12.16.04
Posted in faith at 2:26 pm by
My good friend James asked a good question in the comments section about the bar. He asked this:
What is it about church/the bar that mean the bar isn’t a replacement for church?
This was my response. I’ve added some thoughts in to my comment here to further explicate what I mean.
I think what would be more accurate for me to say is that the bar isn’t a replacement for church, but it can be a church. In which case it ceases to be ONLY a bar, but also a community. Really, it all gets at the question of what the Church really is, and what the difference between the Church and a church is, too. I see the Church as the body of Christ, wherever it is that members of that body go, the Church is there. And then, there’s A church. A church is (or should be) a collection of people who do life together.
I think a pub in a smaller town or village is more likely to give itself to being a church (in that you’ll actually know many more community members there.) For example, last night at Founder’s I saw really only 4 or 5 other people that I knew. In a smaller town, with just one bar I think I’d be able to form much more of a connection. However, if I went to Founder’s every Wednesday night, I might just find the same folks there as well.
As James has asserted to me before, much of America isn’t really into the ‘neighborhood’ thing, as he’s experienced it (he’s from the UK.) In that sense, the bar here can’t (or doesn’t) live up to the community that it might bring elsewhere in the world. So one reason the bar falls short is the same reason churches fall short. We all hop in the car and drive 35 minutes to find the megachurch of our dreams, rather than finding a community where we live. In that sense, I think that it’s fair to say that going to a big popular bar would be just as spiritually edifying as going to a megachurch where no one really knows eachother. (With the exception that at the bar people are nicer, there’s a more diverse group of people, etc.) So in many ways, the bar trumps church, hand’s down.
I just don’t see a Cheers ‘everybody knows your name’ kind of bar in the US, at least not often. In that sense, the bar isn’t a suitable replacement for church…but then again…the church is hardly a suitable replacement for church in most cases. The thing that might frustrate me about churches has much to do with American culture and the way that the church has been shaped by it. The American culture that says, “let’s drive 40 minutes to church because there are lights and drums and shit there,” the culture that says, “let’s get in and out and back home for sunday afternoon football.”
Of course, at the bar, there are T.V.’s, and beer. Thus, Sunday afternoon football is just an extension of the morning service. In that case, as well, the bar has really got one up on the church.
This mishmosh of thoughts has been brought to you by Brandon. Let me know if you can make any sense of them.
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Posted in faith at 2:26 pm by
My good friend James asked a good question in the comments section about the bar. He asked this:
What is it about church/the bar that mean the bar isn’t a replacement for church?
This was my response. I’ve added some thoughts in to my comment here to further explicate what I mean.
I think what would be more accurate for me to say is that the bar isn’t a replacement for church, but it can be a church. In which case it ceases to be ONLY a bar, but also a community. Really, it all gets at the question of what the Church really is, and what the difference between the Church and a church is, too. I see the Church as the body of Christ, wherever it is that members of that body go, the Church is there. And then, there’s A church. A church is (or should be) a collection of people who do life together.
I think a pub in a smaller town or village is more likely to give itself to being a church (in that you’ll actually know many more community members there.) For example, last night at Founder’s I saw really only 4 or 5 other people that I knew. In a smaller town, with just one bar I think I’d be able to form much more of a connection. However, if I went to Founder’s every Wednesday night, I might just find the same folks there as well.
As James has asserted to me before, much of America isn’t really into the ‘neighborhood’ thing, as he’s experienced it (he’s from the UK.) In that sense, the bar here can’t (or doesn’t) live up to the community that it might bring elsewhere in the world. So one reason the bar falls short is the same reason churches fall short. We all hop in the car and drive 35 minutes to find the megachurch of our dreams, rather than finding a community where we live. In that sense, I think that it’s fair to say that going to a big popular bar would be just as spiritually edifying as going to a megachurch where no one really knows eachother. (With the exception that at the bar people are nicer, there’s a more diverse group of people, etc.) So in many ways, the bar trumps church, hand’s down.
I just don’t see a Cheers ‘everybody knows your name’ kind of bar in the US, at least not often. In that sense, the bar isn’t a suitable replacement for church…but then again…the church is hardly a suitable replacement for church in most cases. The thing that might frustrate me about churches has much to do with American culture and the way that the church has been shaped by it. The American culture that says, “let’s drive 40 minutes to church because there are lights and drums and shit there,” the culture that says, “let’s get in and out and back home for sunday afternoon football.”
Of course, at the bar, there are T.V.’s, and beer. Thus, Sunday afternoon football is just an extension of the morning service. In that case, as well, the bar has really got one up on the church.
This mishmosh of thoughts has been brought to you by Brandon. Let me know if you can make any sense of them.
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little more than a placeholder said,
December 16, 2004 at 3:37 pm
Where Everybody Knows Your Name
This post is a response to Brandon’s response to my question: What is it about church/the bar that means the…
Jenny said,
December 17, 2004 at 6:15 pm
I don’t see why there aren’t bars IN churches. I think it would help. The Bible doesn’t say anything against it.
degustibus said,
December 17, 2004 at 10:10 pm
Well you could have bars in churches, but there’s be the problem of licensing and so on, taxes. You could also have churches in bars, the alcoholic priest in the corner listening to confessions.
