I have spent a lot of time talking about what I don’t like in church. Probably time I talked about what I do like. Some of these are things that a church SHOULD be (as in scriptural mandates) and some of these are things that I just like. I am going to tell you the distinction exists, but that's all. It's up to you to figure out which is which in the rest of the column. I have experienced all of these in a church at some point. But alas, I have experienced them in only a transitory fashion -- sometimes even fleeting. The key question is not how to create these situations, but how to hold on to them. Maybe you have an answer?

Maybe a better word for this attribute than "home" is "retreat," but then again, maybe not. I very much view my life as a Christian sort of like a rechargeable battery. I receive power from the Lord, and then I use that power to further His Kingdom. Church is the place where I receive the power -- the rest of the world is the place where I use it. Thus, church should be a place where I go to experience God. For me, this means a place of beauty, and a place of rest.

One of the reasons I complain so about the institutional nature of church is that that institution seems to take so much of the energy I receive, there is none left to use out in the world. That is one of the reasons I am convinced the church is not working very well. If the church is working well, I would come away from it feeling invigorated.

As the place a Christian calls home, church should also be the place where a Christian's faith grows. Growth in the faith is a somewhat indefinable thing. Like the wind, I am not sure it is something one can touch directly, but it is something the affects of which can be readily noticed. This is a particularly important attribute because of what it says about the current debate in so many churches about making them "appealing." Because "appealing" so often gets read in a way that equates to worldly conformity, I think it misses this important point. Most people, Christians included, feel best in a place that affirms the way they are, not asks them to learn to be something different.

You might wonder how church could be "home" and challenging at the same time. There are really only two conditions under which it can be. One is that I, as the church attendee, need to have that challenge as a value. If it is something I value, it will be something I like. Thus, probably the first lesson a new Christian needs to learn is the value of the challenge. The other condition is that the challenge be offered in the correct manner. I wish I could describe exactly what that correct manner was, but I can't. But if you think back on your school experience I bet you can remember a time when you were struggling with something, and your teacher helped you with it, and you got it, and you felt good. That's the right manner. Likewise, I bet you can think of the same thing where the teacher tried to help and all it caused you was further frustration. That's the wrong manner.

Church should be the place where our relationship with God grows in every aspect. Church should be a vital instrument in that growth.

The greatest frustration of my Christian life in the last several years has been the abiding sensation of "there has to be something more." I want to learn more, I want to experience more, I want to be closer to God, but I can’t seem to find anything that I haven't tried before or heard before. "Well gee John, if that's the way you feel, why don’t you go to seminary?" Because, I don’t want to know more church history, or polity, or Greek, or Hebrew, or theology -- I want to know GOD!

I am reasonably confident that the way to what I want lies in the kind of self-sacrificing focus on God that I have discussed in this space before, and I do my very best to have that focus. I read and listen to many people that tell me about that particular path. But I always have the sensation that they are giving me directions, like the guy at the gas station. I don’t want Christian leadership in the Church to tell me where to go I want them to invite me in. Or at least I want them to walk the path with me.

Yes, this means I expect a great deal of those that take up the mantle of leadership in the church. I do so unashamedly.

Boy, this one is slippery. So often when conducting the business of the church, I feel exactly like I feel when I am sitting in business meetings on my job. YUCH! I want to know when I am doing something in church, that I am doing something very, very different. When I sit in church meetings, I want an undeniable, overwhelming sense that the Holy Spirit is sitting in the meeting as well. I could write books describing the sensation, and never pin it down. Suffice it to say that when the Holy Spirit attends, things seem to work like magic.

The bottom line is this -- God calls and empowers us individually, and corporately, to give up our sinful, worldly nature and pick up the glory that He originally created us to have. I am not sure it is within my capability to even envision exactly what I, or the church, am supposed to look like, but I do know it will something radically different. I want church to be that radically different.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Next week finds my wife and I traveling. That means no new column next weekend, but look for my return the following weekend. We will be enjoying the frigid northland of Minnesota. Pray for my wife that she does not die from lutefish, sausage, and beer overload.