I registered at Davenport University this fall to go back for another degree, this one in Computer Science (long story for another time). The registration process involved online forms, a payment schedule, and...transferring credits from another college. Despite the fact that my credits from the other university totalled around 200 I think, I still have a number of pre-reqs to complete, which was somewhat disappointing.
One class I'm required to take is Diversity In Society. I wasn't originally enthused about this...after all, I've worked in multiple environments with hundreds (thousands, maybe?) of people of all ages, ethnicities, religions...would a course like this prove interesting? Worthwhile?
I'm surprised to say that, so far, I'm really loving it. In large part that's due to the textbooks we're referencing, written by Kent Koppelman. Our first reading assignments - which have proved more challenging than I thought they would to keep up with - dealt with an explanation of how, as Americans, we often SAY we value one thing, when in fact our actions paint a different picture.
We were asked to write about 1 of the several values the author describes. I chose individuality; as Americans, Koppelman writes, we say we value individual achievement -- when in fact what we're really striving for, on a subconscious level, is conformity.
It was a good read, and I could go on for pages about it, but it got me thinking about something else, related to this series of blog posts. As "The Church", we must do this, right? We must, admittedly, in SOME instances at least, say we value one thing, then prove with our actions that valuing something else...right?
I think about the structures of my own church, not just the building but the organization, the activities, the resources we expend to complete certain tasks. What picture would these paint to the average person who wasn't raised in the Church? What would that person think we value?
For example, consider our Sunday service. We have many, many individuals involved...that's a good thing, right? Especially when many of those involved are teens who probably couldn't give 2 cents about what's being preached and, if given the chance, would probably choose to sleep in on Sunday rather than waking up to be to an early Church service in time to operate a video camera or a Powerpoint presentation.
I would guess it takes several dozen people to "produce" Sunday morning worship...this including our Worship Team, tech people, speakers...but is it more production than heart?
That's a difficult question to answer. I don't know that it's really possible to know. I've attended many churches. The ones I've connected with the most had the LEAST produced services, to be sure. Consider the church I mentioned in my last post. This is a church holding services with around 5000 people attending. Yet there isn't any huge light show, nearly no decoration on the stage which sits at the center of sanctuary. The church is located in what used to be a shopping mall...you can tell by the way the building is shaped...and outside of paint and carpet, little has been added to change the building.
Or consider a church I attended in Chicago. It's a congregation of maybe 50 or 60 people that meet on Sunday in a building that could hold maybe 3 or 4 times that many. The service doesn't feel "produced" as ours sometimes does...for example, one time that we visited, the worship leader introduced a song he'd learned on a recent trip to Africa. It was somewhat traditional, very simple, and the whole feel of the experience felt more about people connecting through raising their voices, rather than watching others lead as the congregation sings from another part of the room. We felt unified somehow.
I'm not sure what to make of this. As it relates to my previous posts, I'm meditating on the idea of connection. As humans we need this connection, this community - it's in our DNA.
What to do when you seldom feel connected to those you're worshipping with?
As I asked in a previous post...when is it time to leave???
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Love/Hate #4: Discovering Home...Elsewhere...
So, a slight diversion from my other posts...but really, the same thing.
So around 5 years ago -- just around the same time the friends I had described a couple posts ago, the post about the hurt 30 or 40 of us had experienced together -- I visited my brother and sister-in-law's church.
It was amazing. It was magic. Precisely because...it wasn't magic.
I should explain.
Like you reading this, I've attended many churches over the course of my life (I'm 46 for the record). I've attended big churches where no one was affected in any meaningful way by anything occurring in the service, and I've attended services with 50 or 60 people that felt electric - you know that feeling, right? It's the same feeling you get when you attend a U2 concert and caught up in the moment, you look around and realize you're part of a group of people experiencing a moment, one of THOSE moments, the kind that only happen maybe once or twice a year if you're lucky.
I digress.
So I'm at this church and my family is in the middle of this crisis when the tension between us has been terrible, when everyone is exhausted and angry and hurting. And then, it happens. A sermon is given that isn't just a sermon. It's the kind of message that you, as a group, make you think, "that message was straight from the mind of God...and was meant for us." And I'm sure there were a few thousand other people in the sanctuary that felt the same way.
It was a sermon from Second Kings, Chapter 2 (I can still remember it pretty vividly, 5 years later!) and it was about Elisha. The people have come to him because the water source for the city they're in is bad -- making the land 'unproductive'...so Elisha instructs them to bring a new bowl and put salt in it...and Elisha takes the salt to the spring, throws it in, and the water is purified. Amazing. But in the context of the sermon it became something much more than a story about a miracle involving a water source. It became the story WE were going through at that very moment...and the message was essentially this: the problem you're experiencing seems like something you couldn't possibly overcome. It seems like no solution is in sight. Yet Elisha says to the people, bring me a NEW bowl and salt...a fresh start.
