Sunday Thoughts

It's Sunday and I'm thinking about churchy stuff while not actually going to church. 
Weird, huh?

I was just thinking about Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Church from a couple of decades ago. He gave the church five main functions or purposes - worship, discipleship, fellowship, ministry and mission. I was thinking about this as I was wondering why I'm not going to church anymore.

Is it because I've gotten lazy?
Is it because the church doesn't meet my needs or expectations?
Have I just become a heathen or outcast of the church?
All of the above?
None of the above?
Something else?

I don't think that worship is really a main function of most churches today. It's kind of weird because most of them still call their meeting time worship service. Sure, they sing songs but it generally feels (to me) like there is more emphasis put into the production of the service than into the actual worship of God. Maybe that's the reason (or one of the reasons) I don't really feel compelled to go to church any more. 

I checked and it looks like fellowship is actually the second purpose of the church. Fellowship of any kind isn't very high on my personal list of priorities these days. I do enjoy occasionally getting together with some of the people from church and should probably do more of that - either more often with the same people or the same frequency with different people. Fellowship isn't the draw for me that it once was.

My experience has been that most churches pretty much suck at discipleship. I don't know why that is. Maybe it's because people don't really want to learn about living like Jesus taught us to live. If we learn that stuff and then don't actually do it, we're even worse hypocrites. It's way easier to just tell people they need to follow Jesus than to actually follow Jesus. 
Plus not actually doing discipleship saves the time and cost of all that teaching and learning of stuff that we're not going to do anyway.

Ministry is the one thing that really reached out and grabbed hold of me at The Venues. The Venues serves the community around the church better than any church we have ever been associated with. The resources and volunteer hours poured into community service projects are pretty amazing. Through participating in some of those projects, I have found other church communities that also do the ministry thing well. 
I have observed that the church communities that do ministry well are the more liberal, progressive churches. Maybe the more conservative churches are too busy judging to serve.

I honestly don't remember the mission part of the Purpose Driven Church. I imagine that it has something to do with evangelism or sharing the message of the gospel. Today I believe that ministry should be the mission of the church. I believe the message of the Bible is meant to teach me and not for me to tell others what it means for them. I'm not selfish about what I've learned and will gladly share that with others, but I'm no longer compelled to convince others that they need to believe what I believe. 
My faith gives me hope. It gives me peace. And it also gives me purpose.

Why don't you go to church?
or
Why do you go to church?

Just wondering

John