I always thought theaters/movies functioned as quasi churches. But perhaps not — not any more than any other large gathering with a focus, like a sporting event, a football stadium or baseball stadium full of screaming bladdered fans, whipped up into a frenzy …… dionysian….
If you think of a church as a place where people go to get reassurance of some form of personal salvation (as I think motivates most religion and church attendance) then certainly bars don’t cut it. Nor theaters. Nor the great Outdoors.
Want to rub shoulders with friends and share Big Thoughts? unconcerned about personal salvation (whatever that is)? don’t need reassurance about life and death? –well if that’s your notion of religion then a bar should do it. Or a baseball/football game.
As fars as one being more “spiritually edifying” — well who knows? I’m not sure that’s what people are looking for, spiritual edification — seems to me like it’s reassurance that most of us crave. (Not to mention: the notion of “spirituality” has become one of the cliched clang-words of the age.) Google “spirtuality in *” and you’ll find it in the workplace, in corporate America, in music, in nature, in geriatric care — that’s a good one to look at because it sort of tells you bottom line spirituality, when the chips are down–
http://www.geriatrictimes.com/g021225.html
Then there’s “The growing presence of spirituality in Corporate America”::
Different strokes…………
Brandon said,
December 18, 2004 at 9:51 am
Degustibus,
Interesting. I’m not sure why you don’t think that religious communities do so well at assuring personal salvation. I’m also not sure why you don’t think that couldn’t happen better at the bar. Frankly, you seem to have built a huge straw man and have torn that man down.
From the next post, here’s my idea of a community driven by faith.
degustibus said,
December 18, 2004 at 1:42 pm
Fine ideal. Break it down — I’m not too good with abstractions.
Sometimes it seems like a “religious community” can be anything a person wants it to be. If you can find reassurance, personal salvation and so on a in a bar, who’s to argue? I like your idea: A community that wants to end pain and hurt and suffering for the least of these is a community of faithful purpose.
But. Walk the walk. What does this mean in practice? Buying the next round? Tossing a few pennies in the Sally Ann Xmas pot?
(I myself make a sincere effort not to push baby ducks into empty fencepost holes, but then that’s me.)
Brandon said,
December 18, 2004 at 4:18 pm
Walk the walk. Explain to me how they’re doing that exactly at many churches. Explain to me how they’re moving the kingdom forward.
James said,
December 18, 2004 at 8:17 pm
Degustibus: Brandon’s asking some really constructive questions, but you’ve managed to get me so riled up I’m not going to do that. All I can say to you right now is that if churches exist merely to reassure some in-club of their ‘personal salvation’ (whatever that is, it’s certainly extra-biblical) then that makes them the most selfish institution I can think of, and one I’d never want any part of.
Resident Atheist said,
December 20, 2004 at 2:34 am
This issue came up for me when I was in high school. It wasn’t a bar, though; I studied Aikido for several years in a small club. Although I grew up in the church, I view that club as the formative group that shaped me and gave me most of the values I hold today.
By the time I began studying there, I had already accepted and dealt with the fact that the church I grew up in had died before I was born, so the incongruity of spending Sundays talking about changing people’s lives and spending Tuesdays and Thursdays actually doing it didn’t bother me very much. The disconnect was harder for my parents, though. My dad studied with me, and one Sunday my mom caught him handing out one of the community center’s business cards to one teen who looked particularly troubled. “Don’t you see that there’s a problem when you’re at church and you have to tell people who need help that they can get it elsewhere?”
Since then, I’ve spent years thinking about why Aikido’s message was real, living and effectual while my church’s wasn’t. There are a number of relevant factors: the only explicit teaching is given for the sake of understanding and improving practice; there’s a genuine attitude of openness and community, not for the sake of having a community or because people think they ought to have a community, but because the message gives people reason to engage in community. But the most relevant contrast (in the context of talking about churches and bars) is that the Aikido club wasn’t coercive.
Churches tend to come at their message from the perspective of total acceptance or total rejection; it’s better not to hear the gospel at all than to hear it and not immediately drop everything and devote your entire existence to spreading it. The Aikido club was more laid back. People who visited for an evening to watch someone test were just as important as the most senior students. The idea was that the more time you can commit to training, the better; but at the same time, even people who come on visitor’s night and never come back can take away something valuable, and they’re more than welcome to whatever they can glean from a night’s training.
That’s the perfect idea for a martial arts class, but I’m not so sure that’s something you all would think is a good idea for the church. Certainly I think it would be helpful if the church were more open to benefiting people who have no inclination to take the gospel seriously, but the problem is that that particular model doesn’t require commitment or accountability; kind of like a bar. I think people are open, honest and transparent in that class and in also bars partially because there’s no requirement that they’ll be there every week, or share things that they’d rather not share. They can leave for a month or a year or forever and nobody will pursue them; it’s their choice. A tight-knit community like you’re talking about probably wouldn’t work well like that. Being permissive about delinquency isn’t healthy in a reference group.
Just a thought…
Cheers,
RA
BALAAM'S ASS said,
December 22, 2004 at 11:16 pm
The Purpose of Church
This post was originally sparked by something Brandon (bad christian) said here, for example. I recently had a discussion with the high school class that I was teaching about the purpose of going to church, which started because of the…