Spiritual Shopping

In a guest column in our local paper last week, the author quite rightly was bringing to the attention of the churches a neglected close-to-home ministry field - residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities.  She was on target in pointing out that foreign mission trips, servant events, and other exotic service projects like working at food banks sparkle in the eyes of many Christians looking for ways to serve others, but we tend to overlook the folks who live in the nursing home down the street who need our love, our care, and our serving just as much.  I thank her for bringing these folks to our attention once again.

And yet . . . well, here is her first paragraph, verbatim:

I awoke to a bright sunny Sunday morning, feeling good about myself and looking forward to honoring my God at one of the many churches in Brunswick.  I say many because in the 10 years I have lived in Brunswick, I have yet to settle on one particular church.  Each of the six churches I frequent offer something that feeds a part of my soul but not any one can offer everything.

Hmmmm, I thought as I read this.  Here is a consummate comparison consumer.  Apparently she attends one church to meet one segment of her needs, another to meet another segment, etc.   I wonder - is there a particular church she attends when she's "feeling good about herself" and another she attends when she's "not feeling so good about herself"?



And the more I thought about her column, the more I wondered some other things - 

• How many people in our society use churches this same way, the way we choose between WalMart and KMart and StuffMart, depending on who has the best deals that week?

• How many Christian people have gone beyond a personal relationship with God to privatizing that relationship?  How many Christian people call Him "my" God with a sense of exclusiveness, even pride of ownership?

• How many Christian people can't see, or don't want to see, the body of Christ assembled in any particular place, worshiping and honoring the Triune God (not just "my" God) but also receiving from Him grace and mercy and love and forgiveness?  How many pass right by the body as it struggles and grieves and mourns, like the priest and the Levite on the road to Jericho, because they do not want to recognize the body?  How many deprive themselves of the comfort of the Sacraments (especially the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper) because they do not, as Saint Paul said, "recognize the body" not only in the Bread, but the Body gathered to eat the bread?

• How many Christian people call the church to task for its shortcomings from a position of smugness rather than a position of humility?

I don't know the answers to these questions.  I suspect that an answer to each one of them is "more than a handful."  But my charge as pastor of the church that I serve is to care for the Christians who are here - who recognize the body, who don't always feel good about themselves, who share the God who loves them and share His love with each other, who crave the comfort of the Sacrament and its forgiveness, who commit themselves not only to an hour on Sunday morning every so often but to repeating that hour week after week, season after season, and building relationships within the church in so many other ways.

If the author of the above article were to visit our church, we'd welcome her.  If she chooses ours to be one of the six or seven she shops at, we'd still love her.  But we'd know that even while she's shopping to find just what she thinks her soul wants, she's starving that same soul of everything our blessed Jesus has to give her.