Death of Bookstores and Churches

I recently read a CNN article about the closing of the very first Borders bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  After forty years selling books, Borders is going out of business.  This is a sad but expected reality.  More bookstores, both chains and independents, are bound to close in the coming months and years.  Technology is leaving them behind.  For many, the ease, convenience, and efficiency of downloading a book directly to one’s digital reader of choice is a far better option than the whole go-to-the-bookstore-and-buy-a-book method.  Even for those of us without a Kindle or an IPad, online book purchases are still the norm.  Pay a nominal shipping fee and the book arrives at your door in a week!  But I’ve always loved bookstores.  I love them because it’s about more than just the books.  Author Ann Miller recently wrote this about the closing of a bookstore in her hometown: “I shall miss them when they’re gone… There was no better place for grazing the written word, and for meeting the best of friends.” I too will miss them if and when they’re gone.

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I can’t help but wonder if the church is on the same trajectory as the bookstore.  There is much debate about the statistics.  A small minority say that the numbers are actually leveling out and even possibly trending toward a small uptick in church attendance in America.  Most say that church attendance has been plummeting for years and will continue to do so in the coming decades.  Younger generations seem to be particularly disenfranchised. Regardless of where we land on the numbers and statistics, the truth remains that the church is intended to play an integral role in the story God is writing on earth.  As the bride of Christ, she is called to be a radiant expression of the restorative and healing love of Jesus.  The church is meant to be a gathering place of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called saints & sinners; all of us together, collectively stumbling our way through life, trying to get a grip, figuring it out step by step, leaning on each other to make certain that no one falls too hard or too far.  But it seems that in many of our churches, this tremendous calling has been dwindled down to a focus on the efficiency and effectiveness of production.  How does our church look and sound?  Are people buying what we’re selling?  What’s the winning formula to church growth and how do we reproduce it at satellite campuses everywhere? I’m not so naive as to say that these considerations are unimportant.  The aesthetics are helpful in creating an emotional connection.  Gaining buy-in from people is crucial to making real progress.  Church growth and reproduction are prevalent in the New Testament narratives.  But none of these elements can replace the centrality of the communal experience that the church must offer.  And I believe that in order to have maximum effect, this experience must be a genuine, visceral one, untouched by the synthetic processes of forced or manufactured group dynamics.  The church must be an honest and open space, a living and breathing invitation into a community of real people made of skin and bones, dealing with real issues, together fighting hard to make sense of it all. The church must be a place where everyone can put their guards down, immerse themselves in a greater narrative, and lose themselves in a captivating story. Much like a really good bookstore.

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My wife and I were in Portland a few months ago and got to visit Powell’s Books a couple of times.  It’s an incredibly unique place and a must if you’re ever in Portland.  They claim to be the largest new and used bookstore in the world and I believe them.  There must have been at least a hundred people in the store while we were there, although it’s hard to really know because the store is the size of a city block.  Jenny and I got lost in Powell’s and it was wonderful.  Some of the books were dusty and I felt allergic at times but I didn’t want to leave.  At one point I saw an elderly homeless man and a hipster kid standing side by side in an aisle, reading Philip Dick short stories.  I joined them for a little while.  We didn’t say a word to each other but there we were, communing in this equal space where we were all enthralled by the power of story.  As I think back on that experience I am reminded that this is exactly what the church ought to be; an equal space where people from all walks of life can gather and be drawn into a real community, captivated by the beautiful story of God.  So let us hope and work toward the preservation and progress of great bookstores and even better churches everywhere.