How Churches and Airports Are Alike … and Can Be Different

It is 10:15 PM. I have been home a little more than an hour, having spent the better part of my day returning home from Nashville, where I was involved in something called the Middle Adult Summit. It is sponsored by our denomination’s General Board of Discipleship, and I had the opportunity to be one of sixteen people invited to be a part of the conversation. I must admit I’m not sure that I like being called a “middle adult,” because I do not feel like what I have always thought a middle-aged person might feel like. Granted, I was one of the “younger” mid-adults at this summit (probably one of four who would be called generationally a “Genxer,” while the others are baby boomers). We finished up by noon today, and then it was off first to the Nashville airport, then on to Chicago and finally back to Minneapolis.

As I ponder my afternoon and evening hours in airports scattered across the hundreds of miles, I was struck by how the airport experience is really an experiment in pseudo-community. If you’ve traveled by air you may know what I’m talking about. People who normally would not be your conversation partners strike up a conversation. While I was catching up on email at the Nashville airport, for example, a woman (who also happened to be a Mac user, which always catches my attention) asked if there was a power outlet nearby. (Finding a power outlet at any airport is always a challenging proposition). I told her there was an empty outlet above the one I was using, which she took to be an invitation to sit near me. As she plugged in her cord, she feigned friendliness and apologized for her “reach.” I finished up my work, packed up and walked on to witness another oddity.

In a darkened corner of an empty gate area was a young man evidently needing a change of shirts. As I walked by I saw him pulling off his button-down oxford, and mercifully in my peripheral vision only, as I walked by, saw him strip off his t-shirt with one hand as he rummaged through his carry-on luggage with another hand to pull out a clean set of clothes. Strange, I thought, that he would feel free to change his clothes in a deserted gate area open to public view when there was a bathroom right around the corner. Again, there was the sense of pseudo-community … as though he was with friends or acquaintances, simply because we all happened to share one thing in common: we were all traveling by air today.

And then, of course, there is the seating arrangement on all airplanes, which is never commodious for my body size. Even when I was 60 pounds lighter it was a challenge to squeeze into seats designed for the petite; these days the challenge is even greater, and I am not sure I will ever be comfortable sitting for a protracted period of time with one side of my body squeezed closely to a stranger’s. The truth is, and this may be too much information, that I don’t sleep that close to my spouse in our bed at home. When I’m sitting close enough to the guy next to me to feel his nervously twitching leg vibrate against mine, I figure that’s just a little too close. But strangely, when it comes to airflights, most of us accept that as part of the experience. It’s this psuedo-community thing I’m talking about. We’re all in it together, so we pretend that we’re OK with unusual close-proximity physicality with complete strangers.

I could go on, but I think you get my point. About airports and the flying experience at least.

But I think that our church experiences are often like airport experiences. We co-exist in our church relationships with people we would never socialize with in our “real worlds.” We sit next to or near people we don’t really know, but pretend like we do know, because that’s supposed to be part of what church is about. We smile and exchange greetings and discuss the weather, but we don’t get all that involved in others’ lives. When, for example, we hear that one of their children is reeling out of control, we say to ourselves, “Gosh, I never knew that was happening. They seemed like such a happy family.” Or when the empty-nester couple parts ways, we are shocked and say, “I can’t believe it. They were together 25 years. They raised their children together. They seemed so compatible.”

I am concerned that for many of us our church experience is no better than our airport experiences. We experience pseudo-community, but we really never get beyond the superficial and the external. We think of fellowship as cake, coffee and a friendly face … but we just don’t know how to get beneath the surface to really walk with another person in the depths of their life experience. We view the “new person” from across the room and wonder who they are, without, of course, bothering to walk to the place where they are standing or sitting to introduce ourselves. We have our “church friends” and our “other friends.”

One of the things I heard in multiple ways in the past two days in the training I attended was how desperately necessary (for middle adults in particular, but not only people aged 31-60) it is to have a spiritual community. One of the things that those in this age group say (who do not attend church) is that they are looking for a community in which their spiritual lives can deepen and grow, a place where they can know others beyond the surface and journey together in a spiritual way.

And here’s the kicker … many of these adults are finding these kind of meaningful spiritual relationships. They are just not finding them in the church (whatever the denominational stripe). They will meet at 6 AM once a week with friends at Starbucks to talk and pray, but they won’t be in a church worship service. They may host a book study to explore spirituality at Barnes and Noble, but they won’t sign up for the latest education offering at the nearby church building.

The institutionally alienated, spiritually yearning folks in our community are finding ways to become spiritually adept, but they consider churches irrelevant and inhospitable to their needs. I wonder if those outside the church see the church experience like I experienced the airport today, as a psuedo-community where people are doing similar things, but not as a place to be unless absolutely necessary, and then to avoid until absolutely necessary again (could you say “baptisms,” “weddings,” and “funerals”?)

I don’t know about you, but I want to pastor a church where a strong sense of spiritual community is embraced and continues to grow and develop. I don’t want to oversee the work of an airport where psuedo-community is the value of a necessary evil.

God help us … to be different!