One thing we can all be a part of, though, is the remedy for whatever we feel ails our local church or even the global Church. Few of us will impact multiple churches. None of us will change the American church as we know it. We can, however, follow Mother Teresa’s call to “help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you.”
There’s not a single verse in the Bible that says church has to be boring, that it has to be attended in investment banker attire, that worship can be expressed only in liturgical ways. When Jesus healed people or raised their loved ones from the dead, how do you think those beneficiaries responded? If lives are being utterly changed in a church, why would we expect a different response?
One of the things I’ve seen or heard people foregoing for Lent is social media. I can surely understand wanting to curtail an addiction to the likes and comments, favorites and retweets, shares and pins. If envy and comparison are temptations, abstinence from streams of others’ photos and videos could be a helpful detox.