Simony: Christians who wanna make a buck off you.

Simony /'s(a)ɪ.mə.ni/ n. The buying or selling of religious things which are meant to be given freely, or given only to qualified individuals.

[Simoniac /saɪ.mə'naɪ.ək/ adj., n.]

One of my bigger pet peeves are churches who forget a significant part of our job as Christians is to preach good news to the poor. Mt 11.5, Lk 4.18, 7.22 They kinda forget they even have poor among ’em. Consequently the poor find church a surprisingly expensive place to go.

Certain churches don’t want you in their Sunday services unless you’re in your “Sunday best.” I’ve actually heard a preacher justify this idea by pointing to Jesus’s story where a king throws out a guest for not wearing his wedding clothes. Mt 22.11-14 He figures Jesus is the king, and you better show up for his church in your Sunday best. Can’t afford the clothes? Try the thrift stores. Keep looking till someone finally donates a suit or dress in your size. ’Cause the people of the church won’t offer you any help, and people never think to ask; they just assume they’re not welcome there. Which ain’t far wrong.

Once you can finally dress for church, you’ll find many churches have hundreds of activities—but nearly all of them have a fee. It’s $100 to go to the men’s retreat. It’s $50 to register for the women’s conference. It’s $40 per couple for the couples’ dinner. Childcare’s an extra $5. There’s a six-week class on spiritual gifts, and the book is $18.95. There’s an out-of-town speaker, and people from the church will carpool to hear him, but gasoline and parking will be about $10, and afterward they expect to have dinner at a nice restaurant, which’ll set you back another $15.

And I haven’t even touched on simony yet. Now I shall.

There’s a growing trend in revivalist churches: They wanna open a school. Nothing wrong with that; a lot of great Christian colleges began as revivalist schools. (I graduated from one.) Now, if we’re talking a regionally accredited school, with educated faculty, transferrable units, and recognized degrees, that’d be one thing. We’re not. We’re talking about Sunday morning bible studies, now taught five days a week, and now people have to pay $1,000 or more to attend. Same variable content and quality as those conference speakers I just mentioned. I once visited such a school and sat in on such a class: It’s basic information which every church should teach every Sunday. But at this church, they have no Sunday morning classes. All their classes are behind a paywall.

Bigger churches tend to have midweek services, like on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday nights, to supplement the Sunday morning services, or accommodate people who couldn’t make ’em. One large church in my area put them behind a paywall too. Now they hold regular conferences: One of their pastors, or some visiting speaker, picks a topic, speaks two evenings plus Sunday morning, and the church charges $50 or more for the evening meetings. For some speakers, this (plus pushing their books) is their bread and butter. Content varies. Some of it’s actually good. Others are clearly winging it, and quote scripture out of context more often than not.

Who runs the church?

How’s the leadership of your church structured? ’Cause it matters.

Short answer: Jesus.

Way longer answer: When Christians are asked who runs our individual churches, sometimes we describe the leadership structure of their church or denomination. But everybody can potentially give the answer “Jesus.” It is his church after all. He is the king over God’s kingdom.

But since his kingdom isn’t yet of this world, Jn 18.36 the day-to-day duties of running Jesus’s churches on earth fall to vicars. Vicar is the Christianese word for “deputy,” and means the very same thing: Lieutenants who answer to the guy who’s really in charge, and that’d be Jesus. Hopefully we truly are working on his behalf, and not for ourselves… though I leave it to you as to how well we’re doing.

Now, if you were to ask your average pagan who’s in charge, most of ’em assume the pastor is. (Or the minister, priest, father, sister, bishop, apostle, prophet—whatever you call the top dog.) Pastor says “Jump” and everyone responds, “How high?” Depending on how cynical this pagan is about organized religion, pastors range from benevolent dictators, to selfish cult leaders. To their minds, every church is some form of top-down tyranny.

And to be fair, a lot of churches do practice a top-down model. It’s the most common church leadership structure there is. Arguably it’s the first structure: Jesus in charge, and his students not. And once Jesus ascended to his Father, it was followed by the apostles in charge, and everyone else below them.

Of course I say “arguably” because some Christians argue this top-down structure isn’t Jesus’s intent. They’ll advocate for their own favorite structure—namely the structure we find in their churches. Yes, they have proof texts. If you think church oughta be a democracy, you’ve likely got verses which prove God thinks so too. Top-down, bottom-up, middle-out, nobody-in-charge-but-the-Holy-Spirit, or even benevolent anarchy, people will point to verses which they’re pretty sure back their view. Regardless of those views, I’m gonna point out the top-down model is all over Christendom because it’s consistently found all over the scriptures, all over antiquity, and all over church history. Valid or not, it’s everywhere because top-down is humanity’s default setting: Left to their own devices, humans create kingdoms, not democracies. Even in democracies we fight to be on top.

Regardless, everybody pays lip service to the idea Jesus runs our churches. Hopefully he does.

Sacraments: Our Christian rituals. Gotta do ’em.

SACRAMENT 'søk.rə.mənt noun. Religious ritual which represents a spiritual reality, or represents an act of God’s grace.

2. [“the sacrament”] Holy communion.

[Sacramental søk.rə'mɛn(t).əl adjective, sacramentalist søk.rə'mɛn(t).əl.ist noun.]

God does many things in our lives. Some we see. Some we don’t.

When God cures me of an illness, it’s nice and obvious: Everybody, even skeptics, can see I’m well. They’ll totally disagree about how I got well. If they don’t believe in God (or don’t believe he still does miracles) they’ll doubt God was involved in the cure. Might even doubt I was truly ill to begin with. But they otherwise agree I’m well. That part’s visible enough.

Now, when God forgives me of sin… what’s visible?