And a miracle.
It's hard to describe the experience of being moved in the way we all were. The last portion of the sermon involved an invitation. Anyone who felt they were at a similar point in their lives in some way could come forward, grab some salt from one of several bowls at the front of the room, and throw it into a vat of water.
Here's the thing. I'm not the type of person who's repeatedly experienced miracles in my life. There have been moments I couldn't explain, to be sure, things that left me with the hair on the back of my neck standing up. But this sermon was something I'd rarely experienced before.
I say rarely because...well, here's the thing. The times when I've experienced the same type of thing HAVE ALL BEEN AT THAT CHURCH.
What do I make of this? It is absolutely undeniable to me that there is a God. There is meaning to this life, to this World, and you'll never convince me otherwise. But I'm the sort of person who rarely experiences what most people would think of as something "beyond the norm" - do you know what I mean? Don't get me wrong. I believe in the miraculous, the unexplainable. I believe in God, and God can and will do what God will do. But for me to have this experience multiple times, in different ways, but at the same church...
I can't describe it.
I mention all of this because if you were to ask me what I would like to see in my own church it's this: I would ask for the experience I'm describing above for people attending our church.
But here's the rub: multiple people in my own congregation would say that's invalid. That isn't what we should be wishing for. Why? Because God isn't about experience...God is about Truth.
It seems odd, doesn't it? That someone would feel they have the right to label the experience another person has as "invalid"...yet this is the kind of thing I can't share with others in my own congregation because they would give that experience a label.
And so...here I am...12 years down the road, wondering just exactly how long I can continue to experience -- or NOT experience -- what I long for so much, but that is so offensive to others I attend church with.
More to come...
So around 5 years ago -- just around the same time the friends I had described a couple posts ago, the post about the hurt 30 or 40 of us had experienced together -- I visited my brother and sister-in-law's church.
It was amazing. It was magic. Precisely because...it wasn't magic.
I should explain.
Like you reading this, I've attended many churches over the course of my life (I'm 46 for the record). I've attended big churches where no one was affected in any meaningful way by anything occurring in the service, and I've attended services with 50 or 60 people that felt electric - you know that feeling, right? It's the same feeling you get when you attend a U2 concert and caught up in the moment, you look around and realize you're part of a group of people experiencing a moment, one of THOSE moments, the kind that only happen maybe once or twice a year if you're lucky.
I digress.
So I'm at this church and my family is in the middle of this crisis when the tension between us has been terrible, when everyone is exhausted and angry and hurting. And then, it happens. A sermon is given that isn't just a sermon. It's the kind of message that you, as a group, make you think, "that message was straight from the mind of God...and was meant for us." And I'm sure there were a few thousand other people in the sanctuary that felt the same way.
It was a sermon from Second Kings, Chapter 2 (I can still remember it pretty vividly, 5 years later!) and it was about Elisha. The people have come to him because the water source for the city they're in is bad -- making the land 'unproductive'...so Elisha instructs them to bring a new bowl and put salt in it...and Elisha takes the salt to the spring, throws it in, and the water is purified. Amazing. But in the context of the sermon it became something much more than a story about a miracle involving a water source. It became the story WE were going through at that very moment...and the message was essentially this: the problem you're experiencing seems like something you couldn't possibly overcome. It seems like no solution is in sight. Yet Elisha says to the people, bring me a NEW bowl and salt...a fresh start.
And a miracle.
It's hard to describe the experience of being moved in the way we all were. The last portion of the sermon involved an invitation. Anyone who felt they were at a similar point in their lives in some way could come forward, grab some salt from one of several bowls at the front of the room, and throw it into a vat of water.
Here's the thing. I'm not the type of person who's repeatedly experienced miracles in my life. There have been moments I couldn't explain, to be sure, things that left me with the hair on the back of my neck standing up. But this sermon was something I'd rarely experienced before.
I say rarely because...well, here's the thing. The times when I've experienced the same type of thing HAVE ALL BEEN AT THAT CHURCH.
What do I make of this? It is absolutely undeniable to me that there is a God. There is meaning to this life, to this World, and you'll never convince me otherwise. But I'm the sort of person who rarely experiences what most people would think of as something "beyond the norm" - do you know what I mean? Don't get me wrong. I believe in the miraculous, the unexplainable. I believe in God, and God can and will do what God will do. But for me to have this experience multiple times, in different ways, but at the same church...
I can't describe it.
I mention all of this because if you were to ask me what I would like to see in my own church it's this: I would ask for the experience I'm describing above for people attending our church.
But here's the rub: multiple people in my own congregation would say that's invalid. That isn't what we should be wishing for. Why? Because God isn't about experience...God is about Truth.
