The Performance Treadmill

I came across this article and it is good to know that someone also feel like I do..

by Jeff McQuilkin

I think the thing I miss the least about church-as-usual–especially as a staff member–is the pressure to perform, especially during service times. I learned–and I taught–that when it was time for our gathering, all our problems were tabled, all our personal issues were put to the side for the purpose of focusing on God. If we were having a hard time, or a bad day, all that had to go away for however long we were in the service. It was a sincere effort, really, not an attempt to be heartless. I really believed that it honored God to serve Him and the people no matter how I felt at the moment. And there is truth to that, I think, because whenever we can get our minds off ourselves to help others, it’s a healthy thing.

What hurt about it was not the willful turning of my attention to God, nor did I believe He didn’t care about my problems. What hurt was that because I always seemed to be playing a pivotal, seemingly irreplaceable role in the service, when I was in crisis, the leaders seemed to care more about whether I could “pull off” my role in the service than how I was doing personally.

Nobody would have admitted it, no one would have wanted to put it this way. But the attitude was, The Show Must Go On.

As believers, it is definitely important that we gather together, although I really have a broader understanding of what that can look like. But when the church service is the centerpiece of church, the meeting itself becomes more important than the people who are gathering at the meeting. And that, I think, is where setting our issues aside becomes unhealthy. We really weren’t doing it for God. We were doing it for appearances. The Show Must Go On.

I can still see this on the faces of pastors, people I know and care about, people whom I know to be genuinely sincere. They don’t even realize when they are doing it, but there is a fear on Sunday mornings of anything that could disrupt the order of service. Everything must go off without a hitch, everything must be run smoothly. No matter how many times it is protested that church is not a show…it is still run like one. And It Must Go On. No Matter What. It is one of the major reasons why people simply cannot see the Church as people anymore. Church is a building, a program, a gathering.

A show.

The think I like best about not doing that anymore is that I no longer feel enslaved by a mandate to make the Show Go On every week. Toward the end of our 10-year stint leading a house church, I think we finally started to get this. It stopped mattering so much what we did when we gathered; it became more about who we were with, and what we shared together. It wasn’t a community coming together each week to do their duty. It was just a community. And because of that, the things we did and said and talked about–the worshiping together, the focusing on Jesus–became that much more meaningful.

As so many of us look for and discover new ways to be the church, I think part of that process really needs to be putting the gathering of believers into a healthier perspective. It seems to me that in finding a better way, a major priority we as believers should have should be to make our gatherings about God and each other, not about…um…the gathering. Just saying.

Thank you, Jeff.