Learning to Love What Is

 I knew that starting a house church would not be easy. I knew that our vision for how the church should be would take time to cultivate. I knew that finding others in a small, conservative town who share our vision and/or want to join us in a departure from traditional church would be difficult and likely slow – very slow – so slow that there was a very real possibility that our group of four may never become any larger. So, as we began, I tried to guard my own expectations. I would say things (and still do) like, “if we fail, we fail, but at least we tried.” Not the most inspiring words, but it was (and is) a feeble attempt to keep myself grounded and prepared for what I felt could be a very long and discouraging process.

The whole premise for doing what we are doing is for the four of us to find a better way to follow Jesus. There are aspects of the traditional Western approach to church that had become stumbling blocks for us, and we needed something different to get us moving forward again. We searched for alternatives, but ultimately all we found was variations of the same traditional model. We had met as part of a small group in the past, and our small group helped us maintain our spiritual sanity through Covid and in our search for something different. So, it only made sense that eventually we came to see our small group as our church – a house church that already was but had not been intentionally pursued as such. Four of us from that small group prayed, weighed the pros and cons, and despite our ignorance, our knowledge of the previous failures of others who had gone before, and the daunting odds we saw ahead of us, we decided to explore how we could transition from a small group into a house church.

That was many months ago, over a year ago, in fact. We are still here, still a church of four, still trying to figure out how to “do” church that transcends the traditional Sunday gathering to be something meaningful Monday through Sunday. We still have a vision for what our little church can become. We still have hopes of others joining us and hopes of offering an alternative for others like us who have found the traditional church more of a barrier to walking closer with Jesus than a catalyst. We still want something better, something more, and I believe our motives are good and pure, most of the time (I’d be lying if I said that I have completely unloaded my baggage – that is a work in process). But…

A few years ago, our school district had its standard “welcome back to another school year” training a few days before students would be arriving. As usual, I found most of it rather uninspiring (whether it is education or church, I am not inspired by rehashed rhetoric or speakers who try to prove that they are smarter than me, even if they are, and even less if they aren’t), but one thing I walked away with was a magnet that I put on my office whiteboard, on which I wrote, “Don’t fear failure.” I have no idea what the prompt was, but I know we were all told to write something on our magnet, and that is what I chose.

I still look at it on the days I work in my office, and I try to remind myself of the wisdom in those words, but I have found that it is much easier to be fearless about failure when you are not actually failing. It is one thing to begin an endeavor convinced that failure is okay, but it is quite another to be in the middle of whatever you have undertaken and feeling like failure is a distinct possibility, if not an inevitability. Everything tends to press in a little deeper, and every weight feels a little heavier. It is harder to celebrate the moments of hope and easier to dwell on what appears to be a lack of progress or even regression. Casually saying, “if we fail, we fail” at the beginning of the process comes out more genuinely than it does in the midst of a process that doesn’t seem to be working.

Much of this has to do with the way we define “success” in Western culture. I was reminded of this in an article written by Andrew Root and Blair Bertrand – Today’s Temptation for the Church – in Comment magazine, and convicted of my own embrace of this misguided standard when it comes to matters of faith. In fact, if I am honest, the Western way of defining “success” and the traditional church’s embrace of that standard has played a role in why we became a house church in the first place. Western culture is results-oriented. Success is defined in terms of numbers and achievements – things that are measurable and recordable in spreadsheets and graphs. We like efficiency and expediency, and our measure of “success” has us in constant pursuit of the next data point and the next highlight for the annual report. While our motives might be good, they are often misguided. In our constant pursuit of what’s next, we often take control out of God’s hands and believe, whether we actually admit it or not, that the final outcome will be determined by us. We set goals and pursue visions. We plan and plot and scheme, and our actions betray our beliefs. We may give God the glory and announce his sovereignty, but everything we do points to a belief in our own power.

There is something else that happens in our pursuit of what is next, and this is where Root and Bertrand’s words were especially convicting. In our pursuit of what is next, we fail to appreciate what is. Western culture has an unhealthy rhythm that involves attaining a goal and then moving immediately to the next. We dream of a thing and as soon as we attain it, we start dreaming of the next thing. Celebrations are fleeting and momentary, designed to inspire us for the next thing rather than allowing us to savor the current joy. In its embrace of the Western rhythm, the church tends to do the same. Our eyes are so fixated on the next thing that we fail to look around to savor what is. And what is, in the church, is the people we are with. The church is the church because of a unified gathering of Jesus followers, not because of a strategic plan, or a beautiful building, or a balanced budget, or a graph showing exponential growth, or a dynamic pastor and leadership group, or a talented musical team. The church is the church because a group of people have made a decision to follow Jesus together, and that is beautiful all by itself. We spend far too little time breathing that in, looking at the people right in front of us and being grateful for them. What’s next is a constant distraction from what is.

I am guilty. I have been distracted by what I want to happen, and I have not stopped to soak in the wonder of four people gathering together simply because Jesus has compelled us to. My fear of failure blinds me to the success that God has already granted. My want for more makes me ungrateful for what we already have – each other. Root and Bertrand might as well have been sitting in my living room chastising me to my face when they wrote, “this wanting has far more to do with your own anxiety than with your trust in God.” Ugh. I recognized as soon as I read those words that our church is not a failure, I have simply failed to embrace our success in who we are at this moment, in each occasion that we gather together. I have set my sights on what could be instead of loving our church the way it is. Why should I expect more if I can’t love what is?

I felt these two authors were still sitting in my living room. They had one more point to make that I needed to hear and something I needed to do. It’s one thing to recognize a problem, but if that is all that happens, it is pointless. “We need to confess that we’ve led the church by leaving the present for what’s next instead of breathing in the joy of the connections of the community and beauty of the gospel,” they said. “We’ve wanted to speed up rather than wait inside the gift of these beautiful connections.” I’m sure that the authors envisioned a much different target group than a struggling member of a church of four, but their truth applies to churches large and small. Size does not exempt us from dealing with truth. So, this is me dealing with truth. As much as I would like to just point my finger at everyone else, it is impossible for me to honestly excuse myself. Confession is in order.

If I ever want our church to be something better, I must first love who we are. We must love each other in all our imperfections and weaknesses, and it must start with me, not because I am any more important than anyone else in our church, but because I am the only one for whom I can make that choice. I need to have what is next in my peripheral vision and keep what is, the people right in front of me, in my primary vision, loving them well and celebrating them as the gift from God that they are. I have done that poorly during the last year. At times I have not done that at all. I mustn’t hurry. Instead, I need to wait and trust God for what is next, even if what is next is the same thing that is. “And in this waiting, we don’t do nothing, bored and disconnected,” Root and Bertrand remind me. “We do the most important thing. We give our people a way of life that is all about this moment with these people.”

The new year is about to begin, and the next year is not far off. Tomorrow our church of four will gather for the last time this year. With the conviction and help of the Holy Spirit, I will do my best to love my church well. When I see them throughout the week, I will see them for the blessing that they are in my life and be grateful. I will hold what is next loosely and give what is my full embrace. That is my resolution for 2024. To God be the glory, and may the Spirit guide me in gratitude for my church of four.