Unbinding Data

[Tune in]

Heart-Un-Bound                       Sculpture by Michael Young

One of the exercises in the Unbinding Series is to interview someone who does not attend church to find out their attitudes toward church, being invited to church, and whether or not they’ve had experiences they would self describe as spiritual. I took a larger sample from my Facebook friends list to see if there were any trends that could be teased out and how we might respond to those trends.

  

  Question 1 asks about what a person’s first thoughts are when they hear the word church. Half hold negative or highly negative views of “Church”. The common responses were: judgmental, hypocritical, narrow-minded, intolerant. About a third held neutral views seeing value in the building, the role of non-profits and ritual. About half also held some positive views as well – community, family, singing/music, cookies. Interesting to note was that a significant portion held negative and positive views simultaneously.

    Question 2 asked about invitations to church. Virtually everyone had been invited at some point in their lives. Over 90% reported that the invitation was a positive experience even though they may not have availed themselves of the opportunity. They felt included, liked, honored by the invitation even though they may have been wary. Sadly, of those that went only 1 in 5 had a “good experience”. 80% reported being turned off by either the people at the church or by the message which upheld their negative views.

   Question 3 asked if they had ever had a sense of the divine /God communicating with them. 75% or more were unequivocal in “Yes!” Of these, people were split almost equally as reporting that the experience was internal ( connecting with the “God Within”) or external ( nature, energy field, etc).

    Question 4 asked if there was one question you could ask God and be assured of an answer, what would it be. About a quarter had a personal question about heaven/afterlife, about a quarter wanted to know what religion was “right”, 30% wanted to know why bad things happened or why there are bad people.

    Question 5 asked if there was something they would like prayed for and the answers were evenly split between: No, Global betterment of some kind, personal request for themselves or someone close to them.

This was by no means a scientific sample and the fact that these were all friends of mine may be a skewing factor.  ;)

But there were some things I gleaned from the answers and the experience.

1)   We are a community of people. We don’t have it all together any more than any other group. If we are to invite people into our community we need to make sure we aren’t pretending to be something we’re not and let our armor down so we can welcome, strengthen and support everyone who walks in our doors. We need to pray that we see each and every person is worthy of love and respect no matter where they are in their own journey.

2)   We need to keep asking people to come. They like it! Then we need to follow through and show them that we have the courage to imperfect, that we have compassion for them and others, that we are open, vulnerable and authentic. That we love one another just as we are.

3)   We need to tell them our story, not just listen to theirs. We have experiences of God that are mysteries to us too. The Middle English root for conversation means to abide with or dwell with. When we are open and share, they will too.

4)   We need to let them know that we all have questions we don’t have answers for. That this is a place where we can search together, where we can grow in faith, where we enjoy the process of searching and learning. To quote Brene’ Brown, one of my favorite writers “ …cultivating a whole-hearted life is not like trying to reach a destination. It’s like walking toward a star in the sky. We never really arrive, but we certainly know we’re heading in the right direction.”

5)   We need to share how prayer has worked and hasn’t worked the way we wanted it to. That there is no one right way to pray. That prayer is still a mystery to us. That prayer changes us. That we just do it.

      Lord, Listen to your children praying. Send your Spirit in this place. Send us Love, send us power, send us grace. 

     Amen.

      Paul S