:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

Today’s guest post is by Jessica Goudeau, whose mother literally wrote the book on women in ministry:

I’ve spent most of my adult life going back and forth between wanting to do ministry and running from it like the plague. I know the gifts that God has given me, teaching and loving and helping people in need, are designed for ministry. I know that because I inherited them from my mother, who is one of the most gifted ministers I have ever known.

The reason I’ve run from them is because I’ve seen firsthand what it can be like for a woman in ministry.

Over the many, many years my mother has been teaching, in Sunday church, ladies’ class, and now at a Christian university as a theology professor, she has been patient, kind, and loving. Mostly, people have listened well to her. Sometimes she has been boxed into stereotypes—a woman who speaks must be “pushy” or have an agenda.

My mother does not. She is gentle and strong, thoughtful and discerning. She is not afraid of saying what is truth, but she is not out to shove an idea on a church that is not ready for it. I’ve heard her counsel churches that were tackling the role of women in their congregations to take their time, to pray, to listen to each other, to base their changes on strong theology and not on feelings or emotions or the economic power of a rich influential few.

My mother is not afraid to challenge freshman boys who enter her class ready to spew their opinions on anyone. But she spends most of her time working with young women who plan on using their gifts and young men who listen to her as a teacher, regardless of her gender.

She has earned her place among her mostly male colleagues through her teaching, her scholarship, and her desire to partner with them. She literally wrote the book on how to handle balanced and loving partnership between men and women in the church. Her book, Bound and Determined, argues that “we are bound together as Christian women and men by God’s design and that we must live with a determination to be God’s holy people in all of our partnerships.” It takes both women and men to have this conversation.

I watched as she lived out the stories that became her book. I watched as she navigated over the years the deeply-held convictions of people who thought that her gender kept her from using the gifts that God gave her. I watched her pain from, and forgiveness for, people who said hurtful or untrue things over the years.

She handled these situations with maturity. In my immaturity, I couldn’t always understand why she bothered.

The role of women in the church was the last thing I wanted to talk about.

And then I had two daughters. And the thought that they might ever feel like I felt at the age of seven, when I wanted to be a boy so I could preach, keeps me up at night. And I finally understand why both my mother and my father talked and prayed and moved to make a space for women in the church where I grew up, where women now teach.

It was for me. And my sister. And my brother. Because our legacy of faith is the most important thing for both of them. Because they value our voices, male and female. Because they want us to grow up to be the people God has called us to be, nothing more and nothing less.

Since becoming a mother, I have found myself moving back into ministry, just like my mother. When I was little, they used to strap my pack ‘n’ play in the back of our big van (it was the ‘70s) and haul me to college ministry devos. Now we bring our daughters along (in car seats, of course) to poor neighborhoods all over Austin while visiting Burmese refugees. In the last few years I’ve spent most of my time with mothers who weave and create traditional handicrafts in their home. I was drawn toward ministry even when I wasn’t looking for it. Looking back on the last five years in which I’ve been a mother, I realize I’ve created the same balance of academia, ministry, and motherhood my own mother cultivated in my growing-up years.

I couldn’t be prouder to take after her. And I can never thank her enough for the path she forged, for me and for women like me. I’ll spend my life trying.

My oldest daughter has already begun rolling her eyes at the things I say. I hear her tone, the distinct “MOOOOOM” only a daughter can roll out, and I know the road ahead of us could be long. I’ll probably embarrass her over the years. But I can only hope she has a fraction of the respect and love for me someday that I feel for my own mother.

I’ve entered ministry, full-on with my sleeves rolled up. I’m ready to talk and teach. Because I want my daughters to be the women that God created them to be. I’m ready to carve out a space for their precious, intelligent, beautiful voices. Just like my mother did for me.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Jessica Goudeau is the Executive Director and co-founder of Hill Country Hill Tribers, as well as a grad student in English literature. When she’s supposed to be working on her dissertation, she can usually be found blogging about books, babies and Burmese refugees at loveiswhatyoudo.wordpress.com.

About the Women in Ministry Series

The Women in Ministry Series is a collection of guest posts that aims to:

• Provide an alternative to the women in ministry debates by telling the stories of women in ministry.
• Encourage women to explore their God-given callings.

Contributions Welcome: Contact Ed to pitch your post idea in 2-4 sentences.

You can stay updated on the latest post each week by signing up for the weekly e-mail list. (You also get a free E-book!)