It seems odd, doesn't it? That someone would feel they have the right to label the experience another person has as "invalid"...yet this is the kind of thing I can't share with others in my own congregation because they would give that experience a label.
And so...here I am...12 years down the road, wondering just exactly how long I can continue to experience -- or NOT experience -- what I long for so much, but that is so offensive to others I attend church with.
More to come...
Love/Hate #3: Tipping Point
So if some people leave, but some people stay...what's finally the tipping point for those who leave?
That questioned has been asked over and over and over. I just Googled "why do people leave the church". The answers are all over the place...stuff about how church productions don't seem sincere, the church isn't adjusting to the times (holding onto the same language they've used for a hundred years that people don't understand), and of course, a number of studies have mentioned people indicated they wanted "something different" such as different musical styles or different preaching.
All of these are relevant and true. However, consider this. None of these things have changed, right? Churches tend to stay pretty much the same year after year, right? While things like musical style change (as new worship leaders choose new songs written by recent musicians), usually as a family leaves one church for another, it isn't -- in my experience -- because of something as shallow as music.
I say this because having attended the same church for around 12 years, I've seen a number of families who had attended for years (like my family) decide it was time to pack up and move on. And not one of those people said anything about the music or the lighting or the sermons.
So what gives? Christian publications I think would say that churches are struggling to stay relevant to the culture. At the same time that some within the congregation are saying they wished they could just get back to the way things were 40 or 50 years ago, when preachers "preached from the Word", others within the same church aren't experiencing an organization they want to be a part of. They're seeing the desperate looks on the faces of their fellow churchgoers -- people on staff and on the governing board -- and perhaps what's being mirrored back is the kiss of death for churches in the 21st centure: lack of authenticity.
What's fascinating to me, though, is to consider what this means to the average person. While some people might say something like "they just didn't SEEM authentic" - without ever being able to express in words what that meant -- others know exactly they're seeing -- or not seeing.
They want relationships. Real, meaningful relationships with people who are willing to share and invest and endure all sort of dysfunction in an attempt to build community -- and they aren't finding it.
So this leads to the ultimate question. If you grabbed 100 people from various churches - no, let's make it 10,000 -- and you asked those who have experienced these exact things -- a longing to experience relationship when their church ain't cutting it, when they're seeing a lack of authenticity in church leaders desperate to remain "relevant" - WHY DO THEY STAY?
I would like to survey them, and here's what I would ask:
2. Regarding what I would change, first, it would be how we do the offering. We make a production out of taken an offering, and I don't think "church" is meant to be this way. My favorite way that I've seen churches address this is to have boxes at the back of the sanctuary that people can deposit into on their way out (in addition to giving online). Very little was said in this church about the offering -- yet it's church with a yearly budget in the tens of millions of dollars.
3. Regarding friends outside of the church, I have many I wouldn't invite. There are too many things preached from the pulpit they would find offensive. For example, a couple weeks back our pastor prayed "that Planned Parenthood would be defunded." The problem I have with this isn't our church's stand on abortion, but rather, consider this...what does a statement like this mean to someone who's unemployed and who is receiving health care services from Planned Parenthood because it's the only organization she's been able to get help from? Or what about the single mom with a live-in boyfriend who gets free birth control from Planned Parenthood? How does a prayer like this seem to them???
4. This is a tough one. The times when we succeed I feel are all related to holding events that build community...yet we often do this no stated purpose for what those events are supposed to accomplish...so it's difficult to know if anything meaningful is being accomplished. Apart from anecdotes about how much people enjoyed special events, we tend not to take meaningful measurements...so if no goal is stated, is anything achieved?
Really, though, I'd give anything to feel like I attended a church with people that I could be authentic with. I'm much, much more liberal than virtually everyone else in my congregation; I often feel this in a palpable, tangible sense, and based on what's stated, based on people's expectations and values, I feel isolated. There are a very limited number of people I could share this with.
5. The church I attended is much larger, but of the same denomination. What's fascinating to me is that both were the 'large' church in their conference. Yet the one I grew up in averaged about 120 in attendance on Sunday morning; my current church probably averages 1300 to 1500 between 2 services.
Would other people give similar answers? I'd be interested to see - but I'm guessing many feel the same way...
That questioned has been asked over and over and over. I just Googled "why do people leave the church". The answers are all over the place...stuff about how church productions don't seem sincere, the church isn't adjusting to the times (holding onto the same language they've used for a hundred years that people don't understand), and of course, a number of studies have mentioned people indicated they wanted "something different" such as different musical styles or different preaching.
All of these are relevant and true. However, consider this. None of these things have changed, right? Churches tend to stay pretty much the same year after year, right? While things like musical style change (as new worship leaders choose new songs written by recent musicians), usually as a family leaves one church for another, it isn't -- in my experience -- because of something as shallow as music.
