Playing Church

Like all institutions and cultures, the church has developed its own language terms to describe situations that we all encounter. Sometimes it is helpful to look at these terms and define them so that we may better understand what they mean to us and others. I would like to explore the term ‘playing church’ in this post.

We often hear that people are tired of ‘playing church’. What does that mean? I think most times it means that we are tired of just going through the motions. Church becomes a religious obligation to us, or we go simply because we’ve always gone, or because we feel it’s the right thing to do. There’s no excitement, no anticipation, no wonder surrounding involvement in the church. It becomes simply an automated process. It becomes part of what we do to appease God – the fulfillment of a requirement without any joy.

So when we say that we are ‘playing church’, we are saying that we are participating in religious activity. Robert Farrar Capon said “Religion consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshiping, sacrificing) the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God.” We may not feel that we are attending church to ‘get right with God’, but when we feel that we are ‘playing church’ I think more often than not we are involved because being involved seems to us the right thing to do. Even though it doesn’t feel right, it is right. That is the essence of religion – and outward compliance to a standard that is imposed on us by ourselves or others in an effort to please God.

Christianity is the antidote to religion. If religion is man’s effort to reconcile himself to God, then Christianity is the polar opposite in that it teaches that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.” (2 Corinthians 5:19 ESV) Christianity can be defined as a message; a message from God to mankind that He has effected perfect reconciliation between us and himself through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The message calls us to believe that this work of Christ alone reconciles us to God. Those who believe this become a unique family of individuals called ‘the church’ whose purpose is to promote the glory of God and proclaim the message of reconciliation:

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:18-21 ESV)  

‘Playing church’, then, becomes anything short of this ideal. If we are not allowing God to make His appeal through us, we are ‘playing church’. If we are not recognizing that God is reconciling the world through Christ, we are ‘playing church’. If we do not believe that God has reconciled us to himself through the work of Christ alone, we are ‘playing church’.

Perhaps another Christian buzz word enters the conversation at this point; relationship. We say that we don’t want religion – don’t want to ‘play church’ – we want a relationship with God. The problem ends up being that we so often turn our quest for this illusive relationship into religion again. In earthly relationships, we expect to get out of them what we put into them - we often assume that our relationship with God is the same. So we put in and put in and put in to this relationship and it ends up feeling like we are ‘playing church’. Somehow we never recognize that our ‘putting in’ is religion. We don’t get the good stuff as a result of our putting in and we wonder why – never making the connection that in Christ God has given us the best stuff already. In Ozark English – it don’t get no gooder.

We need to have a Biblical understanding of what the church is if we are to avoid 'playing church'. Church is not the building where people meet on Sunday morning, nor is it the activities that take place in that building. The church is a group of people whom God has called out of the world. We are truly a 'people group' in our own right, though we come from different ethnic, economic, political and societal backgrounds. Peter tells us "Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." (1 Peter 2:10 ESV) We have become a people not because we share common interests or backgrounds, but simply because we have been the recipients of God's mercy. It is not our building programs, mission activity, teaching or friendship toward one another that makes us the church, but God's calling in each of our lives. As in the life of the individual, the church that understands that it has been called out of the world by God will bear good fruit.

Look again at the passage quoted above from Second Corinthians and notice that Paul starts the second sentence with a ‘therefore’.  With it he is telling us why we are ambassadors for Christ – why we (as a church) implore people to be reconciled to God. It is because God has reconciled us to himself. It is not because we try harder, or are better people, or are involved in more charitable works or work to have a deeper relationship with God. It is because God, in mercifully reconciling us as individuals to himself, has created a body of peculiar people who can bring Him glory and proclaim the message of reconciliation. That is the only kind of church that is not ‘play church’.

‘Playing church’ is really a buzzword for religion. For many of us ‘relationship’ is also a buzzword for religion. What we need to concentrate on is neither religion nor relationship, but reconciliation. We need to remind ourselves and be reminded constantly that God alone effected our reconciliation to himself through the completed work of Christ at Calvary. It is only then that we can stop ‘playing church’ and start living church. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless