The church, both universal and local, has been a big part of my thinking for a long time now.  For as long as I can remember, the church has been central to my experience as a person and as a follower of Jesus.  Which is not to say, of course, that it’s been a trouble-free relationship.  Often the “church universal” steps up to the plate when the “church local” has been abstracted and frustrating.

This past weekend, while visiting a friend’s church, I heard one of the best (most moving?) sermons of my young middle-adulthood.  The priest wove from addiction theory to Smith’s You Are What You Love to the writer of the letter to the Hebrews enjoinder to go forward together in the faith.  It stirred my heart in a way that a sermon had not for some time.

I’m almost always reading a book that has something to do with the church.  A few months ago, I “overheard” some online chatter about Robert Jenson’s A Theology in Outline, a short transcription of lectures that begins with the professor’s take on “the church as community.”  He writes:

Obviously, then, the first thing I have to do is to say what sort of community the Christian church is.  Is it more like the Elks Club or a corporation?  Like a family or like a nation?  What is it?  It must be admitted right from the start that different communions propose different descriptions of what kind of community the Christian church is– at least as their first and preferred description.  The more catholic varieties of Christianity are likely to insist that the church is a sacramental community.  Where the church is real, they will say, is where people are gathered around the bread and the wine of the Lord’s Supper, the water of baptism, and even minor sacraments like the sign of the cross.  The Baptists, on the other hand, will tell you that the church is a community of prayer, praise, and proclamation.

For all of the cross-pollination that has taken place in the last decade between liturgical and non-liturgical churches, I still find Jenson’s distinction between churches Baptist and “more catholic” spot-on.  When I attend a service at a liturgical church, part of the draw is the knowledge that its not geared up to be some ultra-personal, emotionally heavy service.  And yet I am certain to see some ancient practices on display, which connects me to something, for lack of a better term, roomier.  The “prayer, praise, and proclamation” that Jenson thinks Baptists experience at church might not live up to the expectation, but the sentiment is true.  Such services often seem geared to be extremely personal, too, which is great if you show up with a built-in sense of community and belonging.  As I read that particular “lecture” in the book, I felt like two kind of churches exist: churches who eat the body (the more catholic tradition) and those who try to be the body (the more Baptist, non-liturgical tradition).  It’s a false distinction, I know.  And yet one could easily push and argue in the direction.  What might be best is a bringing together of the two.

Over the next few days, I’m going to be posting thoughts through the lens of Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island.  Much like Jenson’s Outline, I discovered the book by seeing online quotes.  I’m not stranger to Merton.  Much like others in the monastic tradition, Merton has occasionally helped me process being a single Christian in a married, American Christendom.  In the book, which I think is earlier in Merton’s writing career than later, I found a number of thoughts that resonated with both my experience and my hopes for the local church.

(image from patheos.com)