Comment Policy: Everyone is welcome to leave a comment. However, this series takes for granted that women are called by God into every facet of ministry. This is not the place to debate that point and such comments will be removed. Women have been told “no” in far too many places. This is one place that is committed to saying “yes.” For more about the comment policy or submitting your own story, read here.

Next week’s blogger: Nicole Unice

Some of the most important people in my life have been my pastors. They have provided timely wisdom and guidance that has changed my life. However, some of my deepest wounds have also originated from pastors.

I don’t blame my pastors. Personally, they never would have done a thing to hurt me. In fact, I don’t see my wounds as necessarily originating from my pastors. My wounds came from the church system that we both served.

Pastors and lay people have a common enemy: the church system.

The system is rules, expectations, and anything that defines how the organization of church must function. The system is anything that threatens to set itself over the unity of believers. The system uses the hard bolts and jackhammers of man to join together people who require a lover’s caress.

The system doesn’t care whether you’ve had a rough week. If you’re botching up the hymn on Sunday morning, people will complain to the pastor, and the pastor has to do something. The system demands action.

The system doesn’t care if you’ve been the only nursery volunteer for three months. The pastor needs someone to cover it because he’s got five more empty slots to fill. It’s his job to train and equip people for ministry, and he’ll lose his job if he can’t pull it together. He may even ask you to bring a side dish next Sunday for the elder meeting because the system needs more volunteers and you’re one of the few willing to play by the rules.

The system demands that we become fuel for the machine. We all have an idea of what the system should look like, and we make decisions in our churches based on what kind of system we want.

I want a church system that reflects my values, and I’ve fought far too many battles to create the church system of my choosing.

The truth about church is that it’s a living, breathing body joined together with the Spirit of God. We require some organizing and some leadership, but we don’t live to serve what organizes us or to make our systems a success.

Just surviving as a group in a system is unhealthy and self-centered, and survival is what a system demands. If the church organization dies, then what? We fear that every time our budgets run a deficit… What will happen to the “church”?

When I say the church becomes a system, I’m also talking about what you do in order to belong. Play by the rules, and you can be in the community. If you don’t follow the rules, you can’t be in the community.

These rules will vary from church to church, and even some churches can take good things such as inclusiveness to an extreme—as in, if you’re not quite inclusive enough, you’re out. Some systems are enforced from above and other systems are enforced by the loudest members of the congregation. Oftentimes the pressure of the system is applied equally from pew to pastor and from pastor to pew—both making demands and expectations of one another without ever asking why we do this.

The system plays leaders off the congregation. In the system, a congregation needs leaders to provide a compelling vision statement, guide their spiritual lives, and keep the church as an organization vibrant and running. If the church as an organized system fails, it is the pastor’s fault.

The pastor has to maintain a delicate balance of pushing his/her congregation to grow spiritually, while prodding them to buy into the church system. If they don’t believe in the system and follow that by attending, volunteering, or giving, then the pastor is a failure.

There is enormous pressure on both sides. The people want something meaningful to give themselves to and they need real help with their pressing issues in life. Leaders are under enormous pressure to press people to grow, but to not press them too hard.

The system falls apart when pastors push hard to get the congregation to buy into changing the system or their lives. People grow attached to their system and the status quo. It provides the comfort of meeting the same expectations every Sunday:

We show up at 9 am. We sing until 9:24. The offering and announcements run until 9:36, and we pray that there isn’t a special music until the pastor takes the pulpit at 9:37. He will preach until 10:25 because we need a few minutes for an alter call in order to be dismissed at 10:30. Heaven help us if we run until 10:35…

The system hums along until the pastor realizes that the system needs to be changed. This is where all hell breaks loose, literally. The people were told that the system will provide for them and guide them where they need to go. They have invested in a system, an institution, a church, a holy place of God that looks just right to them. Who are these pastors to tell them it needs to look different? At this point, it makes far more sense to fight for the system than to trust the pastors.

The system will give the people what they want. The pastors become caretakers whose livelihoods are held hostage to the congregation.

Other times, the pastors use the authority of the system to hold their congregations hostage. They hold the power of church discipline. They can destroy relationships with one e-mail, even one message on a social network.

The ease of online connectivity can give leaders tremendous power to inflict terrible harm if they sense someone isn’t buying into the system. The same holds true for congregations.

