Metaphors for Church

...the sheer vulgarity, reducing the raison d’etre of church to a glib commercial slogan...

A small group I’m part of has been working to redefine what it means to be Church. The process has been challenging, particularly our recent conversation on the metaphors that American believers are living out in worship (often unconsciously). Here are a few examples:

School — a place to learn, where attendance is generally compulsory;

Restaurant — where you go when you’re hungry or want to impress someone like a business associate or a date;

Gas station — an opportunity to get fuel, purchase a quick snack and hit the restrooms before getting back on the road;

Family — related people, who gather for special occasions and sometimes live together;

Competition — show off your holiness (and don’t forget the registration fee);

Hospital — complete with comfortable rooms, a competent staff of medical professionals and lots of needy patients;

Judicial system — interpreting the law of the land and recommending consequences for rule-breakers.

But a large part of our conversation centered on the metaphor of business or corporation. And today, I stumbled across this quotation from James Cochrane in Between You and I — A Little Book of Bad English (thanks to Chris Erdman for the reference):

“No public body these days, it seems, feels it has done its duty until it has produced what it will probably call a ‘mission statement’ in the form of a participial phrase: ‘Providing jobs and services’ (typical town council), ‘Working to make London safer’ (the Metropolitan Police), and so forth. Two noticed recently are: ‘Making knowledge work’ (the University of Bradford) and ‘Connecting people with God’ (St. Mary’s Church of England, Islington, London.)

“What is it about these phrases that is so irritating? In the case of St. Mary’s, Islington, perhaps it is the sheer vulgarity of reducing the raison d’etre of the church to a glib commercial slogan, no doubt in the name of ‘accessibility,’ ‘relevance,’ or ‘youth appeal.’ More generally it may be a sense of the essential dishonesty of ‘statements’ which, like the verbless sentences of Prime Minister Tony Blair, are not really statements at all but merely vague aspirations for which no one can properly be held to account.”

I hope some of you, who are reading, will join in the discussion as well. I’m interested to see where it will lead.