I mean I know I’m forgiven; Jesus told us we’re given most everything. Mk 3.28 I put my faith in Jesus, so I trust when he says I’m forgiven, I am. But was there anything visible? Anything we could’ve experienced? Did I hear God’s audible voice: “Behold thou art made whole: Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee”? Jn 5.14 KJV Did I experience happy feelings which I’ve come to associate with forgiveness? Was God cursing me in some way, and now he’s not? Do (as the prosperity gospel folks insist is true) I suddenly find myself flush with cash?

In fact no: Most of the time we don’t see anything. Don’t see most of the things God does “behind the scenes,” as we put it—which is inaccurate, ’cause God’s not hiding a thing. He told us what he’s up to, He 1.1 and still tells us when we bother to ask. Am 3.7 It’s just we don’t bother to ask. Or we assume it’s part of some secret evil plan he’s up to.

But God understands how we humans tick: We want experiences. We wanna have something we’ve lived through, which we can point back to and say, “That’s when God did [something profound]. There’s the date and time.” Something to jog our memory, to remind us how and when God did something for us. Like a holiday which reminds us Jesus died for our sins at around 2:30 PM, 3 April 33. Or a handy, easy-to-repeat ritual.

And that’s why God ordained such rituals for us Christians to perform. Things we can do which represent what he did, what he’s doing, what he’ll do later. We call ’em sacraments, which literally means “sacred acts.” Or (if we think “sacrament” is too Catholic a word) ordinances—’cause God did ordain ’em.

The reason God ordained sacraments is to make his grace visible. ’Cause it’s not always. Miracles are visible, obvious forms of grace. Forgiveness… well, what’s obvious is the way we respond to God forgiving us. (If we respond to him; some of us are ingrates.) Some of us think we oughta feel something when that happens, so we psyche ourselves into imagining God’s presence, into feeling stuff, even into seeing stuff. You know, contorting our brains in all sorts of unhealthy ways. Things that’ll just get in the way once real visions happen.

In comparison God keeps it simple. Get dunked in water. Eat bread and drink wine. Set up a rock pile. Wash feet. Celebrate a holiday. Make promises. Say certain words. These rituals represent the reality. Do them and remember the reality. 1Co 11.24-25 Remember God’s grace.

Picking your label.

Years ago I joined an internet forum. As you do, when you wanna interact with like-minded or similar-minded people, and you can’t find a whole lot of ’em in your hometown, so you try out the internet. They’re a lot of fun for the first couple years, but I find they invariably deteriorate. They’re so interested in getting more members, or new members, they start letting in the cranks, and cranks ruin everything. Those of you who are cranks know what I mean.

Anyway, after the numbers got up there, the moderator asked that we all re-introduce ourselves for the sake of the many newcomers. “Please tell us your religious background.” How would you label yourself?

A lot of us took the opportunity to be really vague about it:

• “Student of Christ.”
• “Disciple.”
• “Catechumen.” (Seriously.)
• “Worshiper of the King.”
• “Christ-carrier.”
• “Jesus person.”
• “Grateful believer.”
• “God-chaser.”

Honest to goodness, I didn’t think I’d joined a group of hippies.

Lefties, you know what I’m talking about. I ran into it all the time in college. Join a group, ask the members of the group what they call themselves, and just about every single person has chosen a different label for themselves. They customized the definition to whatever they wished it would be. ’Cause it’s all about them, isn’t it? Even in community.

I used to see this all the time on Facebook, or any of the other social media platforms where there was an “About” page which invited you to state your religion. Some folks went with the usual “Christian” or “Jewish” or one of the denominations. But lots of ’em, sometimes for fun and sometimes because “Christian” wasn’t enough, would put “Lover of JESUS!!!” or some such. Caps and three exclamation points means you really mean it.

Back to the internet forum. I got specific, because I wanted there to be no question where I was coming from—and if there were, it would only be because people didn’t understand the terms. I went with “Christian / Arminian / Pentecostal / Assemblies of God.” From the general to the specific: Religion, theology, movement, denomination.

Some of the others were specific as well. If you identify with your denomination, or you’re in leadership, you tend to. If you don’t care for it, you tend not to join its hierarchy. (Although there are exceptions: At my last church, we took an informal survey of the people’s attitudes about membership, and asked how they identified themselves. One of our elders identified herself as an attendee. No, there was no box to tick; she wrote the word out. Not an elder; not even as a member. There’s commitment for ya.)

The rest of the forum members picked the usual vague terms we find among bloggers, Twitter users, authors, survey respondents, and average church attendees throughout Christendom. It signified they wanted to be unique. It also signified just how much the other terms don’t work for them.

How I got mixed up with the Assemblies of God.

The quick ’n dirty way to size up a Christian is to ask them their church. “What church do you go to?” Then you compare them with all the nutjobs in their church. Never the sane people who go to their church; never the sober-minded, thoughtful, kind, friendly types. (Assuming you know of any.) Just the crazies.

So when people ask my church, I know that’s what they’re up to. I’ll tell ’em anyway: I’m a member of an Assemblies of God church. And off they dig through their memories. If I’m lucky they know a nice person who happened to go to such a church; if I’m not they know some cranks. (Worse, some of our cranks.) Or of various televangelist scandals. Or they know some different kind of crank: The sort who’s anti-Assemblies, who tell anyone who’ll listen, “Do you know what those people teach?” and make us sound like raging heretics.

More often, people don’t know anything about Christian denominations. They know the one they’re in… sorta. They’ve heard of the bigger ones, like the Catholics and Baptists; or the older ones like the Lutherans and Episcopalians. The Assemblies is only a century old. So they don’t always know which prejudices they oughta have against me.

Not that all their prejudices fit. I didn’t grow up in this church. I started attending it only five years ago, less than a year after I moved to town.