Some churches are on the brink of all our war with congregations and pastors both trying to control the system. When the people/pastor become a “threat” to the “church,” that’s usually just another way of saying the people/pastor want to change the system we like.

As I’ve found churches where I can belong, I try to keep an eye on the system. It’s a caged beast ready to strike our communities at any time. The system will alienate us from our leaders we both fear we’re not measuring up. The system has no grace.

I want to serve God and minister to people rather than serving an organization or becoming enslaved to my expectations. My pastors should have freedom to hear from God and to lead without fear. I want to follow them without clinging to any pictures of what a church “must” look like.

I hope my pastors know that they can fail. They can make financial mistakes. They don’t have to lead perfect families. They can have doubts. They can end a service early or late. They can teach from any part of scripture they feel lead to speak about.

I hope everyone in my congregation knows that God’s Spirit knits us together. We don’t have to prove ourselves to one another. We are free to serve one another and let an unstaffed program die because no one feels called to it. Church doesn’t have to look like anything we’ve ever known before if God’s Spirit is leading us to change how we gather for worship or how we serve our community.

We are free to love God and to serve one another, and freedom is the one thing that a system hates. I love my pastors, but I hate the system.

Over all of my years immersed and banished from the church, I have boiled down everything that is important about Christian community to one, 4-letter word: LIFE.

Seek community where there is life. Where God is present and free to move. Where people are encouraged to pursue God’s calling for their lives. Where a community moves as one toward God’s throne of grace.

If you don’t feel the freedom of God’s life in a church, it will be hard to belong. It is God’s life that animates us and joins us together. We can find belonging through other means and activities, but it will never create the bonds God intended to create for his family.

I don’t’ want to offer a template or blueprint, but I do have one rule I follow: Look for the life of God around you.

Where is God free to convict you, to change lives, and to lead you? Cling to community where you can find that. Any community without the life of God is just a club, both an organization centered on common interests and a weapon that will, sooner or later, leave you broken.

Does gathering in community bring you closer to God and his life? Does community leave you more bound and trapped? That is my test.

God is doing stuff in us. We need to link up with the people who are also experiencing God in similar ways. Otherwise, we’ll only fight and struggle with each other. This is not to say we should avoid diversity. That can be good. However, if God is cultivating reverence and silence in you, then liturgy will be a healthy place to find community and to grow, rather than fighting through a more charismatic style that may leave you feeling confused and uncertain.

At this point in my journey, I feel like I’ve had teaching up to my ears. I feel so much more life in a church that emphasizes worship and prayer—as in actively praying for one another at the end of the service. There have been far more Sundays where I’ve longed to receive or offer prayer than to learn something.

I find God’s life in a community that reminds me I can’t learn my way into spiritual health or minister to others solely by imparting information. I suspect that the things that bring life to me today may shift or change a little over time, and that we all experience the life of God a little differently. Perhaps some of us need a little more instruction and knowledge to keep us grounded.

When I can sense the conviction of the Holy Spirit about sin in my life and seek out a friend who is waiting in the wings with the other prayer ministers, I know I’ve found a place where I can belong…

As my friend lays his hands on me and blesses me with confirmation of God’s forgiveness and healing, I can sense the unity of God’s Spirit, knitting us into one people, slowly becoming the image of Jesus in a broken world.

As our church in Connecticut sorted out its future, one of the church’s new leaders started to share her vision that children needed to become a higher priority in our community. As a church in a college town, it was easy to overlook the 5-6 kids who showed up each week. However, she was absolutely right. Part of our calling as a community was to support the spiritual growth of our children.

If we could not bond together for the sake of our children, were we any different from the dull disciples who tried to send the children away from Jesus?

The hard part here is that children’s ministry can become one of the many black holes that consume volunteers.

Churches abuse volunteers horribly.

Churches die without volunteer ministers.

If we want our communities to thrive, we need to participate in them, but then sometimes volunteering and serving takes on a life of its own where volunteers are expended as fuel for the sake of making the organization and programs thrive. On the one hand we need to invest in our kids, but on the other, there is a tremendous amount of pressure to create a “successful” children’s ministry that grinds up volunteers in the process.

This once again raises the question of whether we’re trying to help people thrive or whether we’re trying to help the organization thrive and survive.

Are we volunteering to serve one another or our community because it is good for others and ourselves, or are we volunteering because someone (sometimes it’s just us, sometimes it’s our leaders, sometimes it’s both) to help our organization become successful and well known?

