The Problem with the Church

It seems to me, as a committed Christian, that we, in the Church, are going a long way astray.
I'm not speaking of the definition of our faith, nor of our worship, but of how we operate as a body.
We are still of the opinion, even as we speak of a "post-Christian Era" where our faith does not seem to be relevant to most people, that we can do business as usual - full-time, dedicated staff, to lead our prayers, guide us, counsel us, and teach us - and that somebody else, essentially, will pay for this.
In short, we act as if we believe we ought to be an "Established Church", funded by everyone in the community.
This seems to be true, no matter which of the main-line denominations we espouse. We have large buildings - often ones that sit vacant, unused, or only marginally used, most of the time. We have professional prayers - ostensibly to lead us, but (from the way we act) really to do the praying for us.
We have paid staff (We need them!) to maintain these buildings, to do our clerical work, as well as a great deal of the teaching we claim we need to do, as well as to have.
It is increasingly difficult to maintain this structure, as more and more of our limited resources are poured into salaries and all the necessary benefits that go with them - medical insurance, pensions, for when our workers are too old, tired, burnt-out, or infirm to continue.
The picture is frightening - and we sedulously avoid looking at it.
We know that, as far as our own health is concerned, this does not work. We do need to look at our bodies, our condition. We need to accept the sober truth that things are not working properly, and address the issue - be it angina, a warning of heart disease; a growth that is cancerous; a problem with mental health, or whatever the issue. To ignore it is to hasten our end - and probably to increase the agony of it.
Why should not the same apply to our churches - our bodies of people called together to do God's work? Business as usual is NOT working. Therefore, I believe, we must find another model, and the sooner we do so, the better the prognosis for the body.

I'm going to suggest that there is a model that might serve better - that was once the Church's way of life, and should become it again. The problem is, essentially, that we have too many people depending on our charity for a living. Oh - it's not that the jobs they do are not needed, that they do not work, and work very hard, often for far less than they could earn in the secular world. It's that, unless and until we can attract the rest of the world into our circle of faith, we cannot, really, begin to support such a body.

I am a Scout, as well as a faithful member of the Church. Scouting has found (as has our system movement, Guiding) that we have grown too "professional" for our membership - that we had too many Chiefs, and not enough Indians. It has been true, also, that this imbalance has actively served to drive down the number of people willing to join - that parents have grown to feel that they were not getting value for the dollar spent in bringing their children into the movement.
Part of it came from a period of lax acceptance standards, lax standards of behavior, and poor delivery of our program. We had serious problems - of misconduct in sexual behavior, in use of funds, in training of leaders, and quality of program - and realized that the only way to preserve the valuable part of the movement was to change - to reduce the cost of the program (get rid of excessive paid staff); weed out the unacceptable leaders, for whatever reason; and improve our standards of screening, training, and delivery. It has been a time of turmoil. I'd suggest that not all the changes have been as good as they ought to be, but as far as health of the movement is concerned, an increase in the numbers of Youth involved, an increase in the general health of units, can only be seen as positive.

So - the strong suggestion I have for the Church - and I think this must, if they wish to survive, apply to all the major denominations - is a) to reduce the numbers of full-time, paid staff - clergy, and clerical, to the minimum - far lower than we have at present. Yes - we need people called, identified, trained and ordained to be our leaders - our guides in prayer and sacrament, our counsel in difficulty, our beacons in moral behavior.  I do not suggest, for one moment that these are not needed. But most of them should, for more than simply fiscal reasons, have other, "real", jobs - ones in the every-day world. Teachers - yes - for teaching is a large part of what their task is, even as clergy, but also as workers - and here I think it appropriate to suggest that the skilled trades are as important in their lessons for such leaders as more prestigious "executive" jobs. Our Lord WAS a carpenter, following his earthly father's trade, until He set out to preach - this was the custom of the time, and of that culture. Saul of Tarsus - a man learned in the Law of God, and very much of that lawyerly cast of mind - was a tent-maker, and plied his trade to help earn his keep - he refused, as he told his correspondents, to batten on his converts, even if it were technically appropriate. So, also, we should be earning our own keep, not in the Church, as much as possible.
A friend of mine, a priest, remarked that one of the difficulties that full-time professional clergy face is that they become so familiar with Holy Things, that they lose some of the sense of awe and mystery that surrounds them. These things become simply the tools they work with, and they, themselves, become simply workers at a job, when, in reality, we live in a world of Mystery and Awe, and are called, continuously, to service.
Will this be disruptive? Of course. Will I like it? Probably not - and only partly because one aspect of it would be that the part-time job I have, myself, in a parish-church, would become, of necessity a volunteer job. It's a good thing I'm a pensioner, and not really dependent on this job for income. Will it mean the loss of more church buildings? I hope not - but that would depend on our being able to find other ways of using them.
We must change - or we will become like the large theropods of old - highly successful species, but unable to adapt to changed circumstances, and so doomed to die off.

Doping in Sport

It seems to me that we miss the facts, when we get all upset about doping in sports. The reason - the only reason - for this is that there is pressure on the professional sport participants to win - at all costs, by whatever means it takes. Fairness is not a factor. We'd like to believe that it exists - we feel it ought to - but it has not, for centuries, probably millennia.
The reason? Simply this: that all sports are, in a sense, ritualized warfare. They exist to channel into safe areas the rivalry between me and my neighbour. Who is better? (Does it really matter?) So we try to see who is faster on foot, who has the better eyesight, the steadier hand, who is stronger.
I and my friends, my village mates, my countrymen, set out to prove we are better than those others - in all sorts of team sports. All the various team games - football (soccer), hockey in its forms, polo, and the variants on rugby football - all are stylized battles, with rules more or less agreed upon between the combatants. We see this most clearly in the older forms, such as the Irish sport of Hurling - surely the development of an ancestor of all the others - particularly when the contest takes place over an open stretch of ground, with no preparation.

So - if winning is important, and players are otherwise equally matched, then what I eat or drink, what I take in, becomes more important in giving me that extra edge, to ensure that I win.
As sport becomes more professionalized, and we become vicarious players, just watching, we feel that our side must win - but we can do nothing to ensure that - other than deserting it, if it fails. How do we desert? Simply, by not going to our own games (and the more of them that come to us on television, the easier this is to do), by not paying to support our team. This, in turn, puts pressure on both the players and managers to win at all costs - and some will try anything: brawling, to maim other players, and so overwhelm the "enemy", stealing players, or bribing them to throw games, taking drugs to enhance our performance.
We, as spectators, find ourselves shocked - even though what WE do has contributed to this. We are prepared only to pay for wins - yet become upset when these wins are found to be improperly achieved (at least by what we fondly believe are the rules).

I think this is the reason I've become less and less interested in professional sports. The ethos of win at all costs simply ruins proper sport. It's not fun any more - it's business, and the win becomes, if not destructive (in which case it IS war) more and more a fake - staged for the financial benefit of the players, as much as anything.