Please first read Part 1 of this series, as it is foundational for everything else I will say.
When I hear someone say they hate Christians, my first thought is always "Which ones?" Or if they say they hate church I wonder "What kind?" Saying you hate Christians is like saying you hate people who drive cars or who have brown hair: it's just such a big and diverse category of people that it is impossible to lump them all in the same category. Yes there are some bad people with brown hair but there are also some good ones!
As I launch into an "apology" (i.e. defense) of the Church, it's important we clarify what we mean by "Church". Because my hunch is that when I say "Church", your mind will immediately jump to picturing your parents' church, the church you grew up at, or the one or two churches you have been to most recently. And that's understandable! Of course our understanding of what Church is will be determined by our personal experience of the specific churches we have been to. But the danger is when we assume that all churches everywhere are like the one we grew up at or when we assume that that is what the Bible is talking about when it talks about "Church".
To be clear: if you grew up at a church that was toxic, abusive, prejudiced, or harmful in any other way, I am not defending that church or those behaviours! First and foremost I am defending the biblical concept of Church, and secondly I am defending any specific church that is an expression of the biblical concept of Church. And not all churches are accurate expressions of the biblical concept of Church.
Biblically, Church is not a building. It is not something restricted to Sunday mornings. It is not sitting in pews, listening to a sermon, singing songs, etc.—although those may or may not be aspects of certain expressions of Church. Church is not primarily an institution or a government-registered charity. At the risk of being reductionistic, let me suggest that Church happens whenever and wherever "two or three people gather in Jesus' name" (see Matthew 18:20). Church is a community or group or network of people that have intentionally come together because Jesus is their Lord and Saviour.
So to come back to the point I was making above, if Church is just a group of people gathering for the sake of Jesus then there are literally thousands of different kinds of Church. In my experience, the people who are reacting against Church are typically (not always, but typically) reacting against a White evangelical middle-class conservative Americanized version of church that they have experienced. And when they say they hate Church they have in mind that version of Church specifically.
But do they also hate this Guatemalan church? Or this Latin American church? Or the churches in Iran risking their lives to meet together in secret? Globally speaking most Christians are non-white. While the Church is declining in places like Europe or North America it is growing and in some cases skyrocketing elsewhere.
Sometimes I feel that church leaders don't do a good job helping people grasp how wide and diverse the "stream" of Christianity is:
Were you in a church that was overly concerned with conservative politics? There are liberal and politically mixed churches!
Were you in a church that was anti-science? There are science-affirming churches!
A church that was unconcerned with poverty and social justice? There are churches spearheading justice movements!
A homophobic church? There are LGBTQ-affirming churches!
A church that subordinated women or denied them leadership roles? There are female-led and female-championing churches!
And so on and so forth...
For present purposes my point is not to weigh in on these theological issues or say which kind of church is better than another. My goal is simply to point out that your specific experience of church does not come close to representing the full spectrum of churches out there.
I would highly suggest you check out some of the more unique and creative expressions of church. Personally I find it helpful and inspiring to hear about churches that we would consider out-of-the-ordinary. A good place to start would be with the Fresh Expressions movement of churches.
In the next post we'll dig deeper into the biblical concept of Church and the important role it plays in God's plan for the redemption of the world.