When I visited one church, I happened to mention that I played guitar, and a couple immediately said, “Oh, you should play on our worship team. We need a male voice up there.”

Did you catch that? They were looking at a struggling program, and they needed fresh fuel to help it run better.

They didn’t ask me about where I was at with God. If they had, they would have found out that I’d been burned out terribly from music ministry. I’d grown weary of the complaining and the endless requests to meet someone else’s expectations and standards—the endless pushing and tugging for each person to get his/her own way.

I wanted no part of the music ministry at that point in my life. Truth be told, I was also clinging to my own way of doing church, pushing and tugging for dominance. There was one way to describe my volunteer relationship with the church back then: toxic for both of us.

The church and I were like a married couple desperately clinging to get our own ways because we feared that the other didn’t have our best interests in mind. The problem was that I’d been married to church organization, not the people.

As my friends began to dream about what our church could mean for the children among us, God showed me what he’d been hinting at all along: Christian community is not about the church serving me or me serving the organization. It’s about serving the people in our community.

I’d put up walls around myself in the church because I feared the organization would latch onto me and suck me dry like a relentless oil platform drilling down into my life until all of the fuel had been extracted.

My friend who asked us to rethink our approach to children’s ministry wasn’t concerned about making our church organization great. She simply saw a few kids who needed more attention from the adults, and she asked us to make sacrifices to ensure they’ll receive the support they need to follow Jesus.

When we sacrifice ourselves to an organization, we may get a mug, watch, or picnic. When we sacrifice ourselves on behalf of one another, we have a chance to see the life of God taking root and springing up among others. Serving one another brings more life, and that life can’t help but spread.

Today’s guest post is by Kathy Escobar. When I think about a leading female pastor and and writer, Kathy is certainly at the top of my list.

Years ago, if you looked up the definition of "Christian Good Girl", I swear my picture would be right next to it. I was so good at being good! I knew how to keep the peace. I knew how to give people what they want. I know how to put my needs last. I knew how to say all the right things at the right time to sound really spiritual. I knew how to be nice.

Although I was not raised in a Christian home, when I turned my life over to Christ and joined his team, I found that all of the people-pleasing, peace-making, good-girl skills I had learned as a child of an alcoholic raised in chaos worked perfectly in the spiritual realm as well.

I earned all kinds of praise in the churches I was in for my good-girl-ness. Kathy’s so nice. Kathy’s such a team player. Kathy’s so easy to get along with.

None of these things were hard for me to do. They were like reflexes, a natural and immediate instinct to assess the situation, and then adjust to keep the peace and maintain whatever status quo needed to be maintained.

Over the years, though, as I started to do some personal healing work and begin to look at the unhealthy patterns in my life, something profound began to shift. I started to tell the truth about my own story. I started to not worry so much about what people thought. I started to advocate for others who couldn’t use their voices yet. I started to disagree. I started to use my voice and stir the pot about change in the church.

I started to worry more about pleasing God than pleasing man.

And guess what happened? Leaders didn’t like it. They liked me a lot better when I was following the rules, playing the good-girl game. A weird and subversive shift occurred when I started showing up more honestly, more passionately as a leader. The best words I can use to describe it are: "painful silence."

In my situation, the painful silence lead to me losing a pastoral ministry job that I loved. The reality was that I was just not "good" enough, submissive enough, to be part of that system anymore. Honestly, if I could have switched back to the Good-Girl fast enough, I might have been able to save my job. Temporarily.

But I was too far gone. My soul and passion had started to come alive and I couldn’t turn back.

As difficult as that season was for me personally, professionally, and spiritually, I am so grateful for it because I learned the most important lesson of my life as a leader:

Well-behaved women won’t change the church.

We just won’t.

Well-behaved women will keep the wheels spinning on systems that keep working, keep growing, keep moving. We will do good and honorable work that matters and helps people and makes a difference in their communities.

But we won’t change the church.

Some people think the church doesn’t need changing; they’re fine with the way things are because it works for them. But I think there a lot more of us out here than even we ourselves know–passionate women who believe the body of Christ needs much more than a face-lift to become all it’s meant to be.

Yeah, well-behaved women will not change the church.

Instead, change in the church will come from not-so-well-behaved women who are willing to risk their pride, reputations, and "being liked" to stand for what God is stirring up in their hearts.

