church gravity pulls both ways

I have a good friend who leads a church close by.  He sees his role as a calling and loves seeing the fruit of changed lives as people engage in the story of Jesus.  He is also saddened and frustrated by what he calls ‘church gravity'.

He often gets caught up — or slowed down — by keeping things running.  When the desire to respond to societal injustice or human isolation is overwhelmed by the pressure to maintain week-in week-out operations, he identifies it as church gravity.

Church gravity crowds out meaningful community.

Church gravity blocks out the margin for spontaneity.

Church gravity suffocates innovation and creativity.

Round and round we go.

When church people succumb to church gravity, movement in the work of God grinds to a halt.  People become caught up in the perpetuation of what they are accustomed to.  Stuck in a cycle of what might become an exercise in justifying the existence of what they call church.

But this pull doesn’t just impact those inside the system, it unwittingly increases distance from those on the margins — those we say we want to be present for.

The gravitational pull of prevailing church practice is a force to be reckoned with. And the reality is ‘church gravity’ pulls both ways.

While those who are embedded are sucked in and immobilized (and maybe even scared to get off the carousel), those just outside the orbit of faith community are inadvertently repelled.

And we can’t seem to break the enchantment of the systems we default to - the best of our intentions turn against us: 

Our intent of fostering genuine community relationships creates the expectation of developing another program.

Our heart for authentic worship descends into filling slots on a calendar.

Our initiative for advocacy and justice is quickly swallowed up by an over-abundance of risk-averse compliances.

Whenever we attempt to embody the original meaning of church, we are tractor-beamed back to the distorted practice of church as location, or event — rather than freed up to live as family.

Even the term ‘church gravity’ assumes the pull is back toward something that it should be.  But the inertia that restricts the movement of God’s people is not actually ‘church’ gravity, it is perhaps better understood as ‘culture gravity’.

The inertia that keeps us from moving in the work of God is not about being drawn back to the original intent God has for his people — it is about our circling back to the comfort found in the cultural norms we associate with church.

How do we reduce the pull of this force? 

My sense is it takes a dogged determination to lighten the mass at the centre.  

What are the things that draw us inward?  What must we remove from the centre to enable more freedom for movement?

The pull of church culture can only be overcome if some of the practices we have come to depend on are put to death.  When we are brave enough to name our reliance on programs and worship events and policies as idolatry — and do to idols what is due them — only then will we find ourselves drawn to being shaped into a people that reflect and reveal the heart of God.

And it is only then that those outside our field of ‘attraction’ will stop being repelled, and perhaps be drawn by the nature of Jesus as we live out His life alongside them.

#bravecities

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