The Church and Banana-Coloured Uni-tards

A year and a half ago I made a decision to take a hiatus from the local church for several reasons. One of these reasons was to better understand the 80% of Canadian society that doesn’t attend church regularly. The results of my time formed conclusions that were obvious to me before my temporary “exodus”, but still pose interesting questions.

After 18 months I didn’t miss: corporate worship, lengthy sermons, many irritating people, early Sunday mornings, wearing my “Sunday best”, Christian sub-culture, and crap theology just to name a few. “Church” irritates me. It’s as uncomfortable as ants crawling under your skin while you’re wearing a banana-coloured uni-tard (Definition of uni-tard: a seamless spandex garment [often referred to as a body suit] usually worn by Cirque Du Soleil types which constricts epidermal breathing and typically displays male genitalia like a sculpture in an art gallery à la Michelangelo’s David) Arggghh…..

I know that I can be negative and I am aware that deep down inside my subconscious there are things that I really did enjoy. Daydreaming was one of these joys. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, people rarely take time to daydream because the meaningless hours to waste away the day simply don’t exist. Even if someone could find the time to daydream the likely outcome would be actual dreaming as sleep would soon ensue as the individual would succumb to the sexy temptation of a “cat nap”. When considered, Church affords the perfect opportunity for daydreaming. It’s a place where it’s considered “socially unacceptable” to fall asleep (though it’s often a common practice) which deters somewhat from the enticement of the cat nap, therefore providing the perfect opportunity to daydream about more attractive realities. Also, the fact that there is very little entertainment options at the immediate disposal of the congregant also adds to the ideality of the environment (There are always tithing envelopes or bulletins to doodle on, but this becomes old very quickly). The perfect opportunity to let your mind go comes precisely after corporate worship when the talking head opens and closes its cavernous orphus continually sucking back oxygen as ammunition for the weekly verbal marathon. It is precisely in these forty-five minutes each week that the ideal opportunity to reflect upon alternative realities takes place. For fun I used to dream about an impromptu game of football where I tackle the minister in the middle of the sermon just to see what the reaction would be. I could play out the whole scenario in my mind. In my thoughts I had brought a Nerf ball to Church that morning and yelled out the play; “Blue forty-two, Blue forty-two” before snapping the ball to myself. I’d then throw the ball to the talking head, who I assumed could catch the ball in its mouth with ease, before I would switch teams to play defense and tackle the suit and tie.

Something else that was fun was to sit on the balcony admiring the various types of male pattern baldness of the congregants below and dream about each of those hairstyles being on my head. The comb-overs were always fun to imagine. I could picture myself holding up my arm in a ninety-degree-angle, with my hand formed into something looking like a chicken head, and saying in a thick New York accent, “You’re fired.” See, Church isn’t all bad. These were things that I really did enjoy about my Sabbath. If I could daydream forty-five minutes per week, that would equal a total of thirty-nine hours per year spent in that part of your brain which was largely left behind when you became too old to believe that that there was such a thing as Bigfoot or aliens (If you just said, “aliens don’t exist” in your head right now, your imagination is about as real as the objectivity of “independent journalism”).

And here within this reality lies the futility of living out a “call” to ministry. Because the local Church is an organism composed of human beings infected with human nature, it will never be something that is seamlessly enjoyable. There will always be experiences or people which make atheism appear to be a healthy alternative to the Church, no matter how much fun Sunday afternoon daydreaming or tithing envelope doodling can be. Yet the reality exists that the undesirable alternative to organized religion is disorganized irreligion, which really isn’t an alternative at all.

Herein lays the balance for me. I am unwaveringly committed to Jesus. And as such, I am hopelessly committed to the local church with all my life because Jesus is its’ “head”, and it’s his “bride”.

This temporary exodus still begs the million dollar question (or “the twenty-four million Canadians question”): "If someone who is entirely devoted to Christ and “called” to ministry within a local church setting has trouble finding significant value (pro’s outweighing con’s) in the local church, why then should the 80 percent of Canadian society outside the local Church consider attending?"