Change in the church will come when women who are called to lead, lead, even when others don’t think they can or should.

Change in the church will come when women refuse to squelch their gifts and begin to unleash them without asking for permission first.

Change in the church will come when women passionately follow Jesus, not systems-made-in-his-name-that-do-not-reflect-his-image.

Change in the church will come when women bravely use their voices, power, and any influence they have to inspire others to be brave, too.

I admit, it’s still sometimes hard for me to not be the good-girl. I miss the safety. I miss the praise. I miss the security, even if it was false. Some days I wish I could make nice like I used to because it was so much easier then.

But the Kingdom of God was never about easy. It was never about comfort. It was never about maintaining the status-quo. It was never about playing nice.

The Kingdom of God Jesus called us to participate in creating–here, now–isn’t well-behaved.

That’s reason enough for us not to be, either.

About Today’s Blogger

Kathy Escobar co-pastors The Refuge, an eclectic faith community dedicated to those on the margins of life and faith in North Denver.  A speaker, spiritual director, group facilitator and advocate, Kathy is passionate about healing community, equality, justice, and change in the church.  

She has written several books, including the most recent, Down We Go: Living into the Wild Ways of Jesus, which is centered on cultivating incarnational community in a wide range of contexts.  She has a Masters degree in Management and Organizational Development and a certificate in Evangelical Spiritual Guidance from Denver Seminary and blogs regularly about life and faith at www.kathyescobar.com. Kathy lives in Arvada, Colorado with her husband and 5 children.

About the Women in Ministry Series

The Women in Ministry Series is a collection of guest posts that aims to:

• Provide an alternative to the women in ministry debates by telling the stories of women in ministry.
• Encourage women to explore their God-given callings.

Contributions Welcome: Contact Ed to pitch your post idea in 2-4 sentences.

You can stay updated on the latest post each week by  signing up for the weekly e-mail list. (You also get a free E-book!)

Comment Policy: Everyone is welcome to leave a comment. However, this series takes for granted that women are called by God into every facet of ministry. This is not the place to debate that point and such comments will be removed.Women have been told “no” in far too many places. This is one place that is committed to saying “yes.” For more about the comment policy or submitting your own story, read here.

Next Week’s Blogger: Jessica Goudeau

I’ve asked Tyler Braun to share one of his own stories about belonging in the church. I’m looking forward to Tyler’s upcoming book, which you can learn more about at the end of this post.

A year and a half ago the elders of my current church voted to end the relationship between the senior pastor at the time and the church. He had been the senior pastor for almost 30 years so it was not a quick decision and several congregational meetings were scheduled in order for church members to voice their thoughts and also for the elders to shed light on why the decision was made.

I’ve witnessed some ugly congregational meetings, including meetings where my own dad was dragged through the mud. None compare to some the things I witnessed in these meetings: cheering for one sided-opinions, booing when unfavorable thoughts toward another side were shared, shouting from the seats without a microphone, lots of poor theological statements about God’s will, and of course plenty of pastor worship.

I’ve since decided that congregational church meetings bring out the worst in Christians and they should be either be outlawed or moderated by an outside party who can lay the smack down when someone acts like an eight year-old.

I know plenty of people who decided to leave my church because of these meetings, not even because of the decision that was made. They felt too many of the church members were more passionate about getting their way than developing an intimacy of relationship within the church body. I couldn’t argue with them.

In the midst of the brokenness of our sinful lives, where does belonging, community, and relationship fit in? Is it simply an extra bonus only after all our other spiritual needs and wants have been met? Is getting our way within a local church more important than fostering relationships with those around us?

Brokenness

In our Christian culture full of "church shopping" it seems everyone wants to find the perfect church with the right kind of music, preaching that inspires, children’s programming to keep our kids happy, enough new believers coming to know Jesus so we can brag about the size of our church, and of course good coffee.

But trust me, don’t go looking for the perfect church because once it’s been found it won’t be perfect anymore.

Church has problems because we have problems.

The church is full of sinful, broken people, all on the adventure of life and faith. What we often lose sight of is that the fact that true community and real relationships can break down the power of our fallen nature. So often we allow our brokenness to be the excuse for why we can’t engage others, instead it should thrust us toward a deeper desire for right relationship with others.

