HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 24, 2024 – Ideally, we as Christians should be able to walk into any Christian-designated church building or service or organization anywhere in the world and feel not only welcome but “at home”. We should feel like family to the people working or worshiping there. We should never feel alien or as if we don’t belong. We should never feel “othered”. This is my ideal take on being a Christian in the world.

Realistically, though, there are few if any Christian church buildings, services, or organizations where you feel welcome or at home if you’re a stranger to the people in them. You’ll be received more like Paul just after his conversion than like Jesus after his resurrection, or at least that’s been my experience over the years since my rebirth. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman or because I always show up at these places alone. Maybe being a woman on my own makes me suspect. I don’t know. I generally find the men and the children to be somewhat warmer and more welcoming than the women, but again that might just be because I’m a woman. When they see me, the wives tend to pull their husbands closer (lol) and pepper me with questions, the main one being “And is your husband coming, too?….”

As I mentioned a few articles back, God has me doing the rounds of churches and church-run organizations again. It’s always an eye-opener, attending services and partaking of the hospitality of these places. I make a concerted effort to enter them as if I have the right to be in them, because I do have the right to be in them. Every Christian has the right to be in a place designated as a Christian space or organization. There are zero exceptions to this rule. Sometimes I have to say outright to whoever is giving me the stink-eye and third-degree: “I’m a Christian”, and let that proclamation sink into their hearts and minds and hopefully soften them a bit towards me. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. I haven’t (yet) been chased out of any place, like Jesus was chased out of his hometown synagogue, but I have walked out on numerous occasions, mostly when things were being said or done that I didn’t agree with, or when the sad state of the people and the space was too much for me to bear.

You can feel when a church or organization is on life support, the same way you can tell when a sick animal is nearing death or a business is about to go bankrupt. There’s a pall of leanness that hangs over the proceedings, darkening and dimming and dampening, even though the official word is that everything is just fine. The first thing you notice when an end is nearing is the lack of cleanliness, like the smell of old product left moldering on store shelves or the heaviness of a room that hasn’t been aired out in years. Animals stop cleaning themselves in the days leading up to their death, either because they’re too unwell to do it or they don’t care about doing it anymore or they have more important things to attend to than grooming (Heaven now being in their sights). Sometimes I think I should be taking cleaning products with me when I go to church services so I can do some impromptu wiping and dusting when no-one’s looking.

I remember, when I was first reborn, that I wanted to clean the bathroom in the church I was attending. I was there every day, and I considered it would be an honor to clean that bathroom. But the priest wouldn’t let me do it, without giving me a reason why. Only later did I find out it was because the bathroom, which was readily accessible from the sidewalk outside the church’s front doors, was habitually used by drug addicts to get their fix. Sometimes they’d be found passed out. Sometimes they’d be found dead. It was basically a hazmat zone, that bathroom. Still, every now and then I would drop by the dollar store to get some air fresheners for it. I felt that the least I could do was make the place smell a little better, even if the filth went too deep to remove.

Sometimes that’s all we can do now as born-again believers – place spiritual air fresheners here and there to give the impression that things aren’t as dire as they are. The same thing was done in the decades leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem, both before and after Jesus’ first coming. The few who cared did what they could to turn people back to God, but the majority wanted nothing to do with him. Did they know their efforts were in vain, those few who cared? I think they did, the same way Moses knew that only two among the millions of adults who streamed out of Egypt would ultimately make it to the promised land. But like Jeremiah trying to stop himself from preaching about God, the people who cared couldn’t help themselves. They couldn’t contain their love for God; it just burst out of them, even if they knew that all their efforts (or most of them) were in vain.

So they rolled with it. And rolling with it, they were maligned, mocked, threatened, hated, expelled, persecuted, imprisoned, and sometimes even killed, and nearly always by the very people they were trying to help. It didn’t stop them, though, those few who cared. They considered it a privilege and a good sign to suffer for the Word.

As God leads me, I will continue to roll into whatever building, service, or organization that is officially designated as Christian, expecting not to be particularly welcome but also not letting the stink-eye stop me. Every designated Christian space (and the resources offered there) is a space that’s been set aside for me – for us – and I will gratefully make use of them for as long as they exist. I encourage you to do the same, though you might want to pack a few baby wipes and some spiritual air freshener, just in case.