What we care about

I appreciated Jeanie Smith’s letter of hope during this trying time (“Where can we turn?,” April 30) and her phrase “since the churches don’t seem to be complaining much about closed doors …”

Look around Spokane. Every neighborhood had a church that many people walked to when they were new.

Now most, if not all, Christian churches are actually a 20-minute drive away to a weekly performance venue with leaders that were already socially distant. Pick one. It doesn’t vary much.

As churchgoers we feed the culture. We pass each other on highways driving further and further to the best weekly performance sans honest open relationships and any semblance of the New Testament word koinania. Office-encumbered leaders require a churchgoer to make an appointment to introduce themselves and what we struggle with.

Churchgoers have become a friends list of facilitating acquaintances where it’s safer not to care because caring comes with a price. On we go attending or preparing for the next performance. Until there aren’t any live performances. And we realize little has actually changed except the driving part.

It took COVID-19 to reveal this: We know about what we care about.

Mike Reno

Spokane