go.

Yet I realize my experiences are simply that—mine.

Others have very different stories about their time in church. Perhaps it was outright rejection because of the way they talked or dressed or over their past, or maybe abuse that was silenced or even somehow twistedly justified by someone in a place of leadership, or finding that the people in the church were just as capable of gossip and biting comments as the people outside the church.

When I sit with stories like these, and the many others people have to tell, it doesn’t take long for me to understand the hesitance toward or even rejection of the church. If people are supposed to be the church, how do we respond when those people fail?

I don’t pastor a church, or run a denomination, or sit in any high-prominence roles in the realm of the church world. So what responsibility do I, do we, as regular attenders, have in trying to do what we can to make other people’s experiences of church good instead of bad? There are big ideas that come to mind, like speaking up if we see obvious causes of harm, but there are many subtler ways as well.

There’s the simple—but at the same time, radical—act of paying attention when people share their hurt, whether with us directly or in more public spaces (yes, even on the internet). It can be difficult to listen to stories of other people’s pain, and it becomes far too easy to minimize it and assure ourselves, “That has never and could never happen in the spaces I personally know.”

Except every church is made of people, and people aren’t perfect, so there are undoubtedly instances of getting it wrong that have happened around us. When others are willing to share their stories of being hurt at church, we need to examine our own actions and how we may have, either intentionally or inadvertently, contributed to difficult experiences for other people.

God is a God of forgiveness and grace, so the point isn’t to sit in our guilt, but to encourage us to act and become the better body of Christ we should always be striving to be.

When I think of my own good church experiences, some of them certainly involve transformative preaching and moving worship experiences, but nearly all of them have the common thread of people. This is the paradox of being a follower of Jesus—our fellow followers can be the ones to wound us on the journey, but just as often they can be the ones to heal us.

Far too often I fall into the rut of only talking to the people I already know at church, and not being willing to brave the slight discomfort to strike up a conversation with the new person standing by themselves. Worse, I can think of specific instances where I actually thought, “That can be someone else’s job to go talk to that person today.” Except, if we are all a part of church and the larger family of God, there’s no such thing as “someone else’s job” when it comes to welcoming others and extending kindness to the people around us.

We have to be willing to take our welcome beyond simple hellos too. True community might start with casual conversation, but it doesn’t end there. Whether it’s inviting someone to join us at a Bible study, suggesting lunch after a Sunday service, or starting out with a simple connection on social media, these are all ways we can begin to build meaningful relationships with others.

No one person can prevent anyone from having a bad experience at church, even in the churches where we’re present. But we might be able to help even one person walk away saying, “I saw Jesus in that place.”

–Written by Brianna DeWitt. Used by permission from the author.