The Day We Reinvented Church

When I was about 7 years old, I had my first big beef with God. Despite all my protests and tears, He decided to separate me from my inseparable friend and send us off sobbing to different Sunday school classes. If that weren’t evil enough, He demanded (through my mother) that bow ties be worn in church. God did not earn brownie points with me.

Church—yuck! That’s pretty much what I thought for the next 45 years. I reached a point in my 20s where I decided that God was not to blame for the state of churches. God created magnificence in nature. Humans locked God inside the Church Box and hid the key. God spoke to me much more inside waterfalls and sunsets and meadows than inside a sterile church building. I felt more alive, more inspired, more completely turned on by strolling through nature than by enduring a traditional church service.

I also found God more in my personal relationships with friends and lovers than I did in church. Ministers talked bunches about love but what I felt in church was superficial if not downright phony. Having intimate conversations with people about what really mattered to each of us was far more fulfilling than listening to the drone of canned sermons.

My last attempt at church came in 2000 when I attended Unity of Corvallis in Oregon. My initial response to church was ”not too yucky.” Nothing really grossed me out but I was not wildly inspired, either. My mind wasn’t being especially stimulated and my soul wasn’t being stirred. I had pretty mediocre expectations, and they were being fulfilled.

I had entered the Church Box and was trying to find soul stimulation amid the rules and structures and traditions. Yawn. My past experiences of church were recreating themselves because my mind was stuck. I made a few new friends to buoy my spirits. In very slow and awkward steps, I built a spiritual community. I found, though, that I preferred the occasional labyrinth walk or discussion group far more than Sunday services because those events offered more intimacy and meaning, whether it was me going inward or sharing deeper feelings with others.

Then Wham! In July, 2001 an urban shaman came to town. The church was in the middle of an internal rift; apparently I was not alone in being bored. The shaman was hired to facilitate a workshop to help heal the congregation of its woes. The workshop was made of the stuff I wished in my fantasies that “ordinary church” could be like. Many people had come to the same conclusion—including the reverend. We collectively decided to take Church out of the Box and to redesign it to be more meaningful and relevant.

So that’s what happened during the church service on July 29, 2001. We had Church for the Heart. We arranged chairs in circles instead of rows. The rev set her prepared sermon aside. It became somewhat chaotic in the way that a creative explosion is chaotic. People made newspaper hats or played musical instruments or danced or sang or chanted or hugged or meditated or listened or watched or laughed or wept. You could participate or not participate. There was no schedule. It all flowed within the rhythm of the hearts of those gathered. The service lasted two hours, and around 30 people were present and participating for over four hours.

At one point those of us who’d attended the three-day workshop that led to this transformation spoke about our feelings. When I was moved to speak I took the microphone planning to launch into a very small speech about how the workshop helped me reconnect with God—how I learned that I truly wanted to walk beyond fear into a world of unconditional love. Then a bolt of emotional lightning fried me. I could barely talk through the spontaneous sobs. I was trying to say that I had written in fiction before what a world ruled by unconditional love would be like. I was literally choked realizing that we were actually co-creating that world in “real life.”

The people who really loved what was going on had attended the workshop. Others appeared to be in various states of stun. I felt compassion for those who walked in expecting normal church, only to find that spiritual anarchists had overrun the place. It’s like being in a serious earthquake. Structures tumble. Surprise, everything has changed! Yet it all happened so fast because birth needed to happen right then, right now. No waiting, no rationalizing, no mind, only heart. Go with God.

Ultimately, it was not to be. This was too new even for a New Thought church. Those who had not attended the workshop complained to the board about the changes, and the reverend rescinded her forward progress and went back to tradition. After that, attendance dwindled as member bailed left and right.

But at least I had one great day. That day the environment encouraged everyone to create what he or she wanted and needed for spiritual well being. That Sunday was an adventure in consciousness where no one knew ahead of time the totality of what the day would bring. We went to be surprised. We went to create what we wanted. We could just be there to soak up the energy or we could actively participate. Sing. Dance. Hug. Feel. We could speak our heart, both shadows and light. Church was finally a place where we could be real, authentic, and genuine—until it ended.