The podium stands before me, and the audience sits behind the podium, quiet, their attention focused on me. I can’t believe I’m here. About to bring a meaningful message they really need to hear. I see Granny sitting off to the side, her smile encouraging me.
I open my mouth, and out come some words I no longer remember. My first sermon.
I was five years old. My congregation? About ten very patient, generous stuffed animals. And Granny, who leads the singing.
We were playing “church.”
Fast forward twenty years, and I’m standing behind a real pulpit in Brookline, Massachusetts, once described to me by a religion scholar as “the single most important pulpit in Churches of Christ.” It’s September 16, 2001.
The Sunday after September 11th.
This time there’s a hundred faces, some scared, most sad, all hungry to hear something that would speak to their experience from me, a 25 year-old preacher.
That sermon, and the process through which it came to be, changed my vocation – and my life. You see, I couldn’t preach that day without having words that were really alive in me.
I couldn’t play church that day, of all days.
Most people I know didn’t grow up attending church three times a week like I did. That wasn’t terribly unusual for Dallas, Texas, in the 1970s-80s, but it was at the higher end of religious observance.
From all that church attendance, I can draw the following conclusion: church attendance has ZERO correlation with life transformation.
Which is another way of saying, a lot our religious observance isn’t too different than playing church. Or temple. Or mosque.
Now, this doesn’t mean it was without value, or that being a part of a religious or spiritual community has no benefits. Far from it. Multiple, independently-validated research studies show that regular participation brings longevity benefits, increased social connection and support, and helps people during times of crisis. (That 9/11 sermon was a rare packed house, for example.)
But going doesn’t mean living. And though my five-year-old self didn’t know this, the older preacher had read enough of the Hebrew prophets to know that participation, unless it’s a means to something deeper, is really just playing.
September 16th was the day I couldn’t play anymore. It was time to get out of the game, and get on with life – a life that was really life.