I say this because having attended the same church for around 12 years, I've seen a number of families who had attended for years (like my family) decide it was time to pack up and move on. And not one of those people said anything about the music or the lighting or the sermons.
So what gives? Christian publications I think would say that churches are struggling to stay relevant to the culture. At the same time that some within the congregation are saying they wished they could just get back to the way things were 40 or 50 years ago, when preachers "preached from the Word", others within the same church aren't experiencing an organization they want to be a part of. They're seeing the desperate looks on the faces of their fellow churchgoers -- people on staff and on the governing board -- and perhaps what's being mirrored back is the kiss of death for churches in the 21st centure: lack of authenticity.
What's fascinating to me, though, is to consider what this means to the average person. While some people might say something like "they just didn't SEEM authentic" - without ever being able to express in words what that meant -- others know exactly they're seeing -- or not seeing.
They want relationships. Real, meaningful relationships with people who are willing to share and invest and endure all sort of dysfunction in an attempt to build community -- and they aren't finding it.
So this leads to the ultimate question. If you grabbed 100 people from various churches - no, let's make it 10,000 -- and you asked those who have experienced these exact things -- a longing to experience relationship when their church ain't cutting it, when they're seeing a lack of authenticity in church leaders desperate to remain "relevant" - WHY DO THEY STAY?
I would like to survey them, and here's what I would ask:
- Have you ever considered under what circumstances you would finally decide to leave your church and attend services elsewhere? What are those circumstances?
- If you could change 3 things about your church with the wave of a magic wand, what would you change?
- Do you have any friends outside of your church (that don't attend elsewhere) that you WOULD NOT feel comfortable asking to attend? If so, is there something about your church that they would find awkward or uncomfortable?
- If you decide in the future to attend elsewhere, what does your current church have or do that you hope a future church would have? In essence...what's the BEST thing about your church?
- If you grew up in the Church, is the church you're currently attending like the one you attended growing up? How is it different?
2. Regarding what I would change, first, it would be how we do the offering. We make a production out of taken an offering, and I don't think "church" is meant to be this way. My favorite way that I've seen churches address this is to have boxes at the back of the sanctuary that people can deposit into on their way out (in addition to giving online). Very little was said in this church about the offering -- yet it's church with a yearly budget in the tens of millions of dollars.
3. Regarding friends outside of the church, I have many I wouldn't invite. There are too many things preached from the pulpit they would find offensive. For example, a couple weeks back our pastor prayed "that Planned Parenthood would be defunded." The problem I have with this isn't our church's stand on abortion, but rather, consider this...what does a statement like this mean to someone who's unemployed and who is receiving health care services from Planned Parenthood because it's the only organization she's been able to get help from? Or what about the single mom with a live-in boyfriend who gets free birth control from Planned Parenthood? How does a prayer like this seem to them???
4. This is a tough one. The times when we succeed I feel are all related to holding events that build community...yet we often do this no stated purpose for what those events are supposed to accomplish...so it's difficult to know if anything meaningful is being accomplished. Apart from anecdotes about how much people enjoyed special events, we tend not to take meaningful measurements...so if no goal is stated, is anything achieved?
Really, though, I'd give anything to feel like I attended a church with people that I could be authentic with. I'm much, much more liberal than virtually everyone else in my congregation; I often feel this in a palpable, tangible sense, and based on what's stated, based on people's expectations and values, I feel isolated. There are a very limited number of people I could share this with.
5. The church I attended is much larger, but of the same denomination. What's fascinating to me is that both were the 'large' church in their conference. Yet the one I grew up in averaged about 120 in attendance on Sunday morning; my current church probably averages 1300 to 1500 between 2 services.
Would other people give similar answers? I'd be interested to see - but I'm guessing many feel the same way...
Love/Hate: When is enough enough???
My last post was an introduction to a conversation I had with a friend a week ago over breakfast, centering around why some people continue to attend the same church, rather than follow others out the door -- even as the experience of "Church" has become problematic.
I ended the last post with this question: under what circumstance is it appropriate -- even necessary -- to leave the church you're attending?
Before I wander too far down the rabbit trail, I want to address one idea I'm sure some people reading this might have.
I'm making the statement that before entering into any relationship with a group of people -- whether that relationship involves Church, work, or even a membership in a non-profit organization -- I believe it's helpful, and NECESSARY, to determine under what circumstances one would need to drop out of the group. As a reader pondering this, your first thought might be something like this: "you're making it sound like I should PLAN on leaving, even before I've joined...isn't that a cynical view of what 'Church' is supposed to be about?"
I would counter with a short story.
A few years back, I was involved in an intervention. I won't give any details, but I'll say it involved a large number of people (perhaps 30 to 40?) and it didn't go well. At the end of the experience, those of us involved were hurt, angry, frustrated, and, I think, taken aback -- in part because none of us had ever considered the possibility that things could go as badly as they did.
