"I love music"
I cringe when I hear someone say that. It's the elitist in me. I know, I know. I'm working on it.
I cringe because once upon a time I was a part of the DIY punk scene here on Long Island and across this country. You may not be aware of it, but there are young people around the world writing, recording, and releasing their own music. They're booking their own tours and playing shows in their own "clubs" (basements, kitchens, alleys). Their DIY scene is made of small groups of communities that are extremely tight knit while being completely open to aiding and being aided by the other communities within the network. I cringe when people flippantly say "I love music" because I know what it is to LOVE music. To labor for it. To create it, to deliver, to watch it become more than you imagined. I believe in music. I love it.
And it's my involvment within the DIY punk community that makes me more than a litle uneasy about the state of most churches today. I won't broaden it to "the Church universal", but truly many churches and christians could learn a thing or two from a few sweaty kids playing punk in a basement.
In the world of DIY punk there is no gap between those playing the music and those listening to it. Everyone's role is valid and valuable.
Within the church the chasm between the pew and the pulpit (both real and imagined) is wide. We've created (or allowed) a culture that says that the people on the riser are better gifted and better used than anyone else making up the congregation.
I was in a DIY punk band that toured frequently. We would often book shows in towns we had never been to playing with and for people we had never met. In my years of playing I never had a single instance where I was not given a meal and a place to stay. The members of that community are eager to help in any way that they can. They give out of their own wanting cicrumstances. I was always greeted upon my arrival and many would engage me throughout my stay.
Within the church we find very little outreach to the individual guest at our Sunday services. It is so untasteful for us to engage a stranger amongst our ranks that we've designated "greeters" to take care of the job for us! Allow yourself to realize how ridiculous that is! If a stranger walked into your living room you would certainly engage them in conversation. So should it be in the sanctuary! Rather, the norm is that often guests go ignored and walk out without ever having been engaged and if we aren't engaging people we aren't serving them.
DIY punk is a cooperative community that works together for a goal.
I know all the arguments for denominations. I agree with a lot of them. I don't think that divisions are inherently evil. I do believe that we need to find ways to work together in spite of our differences because that which unites us is greater than that which divides us. Even churches within the same denomination treat each other as competition and not as family.
Let's be honest. We all know know these problems exist, and we will battle them until the end of this age as we struggle to flesh out what "doing church" looks like. I only hope to add fuel to our fire as we press forward. I just don't want to say that the greatest organization of passionate, cooperative, loving people that I was ever a part of were bohemian twenty-somethings putting on punk rock shows in their row house basements. Not when the church could be so much more.
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