What is "church"? A personal history…

Below is an excerpt from a book I am working on called “I Grew Up in Church.” The content below is copyrighted, so please don’t copy it without my permission. However, I’d value any comments or feedback you have about the material–from content to writing style, whatever you’d like to say. Enjoy.

My earliest memory of church was at a little Episcopal Church called St. Joseph’s. I don’t know how old I was, exactly. I think it must have been missions week or something, because the memory I have is of being chosen to stand in front of the church holding one of those globe coin banks. I don’t remember whether anyone put any money in it. I just remember standing there looking at all the grown-ups looking back at me and smiling the way grown-ups do whenever little kids do something cute in church. I wondered what I was doing to get all this attention.

The only other thing I remember about St. Joseph’s was the priest, a big jolly man named Father Al. I never understood why his name was Father Al and not Joseph, since it was Joseph’s church. Father Al was over at my house a lot when I was little, and stayed friends with my mom long after we left that church. I didn’t know at the time why he came over so much, but now I know he was helping my mom cope with my dad leaving us.

Father Al eventually left St. Joseph’s, so my mom did, too. For awhile Mom and I went to St. Philip’s, which was massive compared to St. Joseph’s, and all I can remember was the priest was very far away when he talked. Then, when I was five, Mom and I moved to Michigan, and we went to St. John’s Episcopal, which was bigger than St. Joseph’s but smaller than St. Philip’s. (I guess at that time all the Episcopal churches were named for saints, but I never could tell one saint from the other, and the saints who owned these churches never showed up, either.)

So “church” to me as a kid meant a long building with a cross on top named after Saint Somebody, with walls that echoed, bench seats with a padded kneely-thing that folded out when it was time to kneel down, a guy with long flowy robes and a funky collar who was called Father Somebody and who talked in hallowed tones, almost like a friendly ghost. And when we went there, we stood, sat, kneeled, and stood again, saying pretty much the same things week after week.

My mom’s family were all Episcopalians, but they rarely went to church. Even before her “born-again” experience, Mom was the most devout of the bunch. But it was kind of funny how loyal they all were. If they went to church at all, it was the Episcopal Church. That was the only “real” church. It was like Episcopalian was a nationality to them, like having Irish in your blood. You might not ever go to Ireland, but just let someone try to say something against it.

My dad’s side of the family belonged to a more evangelical, Protestant type denomination. My dad wasn’t going to church much when I was little; he was busy being a hippie. But the couple of times I visited my grandparents on my dad’s side, we visited their church. It was totally weird to me. The organ was smaller and sat on the platform rather than in a balcony behind us. The walls didn’t echo. The minister wore a regular suit, talked less like a ghost and more like a real person, and wasn’t called Father Anything. And he didn’t pray from a book. But those people knew more about heaven and hell and believed hell was real—something they didn’t talk about much in my church. Oh, and nobody smoked. (Just about everybody who went to the Episcopal Church smoked—just not while service was going on.)

There were several churches in the small town in Michigan where we lived. The biggest was a Catholic one with a really cool curvy sloped roof and chimes that you could hear all over town. (A couple of the bullies who picked on me were altar boys there, so I could only guess what they were being taught in that place.) There were other churches, too, and a lot of people I knew went to them. But Mom and I never went to any of those other churches; we always got in the car and drove clear to the outskirts of town to the only Episcopal Church within miles—St. John’s in the country—because we knew that was the right one.

After awhile, Mom and Dad got back together, and Mom and I moved back to California. At first, we went to a church more from my dad’s background, only bigger. By then my mom had quit smoking (she was no longer an Episcopalian). Also, she was into the Word-Faith movement, and could pray in tongues, also. Dad was interested in that too, and shortly after my parents remarried, we went to a Full Gospel Businessmen’s meeting, and Dad and I got filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. It became apparent that we needed to find a different church where that kind of stuff was okay. So we started going to a series of different churches—and they were different. Nothing like what church looked like to me as a young kid. These places used guitars, and sometimes drums, for the music. Sometimes the guys who played them had long rock & roll hair. Instead of the hymns, we sang songs with the same chorus sung over and over again. People raised their hands when they sang, and every so often the song would end and the people wouldn’t stop singing—they’d just sing to God whatever they felt like singing, sometimes in tongues, sometimes in English. It sounded so beautiful. It didn’t matter to me that it was nothing like the church I knew as a kid. This seemed more real, the people seemed really happy to be there, they were more engaged and more genuine, more Jesus-freaky. I loved it. It has flavored my worship of God ever since.

Crazy, isn’t it? My church experiences range from high holy liturgy to Pentecostal fervor. But there were elements of truth in all those expressions of church I experienced growing up. I once visited an Episcopal service as an adult (it happened to be a Spirit-filled Episcopal meeting), and I was amazed at how much came back to me. I saw so much depth and meaning in the symbolism of the old liturgy, so much of a sense of the timelessness of Christ and of our faith, that I was moved to tears. The “high church” types really get that mystical, ageless dynamic of the church. And I see the value in the other expressions, too. The evangelicals emphasize heaven and hell and the need to be born again, and they know how to share their faith. And the charismatic type churches know some things about worship and faith and healing and spiritual gifts. All of that stuff is important and real and beautiful. But just look at how many different churches I had to go to in order to get all that background.

Here’s why I shared all this. We are an extremely confused people, because we have about 27 different things that the word church can mean. Sometimes when we say church, we mean a building (as in “going to church”). Sometimes church means a specific service or event or gathering time (as in “having church”). Sometimes church represents all believers everywhere, and sometimes it means a few people who meet in an old theater down the street. Church can also mean a piece of paper recognized by the government that says you are a church. We’ve created so many different definitions for church, and the church itself has gotten so fragmented, that it’s hard to even understand what church means anymore.

When Jesus said “church”, He meant only one thing. It was really, really simple. “Church” was the collective group of people who believed Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and chose to live in that truth and put their trust in Him.

Out of that one definition for “church”, we’ve created dozens more. Is it any wonder we are so messed up?

Copyright 2008 Jeff McQuilkin. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce without permission from author.

Wayward Son

Musician. Composer. Recovering perfectionist. Minister-in-transition. Lover of puns. Hijacker of rock song references. Questioner of the status quo. I'm not really a rebel. Just a sincere Christ-follower with a thirst for significance that gets me into trouble. My quest has taken me over the fence of institutional Christianity. Here are some of my random thoughts along the way. Read along, join in the conversation. Just be nice.
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