This started a series of conversations I had with myself. If something could go this badly with a group of people I was very close with, could this happen in other relationships? In other settings? For the record, the event I'm referring too didn't involve my local church, though all involved are Christians, and had been for their entire lives.
The experience was a wake up call for me. Again, without going into detail, it was essentially what the Catholic Church has been dealing with for 30 years due to a toxic environment in which no one in charge could be questioned and a lot of people all over the World got hurt. Now take that experience, choose your 10 closest friends, and imagine you found out one of the ten had hurt someone else in the group in the same way. Shocking, right? How could you possibly have foreseen something like this?
You couldn't - WE couldn't. We didn't. Yet there we were, trying to figure out which pieces of the relationships we had with each other could be salvaged and which had to be discarded.
Many of them were thrown out. The friendships we had were irrevocably damaged.
Now apply this logic to your church. Under what circumstances might you find you need to leave? What would that look like?
A first thought might be to consider what the Catholic Church has gone through, to see how it's been handled (and not handled, to the detriment of all churches and religions) and think through, logically, what could have been done better.
It's critical, though, to consider that situation from a broader perspective. The issue isn't just that priests abused children. Think bigger. Think in terms like these: under what circumstances would someone within my home church hurting someone else lead me to feel it's time to get out?
Does this make sense? This is the World, I believe, we're living in. No longer is there an expectation that people will attend the same church, from the same denomination, for their entire lives. No longer are parents expected to wake their children up early every Sunday morning and cart them to Sunday School classes to learn about Jonah and the Whale. Those days are gone.
Is this good? Bad? In my opinion, both. But that's another blog post (and this one's already getting long).
So back to the question: when is it necessary to leave your local church? Again - as I said in the last post - I'm not talking about leaving "The Church" and never attending anywhere, ever again. I'm talking about what many people would label "church hopping" or "church shopping". If it sounds like I'm tailoring this blog post for a post modern audience, I'm not. My intent in considering this question was actually to set some ground rules to PREVENT my family from leaving.
Like anyone who's been involved in any organization, my family has run into issues in our church. This is part of the human experience. We meet people, we form relationships, and without realizing it, we bring certain expectations into the relationship -- and eventually, someone's behavior takes you off guard. If the behavior is hurtful enough, you might feel the situation warrants "conflict resolution". And often in churches, this never occurs. (A great resource related to this is Peter Scazzero's "Emotionally Healthy Spirituality".)
So for me personally, this has been a sticking point. It was a result of 20 hours of counseling my wife and I underwent a couple years ago (see a few blog posts back).
If this language, this idea of creating a "sins list" of things that would allow you to leave your church, seems like a cop out, look at it this way. You would probably consider yourself a person of principles, correct? I would call this list part of those principles. For me, one deal breaker I now have in any relationship is this: while as humans we'll always have to deal with the experience of being hurt by others, it's never acceptable to brush aside the experience. If someone said something hurtful to someone in front of the group, for example, the group is required to address the issue. Not necessarily in the moment (consider someone who's grieving for a lost loved one, and reacts out of anger). But eventually, the issue of one person hurting another has to be dealt with, not covered.
It's this kind of experience that -- in my opinion -- drives some people away from their church. Certain people within the congregation are "untouchable", so to speak. They've attended for years, they're older -- from another generation, we say -- and so even though they say things that are bone-headed (and hurtful to others) because they're doing so 'in the name of Jesus' it's accepted.
The hot button topics the Church is being challenged on right now are gay marriage and gender issues. So in feeling the need to express their opinions, many within the church say things that those in the LGBTQ community take offense with; and because these sentiments are being expressed "for the right reasons" the hurtful talk is continually tolerated.
It shouldn't be.
This isn't a post about LGBTQ issues, but go with me, here. The problem isn't just that some within the Church have differing views about these issues. The problem is that the assumption before the talk ever started is that everyone is always and forever on the same page. No one is ever allowed the dialogue to hash out how their experience and what they've been taught about the Bible are colliding. They have working relationships with people who they never knew were gay. And yet they're attending churches that say "these people" are living in sin...so where does this leave us?
In a bind, that's the bottom line. Now consider this situation from another angle. Let's say when you first start attending a church you talk to the pastor and explain there are certain "deal breakers" you have, and LGBTQ issues are one of those. The pastor explains the local church's position and you make the decision to attend. Or not. Either way, isn't this a better place to be than to invest in relationships for 10 years and then feel blindsided when the pastor preaches something from the pulpit that you can't live with?
