I'm baaaaack

Well, after going skiing (no injuries!) and getting a good case of the flu, I am still trying to figure out this whole blogging thing. The news remains the news on a daily basis, and with our 24 hour news cycle, which I think is deteriorating into a 1 hour cycle, I increasingly believe that my 13 year-old daughter is right when she says, "Dad, it's just the SAME THING over and over again."

I recently read a book which helped me thoroughly escape our post-post-modern culture, and made me wonder/realize what we are missing as Christians. The book was by George MacDonald and is entitled "Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood." MacDonald was a 19th century pastor and author, mostly author, with incredible insight into the human condition. The "quiet neighborhood" of which he wrote was a small, out of the way, English parish where the lead character was the vicar. The insights shown in loving and pastoring sometimes difficult people were amazing to me, particularly when one considers that MacDonald was still a young man when he wrote the book. The book was written when "parish" was the way in which Christians instinctively understood daily living. That presupposition alone was enough to set this book apart as a treasure when read by someone in today's church.

What happened to parishes? What happened to the idea that people don't just "go to church" together, but they live life together? "Going to church" is just a phrase that shows the deep misunderstanding that most people have about what the church is, in any case.

What has happened to the church? Why did megachurches come into existence and why are they no longer effective, if they ever were, at doing what they set out to do?

Now that I am asking questions, what makes a church a "megachurch?" Is it size alone, or is it a set of attitudes? I think it is the latter, meaning that we could have a series of very small "megachurches" out there, leaving us with an oxymoron much like "jumbo shrimp," only in reverse. What do you think?

Finally, back to parishes...don't we need them back, or at least the attitudes and understandings they were/are based upon? Don't we need to get back to living our lives in covenantal community, and not just "going to church" (ugh!) together? And what does it mean to live in "covenantal community?"

More tomorrow on how this happened and what to do about it.