Stephen Stills’ first solo album, appropriately named “Stephen Stills,” contained songs that have become part of his concert repertoire, both solo and in various bands.  This little song’s title is more important to me than the song itself, but I saw the title the other day. It’s been dogging me ever since, so I have to wonder, does it matter?

I’m a church guy. We were brought up as part of the last generation (for a while) that was taken to church on  Sundays for basically two and half hours in the morning and as much as three and a half to four hours on Sunday evenings (youth group, youth supper, and evening service!). We went to church camp. I overdosed on Sunday School (thank God I was not of a sect that offered me fake gold pins to wear for attendance – I had a better record at church than I did at school, and I usually only missed about five days of school each year!

Church was cool, though. We had ministers who liked kids. My favorite minister was a guy fresh out of seminary who rode a BMW motorcycle. He had a Captain America helmet that he wore with his suit to go visit at the hospital. When I moved to Georgia to pastor the only full-time church I ever served, I moved with only a motorcycle, my backpack filled with a week’s worth of clothes, a rolled-up robe, and a sleeping bag. Role models: go figure.

When I was 18, Old Weird Bob came to town, VW camper carrying us everywhere. He was a great distraction while my girlfriend was away for the summer. I lived every minute that I was not at work at his house until it was time for her to return and me to go to college. He introduced me to The Giving Tree, The Velveteen Rabbit, and Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving. Strange, educational summer. Certainly church, but very different.

It took me about four hours of college to make me change my major from psychology (thanks, Dr. Fromm) to religion (kudos, Fr. Louie/Thomas Merton).

With Pentecost coming faster than my sermon-writing, I’ve been thinking about church. My best friends have always been church people, or people who spent a lot of time being anti-church (church gets in your veins and even if you are against it, it’s part of you).  Someone has said in the past twenty years, that we are in a situation, church-wise, that is as challenging as the first generation of Christians. We are, like them, creating church from day-to-day. No longer is church status quo in America.  All the things I learned in seminary and college aren’t very relevant. At least at the organizational level.

Wisdom-wise, I wouldn’t give up anything about my education. I was introduced to – tasted and saw, as it were – great souls who thought great thoughts. I still suggest to my camp staffers and older campers that they sit under a tree from time to time, stare off into the ionosphere, and think the great thoughts. Our wisdom needs to catch up with our  technology so we don’t become one of those Star Trek-ish societies whose bodies can no longer function because we let our technology take over for us.

If church did nothing else for me, it helped me think. We were challenged never to take anything at face value, not even the Bible. God made our brains, I was told, and God is not afraid of our minds. Used well, with practice, our God-made brains will perhaps solve some of these damned things our technology cannot: racism, hunger, hatred, warmongering, nationalism (yeah, it’s a problem, what my faith calls a sin), class-ism, and all those other “isms” that my generation was going to do away with.

Church is part of someone – part of this someone – and frankly, I’m glad it’s changing. Interestingly, lots of the emergent church movement leaders are looking, of all places, to the wisdom of the past to find wisdom for the future. We’re getting rid of the business model, the Robert’s Rules of Order model, the balanced budget or I quit model, and moving towards the Jesus model, the love the world and those in it that God created model, the willingness to see our brothers and sisters – even in different faith traditions – model.

Yeah, church matters. Not the crazy ones who want to rinse you off – or soak you – and then make you a prejudiced bastard, but the ones who insist that God, whoever that is, wants us to get along, love each other and the planet we’re on, and use our brains for something other than growing hair.

Yeah.