This is another rabbit trail, but in my opinion, it's where churches are suddenly struggling in the 21st century. Millenials, on the whole, aren't interested in attending churches that preach hellfire and brimstone for gays...and churches aren't going to "change their doctrine" to accomodate the views of those who have beliefs that conflict with what their church has listed as doctrine for decades or more. So...while people don't leave en masse...few people join.
This is where churches shouldn't be taken off guard. The proactive thing to do would be to ask a number of people in their local communities why they don't attend. For the record, I'm aware these types of questions have been asked by researchers and the results published...but I'm not sure this is always helpful. Does it help to know that people between ages 18 and 34 believe, on average, a certain thing about a topic? After all, churches aren't trying to develop relationships with 18 to 34 year olds; they're trying to reach specific people with specific life situations.
So to end this already lengthy post, I'll list a few deal breakers I've developed for relationship (and there are only a few). These were generally a result of a specific life experience (usually negative) that left me thinking, "I'm never doing THAT again..."
So in no order, here they are:
1) I can't be a part of any relationship or group in which it's acceptable for some members of the group to hurt other members (or, for that matter anyone) and the hurt isn't allowed to be addressed. As humans, hurt is inevitable...but it shouldn't be just "tolerated".
2) I can't be a part of any relationship or group which is detrimental to my health or the health of my family (physically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually)
3) Any commitment that I make has to come with an end date...in other words, if I'm asked to lead an event or group, I need to know the end date of the commitment. Note: Churches are infamous for using people to the point of burnout. The prevent this, no one should ever be asked, as a volunteer, to fulfill a role like teacher, youth leader, children's pastor, etc. This has proven to be one of the most useful and helpful rules...and it's made it easier to say no.
4) No one in the group should ever be guilted into a completing a task or fulfilling a role. Again, churches are infamous for this. "But we've ALWAYS had a Sunday School...if you don't teach, who will lead us?" My answer: you'll live without Sunday School. No one will die. Trust me.
There are others that don't come to mind at the moment...but these are the most important.
I ended the last post with this question: under what circumstance is it appropriate -- even necessary -- to leave the church you're attending?
Before I wander too far down the rabbit trail, I want to address one idea I'm sure some people reading this might have.
I'm making the statement that before entering into any relationship with a group of people -- whether that relationship involves Church, work, or even a membership in a non-profit organization -- I believe it's helpful, and NECESSARY, to determine under what circumstances one would need to drop out of the group. As a reader pondering this, your first thought might be something like this: "you're making it sound like I should PLAN on leaving, even before I've joined...isn't that a cynical view of what 'Church' is supposed to be about?"
I would counter with a short story.
A few years back, I was involved in an intervention. I won't give any details, but I'll say it involved a large number of people (perhaps 30 to 40?) and it didn't go well. At the end of the experience, those of us involved were hurt, angry, frustrated, and, I think, taken aback -- in part because none of us had ever considered the possibility that things could go as badly as they did.
This started a series of conversations I had with myself. If something could go this badly with a group of people I was very close with, could this happen in other relationships? In other settings? For the record, the event I'm referring too didn't involve my local church, though all involved are Christians, and had been for their entire lives.
The experience was a wake up call for me. Again, without going into detail, it was essentially what the Catholic Church has been dealing with for 30 years due to a toxic environment in which no one in charge could be questioned and a lot of people all over the World got hurt. Now take that experience, choose your 10 closest friends, and imagine you found out one of the ten had hurt someone else in the group in the same way. Shocking, right? How could you possibly have foreseen something like this?
You couldn't - WE couldn't. We didn't. Yet there we were, trying to figure out which pieces of the relationships we had with each other could be salvaged and which had to be discarded.
Many of them were thrown out. The friendships we had were irrevocably damaged.
Now apply this logic to your church. Under what circumstances might you find you need to leave? What would that look like?
A first thought might be to consider what the Catholic Church has gone through, to see how it's been handled (and not handled, to the detriment of all churches and religions) and think through, logically, what could have been done better.
It's critical, though, to consider that situation from a broader perspective. The issue isn't just that priests abused children. Think bigger. Think in terms like these: under what circumstances would someone within my home church hurting someone else lead me to feel it's time to get out?
Does this make sense? This is the World, I believe, we're living in. No longer is there an expectation that people will attend the same church, from the same denomination, for their entire lives. No longer are parents expected to wake their children up early every Sunday morning and cart them to Sunday School classes to learn about Jonah and the Whale. Those days are gone.
Is this good? Bad? In my opinion, both. But that's another blog post (and this one's already getting long).
So back to the question: when is it necessary to leave your local church? Again - as I said in the last post - I'm not talking about leaving "The Church" and never attending anywhere, ever again. I'm talking about what many people would label "church hopping" or "church shopping". If it sounds like I'm tailoring this blog post for a post modern audience, I'm not. My intent in considering this question was actually to set some ground rules to PREVENT my family from leaving.
