Beta Church: The Dancing Angel Who Dumped Us.

I once was a member of a pretty happening church near the Metroplex.  It was a newly liberated, formerly traditional baptist church with lots of people driving hours to attend.

I was still pretty new to church culture and being an arts major, I was not at all shocked to see lots of strange types of people. Hipsters, jocks, college students, young families, different races, and loads of kids with grungy shirts and piercings. It was like a weekly Woodstock for Christians. It was radical and freakiness seemed next to godliness in those days.

There was one particular family that stood out. They were home-schoolers in the Amish/culty kind of way.  They weren't in a cult or Amish, but the girls all had super long hair that went past their waists and they always wore long dresses. The boys dressed like it was the 1950's with button-downs and pressed pants, hair styles like Beaver Cleaver.

The matriarch was the most interesting member of all.

Her name was Laitha.

Picture this sort of thing.

She was intimidating from afar because she was so bold, passionate and obviously unafraid of opinions.  However, she was warm and wise up close. A fountain of wisdom and knowledge.   I couldn't help but like her.  She danced during the service in the back, in a special spot for flaggers, people who liked to lay on the floor, and dancers.

Then one day, she confided that she and her family was leaving our church to start a "home church".

What?  So our super cool, open-minded, rocking sub-cultural church of awesomeness wasn't good enough for her anymore!?

We were being dumped.  It hurt.  

I didn't understand.  "Home church" seemed weirder than homeschooling, burying placentas in the yard, and dancing in a baptist church!  

I was puzzled... and sure that I never wanted to be that weird.

Now, many years later I think I understand what Laitha and her family were looking for.  She wasn't really rejecting US.  She and her family had decided to try something OLD.

We were doing the NEW thing, and she was simply taking her form of gathering congregationally back to the roots of every church... meeting in homes.

The way we've done church has been as firm in my mind as the scriptures themselves.  I never thought to ask where our customs come from.  I just went along because I equated the formal procession of Sunday morning worship as concretely biblical--as if God sent out a church memo and said:

"Thou shalt begin with organ and piano, then thou shalt welcome my people.  Then thou shalt sing three or four hymns ( not necessarily all the verses), followed by the offering and prayers.  My choir of superior Christians will sing one more, but you just watch.  Then my anointed man will talk at you for about thirty minutes or more.  Be patient, be still and smile.   Listen take notes.  Pray again.  Play one more hymn then dismiss so that everyone can be home before the Dallas Cowboys play.

(just kidding.)

I have alway really liked churches with charisma, huge projection screens, huge bands, awesome rock style music, special events, giant buildings.  I still do...but something is missing.

I think that maybe like the popular  "Happy Meal" with it's glossy box, special treats, and grandiose marketing schemes, American churches have perhaps forgotten that to a really hungry person, a burger is a burger.  We have become so concerned with selling our product that perhaps we have underestimated the power of doing things simply and sincerely.

And we all know where the best burgers come from... our own backyard grill.  

We need more than one type of congregation... perhaps there is room for an OLD way around here.