Belonging

"In a community-starved world, the most potent means of witness to the truth of the gospel is the magnetic power of the oneness that was committed by Christ to his new community at the center of history" (Bilezikian, Community, pg 37).

I believe the #1 reason so many churches struggle to reach young Christians, ages 25 and below, is because they do not believe they belong. While observing the students at my church, I see the power of belonging and acceptance as it often leads to a greater involvement and engagement. But let’s be honest, students aren’t much different than adults. We’re all longing to belong to a group–to be accepted for who we are. The problem is we want others to help us feel accepted before we’ll be willing to extend the same to someone else.

To truly belong we have to take the first step. We cannot wait for others to come to us.

The Power of Christ in Our Midst

The more I become closer to Christ, the more I recognize my own selfish desires. Seminary, despite being a wonderful experience overall, has taught me that the more I learn about God, the more I realize I do not know. On my own, left to my own devices, I’m a worthless pile of junk. It sounds harsh to think of it in this way, but it remains true.

In the brokenness of our sin we have an opportunity to reflect the being of God, as one that breaks the power of sin through His presence in our community. In Him we truly belong, and through belonging in Him we can help foster unity within the body so others might belong as well.

In John 17, Jesus, knowing His hour of pain and suffering is near, has a powerful petition directed toward the Father. What is it that matters most to Jesus in this moment of reflection and conversation with the Father? When He leaves this earthly ministry in order to be at the right hand of the Father, what is it He desires most from His people? I believe this is answered in John 17.

Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity (John 17:21-23).

Is church as we know it completely broken? Because we are each broken, yes. Is the communal church what we need to push ourselves toward? Yes.

So often we want to wait for others to help us feel as if we belong–to ease our longing for intimacy–to make community something easy for us.

What if we began to realize that through Christ we belong to God and is it our job to allow others to sense that same belonging to the Kingdom of God?

I believe we would begin to see the power of Christ in our midst.

Tyler Braun is a 27-year-old INTJ living in Portland, Oregon with his wife Rose. He works full time as a worship leader, while also finding time to study at Multnomah Biblical Seminary in pursuit of a masters degree. Currently Tyler is living the Portlandia dream of commuting to work on a bike while paying off school loans. His first book releases in August with Moody Publishers and is available for pre-order now. You can find Tyler on Twitter, Facebook, or his blog.

While attending our new, struggling church in Connecticut, we regularly faced the possibility of the church disbanding or at least going broke. Part of me hated the thought of finally finding a church and losing it.

I’d waited seven long years for this church. Would God really take it away from me now?

The more I thought and prayed about this, the more I realized that I didn’t care about this church. To put my thoughts more precisely, I was 100% loyal to the gathering of people, but I could live without the organization: the name, the logo, the meeting space, and the pens—I could manage never again seeing the 10,000 pens that a previous staff member had ordered.

On one hand, I was ready to give everything I had to this church. On the other hand, I was ready to start listing all of its assets on Craig’s List.

It was probably the best thing for me.

As I wrestled with my past disappointments with church and the hope our new community represented, the threat of losing it helped me keep a better perspective. I needed to belong to a community of people joined by God, not to a nonprofit organization.

When the people serve the organization and not God, one another, and the world, we create a barrier that may prevent us from belonging to God’s community. We become employees, of a sort, for an organization. This tension only becomes greater the larger a church becomes and the more assets it owns.

This taps into some of my issues I’m still working through with church.

On the one hand, I have no problem with investing in processes that help the community function better. For a season I helped update the church website and started an e-mail newsletter.

On the other hand, I have long resisted membership classes and any form of membership.

Perhaps my idealism lingers, but I still can’t stomach the thought of sitting in a class that explains the basic theology and practices I need in order to be a part of a community. What are the creeds for? I still imagine that the things discussed in these classes should be part of every Sunday and embodied at small group meetings and service projects.

If I need to be “taught” that my church values serving others, then what are we actually doing each week? Are we serving others?

The thought of formalized, hoop-jumping, class attending church membership still strikes me as a waste of time. I’m all for making a formal declaration that I’m committed to worshipping and serving with a group of people, but why do we need membership’s boundaries between insiders and outsiders?

The moment we create members and non-members, we’ve just created a potentially large barrier to belonging to a community. I know that the church has historically had a rigorous membership process, and I’m all for discipling and teaching new Christians, but I bristle against formalizing it and labeling people.

