A Tourist's View of the Church

I've lived here in Hana for over 4 months now. The house (Hale Kahu - house for the minister) is on the Church property with the main windows facing the church and road (not the beautiful Pacific Ocean). I get to watch the tourist busses and cars as they pass by.

Hana is a tourist spot - in fact the main industry seems to revolve around tourism, either accommodation, food, souvenirs, or goods and services. Every day many small tourist busses come past Wananalua Congregational Church building. This half block of road is the only way through Hana; a fact which has not escaped the notice of the police when they set speed traps and drink driving tests.

Each of these tourist busses stops or more likely slows to a walking pace as it goes past the Church building entrance. No doubt the driver has a spiel about the historic significance of the building and the graveyard. Only rarely have I seen a bus actually stop to let a passenger off to go inside the building to take a photo. It's a tourist spot - to be seen, photographed, talked about, but not experienced.

But there is a real Church that meets here and worships and, yes, sometimes argues as it seeks to find its way in this modern world. None of that is seen by the tourists.

On Facebook there is a list of 100 places to see before you die. I have seen 8 at this point. But I somehow am uneasy at the 'tourism' sight-seeing approach to life. The comedy movies like National Lampoon's 1987 "European Vacation" plays up the silly side of that.

Yet we find people treat faith in that way - it's a tourist like venture - to be seen but not experienced and worked at; something that is to be dished up to amuse us or to make us feel happy. And the Christian Church has played into this. Can you imagine Paul or Peter of the New Testament acting as a tourist guide for the church buildings in Asia Minor? Can you see them highlighting the building or the artifacts of memorabilia donated in memory of people as they take each party through the old building? Can you see Paul arguing for the churches around to donate money towards restoring the old building in Jerusalem as he travels through Greece?

Congregations unwittingly take this tourist approach also as we skip merrily from Christmas to Easter Day to Thanksgiving and all the other 'happy' church occasions. And make sure the service only goes for 45 minutes because, as one Church in all seriousness actually told me, "We want to get to the restaurant before the other churches so we can get in and have our meal before they take all the seats."

But when a congregation has to face the reality of hard decisions in tough financial circumstances, we have no resources to lead us through because we have only sought ease and our own comfort in our church life. No hard study and grappling with the Scriptures ( "just preach to us from the Bible, Pastor") and sitting in uncertainty with our fellow pilgrims on the Way to prepare us for difficult times. No sharing of disagreement in searching for the way forward nor taking on board the promptings of the Spirit towards new ways.

Similarly we remove all the bits from the liturgy that make us squirm - confession, praying for our enemies, sermons about issues that touch our pocket books or our political sensibilities, new hymns that challenge us musically and theologically. Just preach how to survive our daily living with as little discomfort as possible, like patients pleading with their doctor to remove all pain we demand the morphine of the old comfortable hymns and the familiar, domesticated portions of Scripture.

No, I cannot blame society for treating the Church like a tourist site and a museum, we the Church have done it to ourselves. And while we keep doing it we become what we have created - a museum to faith that others only see superficially as they pass slowly by; a quaint piece of antiquity left over from a former age.

Let the Spirit blow through the Church so that we become the vibrant living community we were meant to be.