Like anyone who's been involved in any organization, my family has run into issues in our church. This is part of the human experience. We meet people, we form relationships, and without realizing it, we bring certain expectations into the relationship -- and eventually, someone's behavior takes you off guard. If the behavior is hurtful enough, you might feel the situation warrants "conflict resolution". And often in churches, this never occurs. (A great resource related to this is Peter Scazzero's "Emotionally Healthy Spirituality".)
So for me personally, this has been a sticking point. It was a result of 20 hours of counseling my wife and I underwent a couple years ago (see a few blog posts back).
If this language, this idea of creating a "sins list" of things that would allow you to leave your church, seems like a cop out, look at it this way. You would probably consider yourself a person of principles, correct? I would call this list part of those principles. For me, one deal breaker I now have in any relationship is this: while as humans we'll always have to deal with the experience of being hurt by others, it's never acceptable to brush aside the experience. If someone said something hurtful to someone in front of the group, for example, the group is required to address the issue. Not necessarily in the moment (consider someone who's grieving for a lost loved one, and reacts out of anger). But eventually, the issue of one person hurting another has to be dealt with, not covered.
It's this kind of experience that -- in my opinion -- drives some people away from their church. Certain people within the congregation are "untouchable", so to speak. They've attended for years, they're older -- from another generation, we say -- and so even though they say things that are bone-headed (and hurtful to others) because they're doing so 'in the name of Jesus' it's accepted.
The hot button topics the Church is being challenged on right now are gay marriage and gender issues. So in feeling the need to express their opinions, many within the church say things that those in the LGBTQ community take offense with; and because these sentiments are being expressed "for the right reasons" the hurtful talk is continually tolerated.
It shouldn't be.
This isn't a post about LGBTQ issues, but go with me, here. The problem isn't just that some within the Church have differing views about these issues. The problem is that the assumption before the talk ever started is that everyone is always and forever on the same page. No one is ever allowed the dialogue to hash out how their experience and what they've been taught about the Bible are colliding. They have working relationships with people who they never knew were gay. And yet they're attending churches that say "these people" are living in sin...so where does this leave us?
In a bind, that's the bottom line. Now consider this situation from another angle. Let's say when you first start attending a church you talk to the pastor and explain there are certain "deal breakers" you have, and LGBTQ issues are one of those. The pastor explains the local church's position and you make the decision to attend. Or not. Either way, isn't this a better place to be than to invest in relationships for 10 years and then feel blindsided when the pastor preaches something from the pulpit that you can't live with?
This is another rabbit trail, but in my opinion, it's where churches are suddenly struggling in the 21st century. Millenials, on the whole, aren't interested in attending churches that preach hellfire and brimstone for gays...and churches aren't going to "change their doctrine" to accomodate the views of those who have beliefs that conflict with what their church has listed as doctrine for decades or more. So...while people don't leave en masse...few people join.
This is where churches shouldn't be taken off guard. The proactive thing to do would be to ask a number of people in their local communities why they don't attend. For the record, I'm aware these types of questions have been asked by researchers and the results published...but I'm not sure this is always helpful. Does it help to know that people between ages 18 and 34 believe, on average, a certain thing about a topic? After all, churches aren't trying to develop relationships with 18 to 34 year olds; they're trying to reach specific people with specific life situations.
So to end this already lengthy post, I'll list a few deal breakers I've developed for relationship (and there are only a few). These were generally a result of a specific life experience (usually negative) that left me thinking, "I'm never doing THAT again..."
So in no order, here they are:
1) I can't be a part of any relationship or group in which it's acceptable for some members of the group to hurt other members (or, for that matter anyone) and the hurt isn't allowed to be addressed. As humans, hurt is inevitable...but it shouldn't be just "tolerated".
2) I can't be a part of any relationship or group which is detrimental to my health or the health of my family (physically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually)
3) Any commitment that I make has to come with an end date...in other words, if I'm asked to lead an event or group, I need to know the end date of the commitment. Note: Churches are infamous for using people to the point of burnout. The prevent this, no one should ever be asked, as a volunteer, to fulfill a role like teacher, youth leader, children's pastor, etc. This has proven to be one of the most useful and helpful rules...and it's made it easier to say no.
4) No one in the group should ever be guilted into a completing a task or fulfilling a role. Again, churches are infamous for this. "But we've ALWAYS had a Sunday School...if you don't teach, who will lead us?" My answer: you'll live without Sunday School. No one will die. Trust me.
There are others that don't come to mind at the moment...but these are the most important.
Friday, August 28, 2015
Love/Hate: Why do they stay???
I was having breakfast with a friend recently and he asked me this question -- which became a potential book idea.
There are thousands of books and blog posts about why people are leaving the Church. So a competing and relevant question is this...for those who choose to stay, who hate the church they're in...why do they stick around?
