Left in the lurch by church.

I had a chat to a friend the other week who was musing on the fact that she couldn't bear hypocrisy in the church, how her experience had taught her that was what you got with church. But yet she wanted to know where not being part of a church left her and her faith. Unrecognised? But recognised by God?

Another friend had been forced to leave a job with a Christian organisation after they deemed him to not 'be in the right place with God', they didn't surround him with love, model 'being in the right place with God', disciple him to achieve his best for God and for them. They just judged him to be producing bad fruit and showed him the door.

He is the second friend treated like this by "Christianity", pronouncements made, contracts ended and lives, faiths left bewildered, hurt and angry.

I am blessed to be working for a Christian organisation that seeks to practice God's love,justice and mercy in all it does, it has become for me a church. I have tried to belong to our local village church as I have felt God calling me to be there but like my first friend I don't feel a part of it, I don't find God there and I don't know where it leaves my faith.

Don't get me wrong there are some lovely people there and great people of faith but they seem to be at the edges and joining seems to be a covert mission. The other day I took a friend round for a look at the church and a warden and congregation member were in there doing huge flower arrangements, I presumed for a wedding. They didn't say hello when we entered, I did. When I said "wow, what amazing flowers" they looked up with blank expressions and then carried on with their work, no sound uttered. I felt we were trespassing, I wondered if God feels the same way?!

Bono put it like this " Can you imagine how it feels to believe in Christ and be so uncomfortable with Christianity? The church is an empty, hollow building. The established church is the edifice of Christianity. It's as if the Spirit of God leaves a place, the only things that are left are the pillars of rules and regulations to keep it's roof on. And we are more and more claustrophobic around organised religion". So where does that leave us?

The hypocrisy argument I've always said is a symptom of hypocrisy in our own lives. If 'we' are the church then 'we' bring hypocrisy in and only God changing us can change the church, and you have to be in it to win it, it's not right to sit outside and moan! But where does that leave you on a Sunday morning if you want to practice faith but you can't stand 90minutes of what feels like torture?! It leaves you being a consumer doesn't it , shopping around to find a church that fulfils all your criteria and church isn't about consuming, it's about worshiping. But does worship mean you try and hide who you are, your opinions, your irritations. Does it mean that God accepts rubbish church, so you should? I can't believe that either.

So I don't know what to believe. When a very good friend of mine lost faith recently it wasn't in church that it returned but out walking through fields, being close to God and his creation, feeling the wind of His spirit. But being out there on our own doesn't answer the call to be church with, and for, one another. Whatever it looks like religion needs to be organised to work, so I have no answers but on Sunday I may try to go to the village church for the first time this summer. I will look for God there because I know He is there, who knows I may even find some answers, for myself and for my friends.