The Church and the Living-Practicer Theory

The Sec­ond Stage of Church

When we talk about the church, what we are really talk­ing about are the peo­ple that make up the church: the mem­bers. So, it seems to me, that before we can even exam­ine the role the church plays in the pub­lic sphere, we have to get a han­dle on its mem­bers and how they prac­tice church.

The church-goer (“church-practicer”) gen­er­ally falls into one of five categories:

1. The Holiday-practicer: attends church only on Christ­mas, Easter, and when­ever some­one dies (not really a hol­i­day, but the same idea);
2. The Sunday-practicer: attends church, maybe even Sun­day School, then goes home and for­gets about most things until the next week;
3. The Solo-practicer: not only attends church and Sun­day School, but through­out the week con­tin­ues solo with activ­i­ties like prayer and meditation—also checks behav­ior and makes sure it is suf­fi­ciently Christian-like;
4. The Sermon-practicer: does all the above while also talk­ing about his or her faith with oth­ers and ser­mo­niz­ing; and finally,
5. The Giving-practicer: not only talks about being a Chris­t­ian, but demon­strates it by prac­tic­ing the good. I don’t just mean giv­ing money; I mean get­ting out into the com­mu­nity and get­ting her hands dirty. There is a wide vari­ety of oppor­tu­ni­ties for the giving-practicer, rang­ing from vis­it­ing a shut-in to lob­by­ing for polit­i­cal change to going on a mis­sion trip to another coun­try (or the neigh­bor­hood just down the street).

The more Giving-practicers in the church, the larger the role the church plays in the pub­lic square. It is they who oper­ate from the belief that Chris­tian­ity is to be enacted. In other words, Chris­tian­ity is a pub­lic and holis­tic iden­tity that should eth­i­cally impact every deci­sion and action through­out the week, rather than be com­part­men­tal­ized (pri­va­tized) to Sun­day morn­ing or Bible stud­ies. Jesus did not give his life for an hour of our time. He gave his life so that we could be rad­i­cally transformed.

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Jesus did not give his life for an hour of our time.
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I grew up in a church that pro­moted the Giving-practicer lifestyle. We have “House Churches” in addi­tion to the usual Sun­day morn­ing con­gre­ga­tional wor­ship. These are groups that meet dur­ing the week at people’s houses, and they focus on a par­tic­u­lar mis­sion. For instance, one runs a clothes closet, one min­is­ters with local AIDS vic­tims, one does out­reach to churches in Africa, and so on. It is not oblig­a­tory to be a mem­ber of a House Church if you attend my church, but from what I can tell, most peo­ple jump right into one House Church or another, not because they feel pres­sured but because they find joy in respond­ing to their faith this way.  God has given us great things, so it seems nat­ural to give some­thing back.

When I grew up and flew the coop, I got the chance to visit other churches. While I saw out­reach in these churches, it seemed to be mostly done by the older retired folk (those who had “time”). A few younger peo­ple would get involved, but there was not the same sense of joy as in my church at home, and on the whole, peo­ple demon­strated more of the Sunday-practicer or Holiday-practicer type. I was dis­turbed by these prac­tices because they ran so counter to what my own church had taught me: that pri­vate spir­i­tual devel­op­ment and per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion are not the chief pri­or­i­ties for a Chris­t­ian life. While attend­ing church is good for self-nurturing and pray­ing and prais­ing God and all that, the church should cul­ti­vate mem­bers who give their time and energy to help oth­ers. That is, after all, what Jesus told us to do.

In high school, I was part of a House Church called “Sec­ond Stage,” which brought together faith, drama, and clown­ing. I was told that the name came from the idea that the first stage was to have faith and the sec­ond stage was to act on that faith.

I guess the church has always had issues with how much it should engage the pub­lic sphere, espe­cially when want­ing to respect other cul­tures and reli­gions. I have often heard how preach­ers avoid pol­i­tics for fear of offend­ing peo­ple. But I believe the church has a respon­si­bil­ity to work with social injus­tices, not just donate, preach, or pray about them (as the first four prac­ticers do) but to phys­i­cally do some­thing about these social wrongs. Of all the church-goers, it is only the Giving-practicer who truly reaches that sec­ond stage of act­ing out faith.

Maybe it is time we all got up on that stage.

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