How To Find A Church

If you are anything like me, you've been stumbling through much of your adult years trying to find the right church . . . something you can belong to and feel good about. You've tried different places, denominations and non-denominations, fringe groups, road trips, bars, books, late night debates, gatherings of homeless people, and, in the words of Bono, you still haven't found what you're looking for (except for occasional moments of connection).

Here's where I've come to: If you haven't found a church by now, you're not going to find it. At least, not in that way.

The days of strict denominational allegiance are over. There are no street corner fistfights based on whether you think Jesus is fully human, fully divine, or something in between (there once were). Sure, you can still get into a scrap with a fundamentalist, but the days are long past when Anglicans would shun the Congregationalists who shunned the Presbyterians who all thought that Catholics were one rung short of a stepladder. Its an ever-increasingly ecumenical world we live in. In particular, religious outreach work and the halls of academia are very much ecumenical, and perhaps even post-denominational.

People like me go around trying to find the right church. We do this on a couple of levels. The first is trying to find the right denomination, something we can "agree with." However, each of us probably has a unique worldview. Our perspective is a very individual blend of all that we've been exposed to--media, community, schools, family, etc.--so there is probably no other single person who can really relate entirely. This was probably always true, but perhaps more now than ever. Face it: You're not going to agree completely with anybody.

We also try to find the right community. We want a community we can "get along with". We want to grow spiritually, but also to be in a community of like-minded people with minimal infractions.

In short, we don't want to grow.

As my former spiritual advisor Fr. Ron Atwood says, "The only thing for certain when people gather in community is that there's going to be conflict." The issue is not whether there is conflict or not, but whether a community can grow through it or not. Conflict is a tremendous--and absolutely necessary--ingredient for growth. The conflict doesn't have to be violent, it can simply be the tension when people with divergent views try to hash out a relationship--even when they don't agree on even the very approach to that relationship.

In our western world, we get caught up in whether something is "true" or not. We ask if a certain religion is "right" or not. Is that really the question we should be asking? I value the tradition of Christianity (and especially Catholicism) first and foremost. Along with that, I value the community. I value the faith. Only lastly do I value the conclusions it has reached. I have always seen the conclusions as evolving, anyway, and in that sense that are part of the tradition itself.

You could just make community with whomever crosses your path, however difficult it may be. That may seem extreme, but if you don't do that you need to affirm that there are times when people can't or shouldn't be in community. You have to draw a line.

Huddling with like-minded folks isn't going to get you anywhere, but isn't there a group of people with whom you just can't make community with? It would be an exercise in futility for me to congregate on a regular basis with fundamentalists. I have tried on a number of occasions, figuring that we could be in dialogue and enrich each others' lives, despite our different views. It has enriched our lives. But it has always come crashing down.

I do think it was simpler and perhaps better a couple of generations ago in the Catholic Church in this regard: You were simply assigned to a parish! It was based on geography, so you were with your neighbors. You had to make it work where you were at. If you were the only person there proclaiming social justice, then God bless you! I don't see a problem with this, just as long as there is some kind of flexibility to accommodate times when people just can't make it work and need a fresh start. So if someone had a question about which church to belong to, I would normally just tell them to stay where they were at. Problem is that many today don't have a home parish in the first place, and I'm not sure how you pick one.

So I don't really know how to find a church. Sorry, I lied in the title of this post. But I do know that finding one you can "agree with " is unlikely, and one you can "get along with" possibly unhealthy, as well. Those are probably not the best criteria to use.

Making some kind of lateral conversion from one denomination to another doesn't make sense in this day and age. I would guess that most who convert probably do so more because they appreciate the community more than due to a change of belief. At most, I find myself rooted in the denomination of Catholicism but also very much ecumenical. I think its important to be both, even though they are contradictory concepts. I'm very much inspired when I see that my favorite religious leaders have been rooted deeply within a tradition, even though their beliefs and vision range far beyond anything trite or dogmatic. I think of Daniel Berrigan, Thomas Merton, Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day--these folks have probably entertained more "new age" beliefs than Oprah Winfrey. Merton practiced meditation with Buddhists, as a quick example. By being rooted so deeply, they seemed to be able to blossom so much more than if they belonged to a church that professes no dogmas. I think they are on to something.

They got there through hard work, and a lifetime of humility, study, outreach, and stumbling through life with an open heart. Like Bonhoeffer's term "cheap grace", I call what is going on today "cheap new age." You can't go around proclaiming the divinity of every human person unless you've been in the deepest, nastiest, most horrendous trenches. Its not something you seize, its something you get and an understanding you come to by emptying yourself (which relates to a discussion about Philippians in MysticalSeeker's blog). Traditional Christianity seems to understand this. This is probably what has bothered me most about new age religions. Its not necessarily the beliefs they come to. Some are disturbing, some are not. Its the fact that they got there without the work. Its like cheating on your final exam and getting all the answers right, but not going through the studying and the reading to get there.