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.