I grew up going to church every Sunday. Our family church day began with Sunday School, to which we were always late, followed by morning worship. The evening began with youth group, then snacks (eventually this evolved, by the time I was in junior high, to a light supper), then evening worship. When we were old enough, all of us except my father (who made a joyful noise when he sang, the best that can be said of his vocal skills) took their place in the church choir, which my mother sang in from the time I was tiny until the present, possibly even before that.

Church attendance was never optional. A fever would not free you. Mother may argue that she would have NEVER sent a child to church with a fever, but I would then argue that her thermometer was always broken on Sunday (sorry, Mother – I know that’s not true, but certainly how I remember it)! You had to be visibly sick on your stomach to get out of church. Visibly. No visual evidence, no reprieve. Church was not an option for us. We were not free to choose the training our souls received any more than we were free to get behind the wheel of a car without a license or shoot a gun without Uncle Herman to teach us as he had our mother. We went to church to get our souls educated (Mother was sick with pleurisy once, and I taught her Sunday School class – ghost stories! So much for soul education, although it was a lot of fun!). We were brought up in the church as much as in our schools, and what we learned in school was one thing, and it was important, but what we learned in church shaped and  informed all those other things. Church wasn’t ever just the walls and steeple: it was the hammer and anvil that shaped us, that earth under our feet, and it surrounded and protected and loved us into an understanding of life that was, in modern terminology, holistic.

Occasionally, a young person asks me if being part of a particular church is necessary for faith. I tend to say, “No. But there is something good about belonging to a community of faith. Don’t miss out on that. Find your place.”

I once was approached by a young man asking to be baptized. I was a seminary student and working part-time at the church, and I usually noticed new faces at worship. I told him I was sorry I did not remember seeing him. Turns out he had not been there, or to any other church: he was simply calling pastors and asking if they would baptize him.He had been reading his Bible and learned that unless he were baptized, he would not be “saved.” Being a good and diligent seminary student who had not been sleeping the day we discussed baptism in my pastoral theology class, I told him that there was more to baptism than that. I did not do the baptism. He left me and found someone, hopefully, who would.

My answer now would be different from what it was then. I was trying to be true to my theology in those days. These days, I try to think more about being true to God and to what a person might actually need, instead of somehow being true to a particular theology. I learned a little of that from Will Campbell.

I was ashamed when I finally got around to reading  Campbell’s Brother to A Dragonfly; seems you CAN baptize people outside of the church, just as you can marry them, bury them, counsel them, and do all manner of things that do not have to be part of what Campbell calls “the steeple.” While I still think my seminary professors made some good points about why we should not just be dropping bodies into water anywhere, I tend to agree more with Campbell: sometimes we need to do “church stuff” to people because the church has rejected them and they still need that stuff!

People need to be baptized not just to join the church but also because baptism symbolizes new life: a mystical transformation that  has living psychological benefits. People need to be married by a pastor because it means God is present in their lives, and some people won’t ever be closer to a minister or to God than they are that day (I admit that I have often said I won’t do a wedding without counseling, and from what I have seen and experienced, counseling is not a good luck charm that makes the marriage work: if they’ll do it, I’ll do it; if not, and they still want God’s blessing on their union, I’ll do it, by God!). People need to be buried by a minister because ministers should be signs of hope in the world, offering solace to the living and giving meaning to the lives of the deceased and pointing to the fact that there is more to life than what we see and feel.

One of my college professors suggested that if anyone who believed that the words at the communion table actually turned bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus should be out on the street corners, offering Jesus to everyone who passed by. He shocked some of his students from the more apostolic traditions. But it’s true, and some of my Roman Catholic friends would now agree with him. Why leave him in the church  to be ignored?

I have plenty of friends who are bringing up their children outside of the church. They are doing a pretty good job. They miss out on some good things, from the support that comes whenever there are life troubles (in a good church, at least), to the good friendships that form as we walk our faith path together. Sad for them: I am the closest thing to a priest they have, and I frequently hear, “If you were pastor of a church, I’d attend.” I don’t for a minute believe it. In many ways, they have their communities around them, and those people can be, many times are more, supportive than church “families.”

Being a “pastor” is not necessarily a paid position. Being “church” doesn’t always have to do with walls, crosses, baptismal fonts or pools, arguments about the color of sanctuary carpet, or the style of music you sing. It does, however, have something to do with understanding the world,  how we all fit together,  how we learn to relate to God and how God relates to us. Real church is about the living of our days and nights, not what our denomination is, or whether the steeple is in decline, or politics, or even theology. Are people hungry? Go feed them. Are they sick or in prison? Visit them. Are they mentally unstable? Love them and accept that the church must be for them or for no one.  Are people challenged? Be their friend and advocate, and make them feel their worth as children of God. Just try to love, and you’ll be the church (operative word here: “try:” even Jesus suggested there are times when you need to kick the dust off your shoes and move on!).

Mother always made me listen to sermons, then asked when we got home what I had heard. I asked her once, “How do you know you’re doing the will of God?” Her answer has sufficed all these years later: “If you’re doing something loving, you can’t go to far from the will of God.” Talk about church shaping your life!

Church: at its best, it stands for so much more than the brick and mortar or whatever material it’s made of. At its worst…well, we’ve seen that, too: the Crusades, support of slavery, nationalism, exclusion of people, and the list goes on and on.

At its best, though, it can be the True Realm of God, where all are welcome, all are fed and housed, all are really seen and acknowledged as children of God. I like it when it is those things. And when it’s not, I’m okay with sleeping in.