For we, being many, are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one Bread.

                                           1 Corinthians 10:17

We went to church today.  Our church is a Congregational church in an upscale, all-white town.  It is a welcoming place.  I try to understand what element is missing, for it always seems to me that something is missing.  I cannot fault the people for being white or upscale.  They are merely who they are, gathered together to worship God in the town where they live.  I am one of them, or almost one of them.  I am white, I am not upscale, but always trying to keep up appearances of being so in order to fit in and meet the social expectations of community and family.  I have dropped out of the Catholic church, my childhood religion, and the Baptist church, where I raised my son.  I had major problems with both of those churches either theological or political, in fact more problems than I have with the congregationalists.  But I think they had some things that the Congregationalists lack.  

     The Catholic church had a sense of the sacred.  You could not cross the altar without genuflecting or say the name of Jesus without bowing your head.  The host was said to be the actual body of Christ, and people prayed to Saints embodied in pious statues at the front of the church.  I do not think this was always right and good but I just mean to mention that this provided something the people needed, something sacred, holy awe-inspiring and inviolable.  

       The Baptist church had less of this.  The one thing they had that was inviolable was the Bible.  The Word of God as inerrant, ‘living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword”  provided a sacred center to the service.  Compared to the Baptist church, the Congregationalists lack a sense of urgency.  For them it really doesn’t matter what you do or whether you come to Christ or not.  All are welcome, no attempt is made to make one conform to rules.  There are no expectations of a conversion experience.  There is no heaven or hell mentioned in the sermons.  I did think this was overdone and distorted in the Baptist church, but without it what is the point of believing in Jesus?  Why do we need to spread the Gospel, why bother with any of it?  I have my own understanding of these things, not entirely reflected in any of these churches, and I know that with these compromised positions, some things left unexplainable, some denied, and others interpreted to my own understanding,  I could not well be a minister.  A minister must have a theology, a guiding principle, a set of absolutes that he or she stands for so that the congregation knows what he stands for and where they stand. 

     However, I must give the Congregationalists credit for their efforts to reach out into the community, for their welcoming atmosphere, and especially for their Christ-centered theology.  The communion service is done with great reverence and it was what Jesus commanded his church to do.