Connoisseurs of Vending Machine Faith

In the recent issue The Christian Century, Suzanne Guthrie reflects upon how consumerism has crept into our faith communities. Since the 70's or perhaps earlier, individuals have been looking for churches and congregations that meet their personal needs. Those of us who have been in the ministry for awhile are not surprised by this phenomenon. People have been telling us for a long time that they are leaving because we are not meeting their personal needs. Point in fact, is that we are living in a culture of vending machines and quitters. When individuals are asked to sacrifice "I" for the community of "we", they quit or move on to another vending machine. Perhaps the more distressing reality is that we've forgotten what it means to be a community of faithful followers of Jesus Christ. Guthrie is shocked when she learns that by simply changing one word in the Lord's Prayer -- the word ' trespasses' to 'sinners'-- precipitated an angry response from a distraught member who complained that in making this simple, seemingly insignificant change, she had taken away the Lord's Prayer.

Guthrie's experience is not unlike my own. She made a small change in the Lord's prayer and in doing so, she learns that she ruined someone's worship experience. We hear such reactions when we try to introduce new music to a congregation, change a Sunday School curriculum, pull the altar away from the wall and serve communion from a table. Today, we hear statements like, "I came to the service today so that I can get my ashes for the year, or receive my Sunday School pin" We hear statements like, "I need to make contact with my Jesus today" or "I have to get my 'church fix' so I can make it through the week." The sad truth in all of this is that prayer and worship, like soda and candy bars, have become a choice from the vending machine of life. And so, if one machine doesn't have what I want, then I'll go to the one down the street and eventually, I'll find what I want.

So what is a church if it isn't a place to come and change? What is a church if it isn't a place to grow and to become a community of "we" rather than a fragile collection of I's? What is the meaning of Christian community in our world today? Murphy Davis, co-founder of Open Door Community in Atlanta, Georgia has this to say about the meaning of Christian community. "Life in Christian community reminds us again and again that we do not belong only to ourselves. We belong to God and to each other." Davis and Guthrie remind us that the church as a Christian community is counter-cultural to the modern way of thinking and experiencing the spiritual in our world today. Davis and Guthrie reflect, in part, a departure from a modern understanding of the church to a post-modern understanding of the church.

The modern era elevated the individual to the center of the universe. Modernist characterize the human being as an autonomous, rational substance, encountering Newton's mechanistic world. Modernist believe in managing information, knowledge and technology so that it can improve our human existence. The modernist place more stock in the scientific and rational than they do in feelings, emotions and spirituality. In this context it is easy to understand why "church people" have become connoisseurs of vending machine faith. The modernists believe in the importance and the centrality of the "I", the individual rather than in the sacrifice of the 'we'.

The physical and spiritual significance of "we" is paramount in the post-modern time. Post-modern people believe that we are not the center of the world with the physical laws of earth acting upon us. Post-modern people understand that the earth and the human community is fragile and that the future of our existence is dependent upon a new attitude of cooperation rather than conquest. The post-modern person believes that neither the earth nor the human being is either mechanistic nor dualistic. Rather the earth and the people of this world are historical, relational and personal. The believe that knowledge is always incomplete and that our future together must operate with a community-based understanding of ourselves and what is truth. "..Christian community reminds us again and again that we do not belong only to ourselves.."

And so it is a starting point for the church today. So I babble on and I struggle with this new and compelling vision of the church. If the church, as we have known it, is to survive into this century we must examine and dismantle our tendency to see church and faith as a vending machine of choices. The spirit of the Christian faith is not about us, it is about how God is using us to build a safe and sacred space in the midst of a culture that is consumed by selfish ambitions that rape the earth of its resources, bullies the world's people into thinking, believing, and acting like middle class Christians, and we sit around our sanctuary, clinging to our dollar so that we'll be ready for the vendor when she/he comes to bring us to our heavenly reward. And if we believe we've been forgotten, we'll find another machine and maybe, just maybe the heavenly vendor will remember us this time. If not, I'll still have my dollar.