First, a couple clarifications. By "church" we were referring to a local church congregation, rather than the capital "C" CHURCH...which is to say, instead of leaving a congregation and attending elsewhere, they're choosing -- for whatever reason -- to continue attending the same church, even though they're hating the experience.
Second, a word about the word "hating". What we meant in the text of the conversation is this: if the church you're attending is making you miserable, why stick around?
Those of a certain generation -- say, aged 40 and over -- would probably point out that worship "isn't about you...it's about God". I would counter with this: if the experience you're having attending a church isn't good for your health, then it isn't about God.
Yet this seems to be exactly what's happened for many people attending churches in America...at least, for those who attend Christian churches. What do I mean by this? What do I mean by a church not being good for your health?
Simply that the experience has become continuously negative -- for a number of possible reasons.
Our conversation didn't focus much on what those reasons were, in part because as evangelicals (that word should probably be capitalized???) we were both keenly aware of how things sometimes "break bad" in churches. For the record, my friend previously attended the church I'm still attending, so we have that common experience to some degree. But to clarify, the types of things that often go bad in churches always center around our experience with humans as we try to live WITH each other but WITHOUT existing in conflict.
It isn't easy. It never is. Any relationship worth having involves work. Consider marriage. You enter into that relationship with all kinds of expectations for what it will be like. And life couldn't possibly mirror perfectly what you were hoping would happen.
So multiply that conflict by a thousand and you have the experience of attending "God's house." (cringe)
The conversation was close to 2 hours long and I can't recap all of it in 1 post. But I do need to include 1 item we talked about.
It would seem to me that if you're joining any organization, whether it's a private company or government entity, or a church - there should be certain non-negotiables before you join that institution. Here's what I mean: there's a list of deal breakers...and if those things, those rules aren't adhered to, everything should end. You need to get out.
For example, if you join a company and the company treats its employees badly -- to the point the stress isn't good for employee health and is creating an atmosphere that's slowly destroying people -- you should do everything you can to leave, right?
And can't the same be said for churches? SHOULDN'T the same be said? If a church is treating employees badly, someone needs to say something, right? (Think of the perpetual burnout that pastors allow themselves to be exposed to.)
This was significant part of our conversation and it's ongoing. It's kept me thinking...under what circumstances do I need to leave?
More to come...
There are thousands of books and blog posts about why people are leaving the Church. So a competing and relevant question is this...for those who choose to stay, who hate the church they're in...why do they stick around?
First, a couple clarifications. By "church" we were referring to a local church congregation, rather than the capital "C" CHURCH...which is to say, instead of leaving a congregation and attending elsewhere, they're choosing -- for whatever reason -- to continue attending the same church, even though they're hating the experience.
Second, a word about the word "hating". What we meant in the text of the conversation is this: if the church you're attending is making you miserable, why stick around?
Those of a certain generation -- say, aged 40 and over -- would probably point out that worship "isn't about you...it's about God". I would counter with this: if the experience you're having attending a church isn't good for your health, then it isn't about God.
Yet this seems to be exactly what's happened for many people attending churches in America...at least, for those who attend Christian churches. What do I mean by this? What do I mean by a church not being good for your health?
Simply that the experience has become continuously negative -- for a number of possible reasons.
Our conversation didn't focus much on what those reasons were, in part because as evangelicals (that word should probably be capitalized???) we were both keenly aware of how things sometimes "break bad" in churches. For the record, my friend previously attended the church I'm still attending, so we have that common experience to some degree. But to clarify, the types of things that often go bad in churches always center around our experience with humans as we try to live WITH each other but WITHOUT existing in conflict.
It isn't easy. It never is. Any relationship worth having involves work. Consider marriage. You enter into that relationship with all kinds of expectations for what it will be like. And life couldn't possibly mirror perfectly what you were hoping would happen.
So multiply that conflict by a thousand and you have the experience of attending "God's house." (cringe)
The conversation was close to 2 hours long and I can't recap all of it in 1 post. But I do need to include 1 item we talked about.
It would seem to me that if you're joining any organization, whether it's a private company or government entity, or a church - there should be certain non-negotiables before you join that institution. Here's what I mean: there's a list of deal breakers...and if those things, those rules aren't adhered to, everything should end. You need to get out.
For example, if you join a company and the company treats its employees badly -- to the point the stress isn't good for employee health and is creating an atmosphere that's slowly destroying people -- you should do everything you can to leave, right?
And can't the same be said for churches? SHOULDN'T the same be said? If a church is treating employees badly, someone needs to say something, right? (Think of the perpetual burnout that pastors allow themselves to be exposed to.)
This was significant part of our conversation and it's ongoing. It's kept me thinking...under what circumstances do I need to leave?
More to come...
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