I’ve always tried to walk this line where I want to be fiercely committed to a community of believers where I belong while never adding anything that could put up a barrier between myself and anyone in my community.

Perhaps I’m an extremist here. I certainly don’t condemn anyone who believes in church membership or who has taken a membership class. I don’t want to make this a moral matter.

I just really, really don’t want to attend a ten week class that somehow magically makes me belong in a community. A class can’t do that.

The more I reflect on belonging to Christian community, the more I notice obstacles that we have created on our own. It’s hard enough to belong in a church. Why make it harder?

I know some churches that won’t allow people to serve in ministries without becoming a member, and that’s where I really bristle. Such a policy tells me that buying into the organization itself is more important than the ties that God has created among us through the work of his Son and the indwelling Spirit.

I could be wrong. I don’t know. I just know that the churches where “buying in” to the church’s way of doing things became a big obstacle. It wasn’t enough to profess the same creeds. I needed to profess the same vision statement and values.

That doesn’t strike me as a way to belong. That’s a way to become an employee. When an organization’s goals and values overshadow the work of God among us, belonging will be tough, if not impossible for many of us.

Jesus came to break down barriers, and therefore I’m always suspicious of any barrier we create before people can truly “belong” to our Christian communities.

Facing rejection as a church visitor is tough enough. However, if you don’t see the value of attending church in the first place, it’s nearly impossible to face something as unpleasant and alienating as being the lonely visitor standing with a cold cup of coffee in the lobby while everyone else cheerfully chats with one another.

When I stopped going to church, I didn’t see how I could ever make church work for me again. However, as I prayed about it, God sent a little nagging thought into the back of my mind: “Never say, never.”

I didn’t, but it was hard to believe.

My time isolated from Christian community was tough. As I struggled to find a new Christian community and faced the possibility of rejection or getting tangled in an unhealthy church, those seven years in the wilderness away from church reminded me what was at stake.

It’s really, really hard to be a Christian without the support of a community. For a few years we hosted a few Christian friends at our home for a morning prayer meeting before work, and that was a lifeline for me.

We only had about 30-45 minutes, but it was just enough to provide me a safe place to share my struggles and to find the support I needed so desperately.

Belonging to a Christian community is not about just stamping your time card each week and relieving your Christian guilt. In fact, the obligation of attending church is an empty mirage of Christianity. Attending church weekly is not a way of avoiding sin in and of itself.

Belonging to the life-giving Christian community, which can be found in church, is how we are sustained and kept healthy. We need to be with people who are facing the same challenges in life or who have worked through the same stuff as us.

We need to know we’re not the only crazy ones. We need to receive prayer from people who face the same doubts, fears, and temptations. Belonging to community is not always the same thing as “attending” a church.

We need to know that someone we care about will be crushed if we give in to our sinful desires. We need to know that someone will pray for our restoration after we have failed.

Failure in the Christian life is a very real possibility. Christians struggle with broken marriages, porn addictions, body image lies, eating disorders, and greed. These are big, ugly sins that have taken root in our lives, and our only hope of healing and wholeness comes through God and his community that embodies the ministry of Jesus.

If the church continues the work of Jesus among us, then we need to be connected to a community of believers who can bring his healing work among us.

When I am joined to a community of believers, I can find people who support me and pray for me. I have prayed healing prayers for others.

Isn’t it amazing that we all come together with our flaws and problems, but God chooses to use us to heal and bless one another. When we gather together in Christian community, we have an opportunity to be touched by the very hands of Jesus.

We don’t belong to a community when we all wear the same shirts or park outside the same building. We belong when we become the presence of Jesus to one another, joined together mystically by his Spirit as one body and bearing one another’s burdens.

Years ago, we used to attend a rural church. Naturally, the hunters ended up together.

When we moved to an urban setting, all of the cyclists shifted their chairs toward one another.

Sometimes these groups form naturally. Other times they arise because they’ve been imposed on us.

We’re frequently broken down into marketing segments by businesses for the sake of selling us products, and it’s not uncommon for churches to do the same. We naturally lean toward affinity groups and congregate around common points such as age, hobbies, beliefs, or even which service time we prefer.

Churches follow demographics, trends, traditions, prejudices, and just about any other way people define themselves. Sometimes these trends emerge naturally, while other times churches work hard to make these distinctions extremely stark.

With all of these ways to slice and dice people into groups, should we be surprised when it’s hard to find a church where we feel completely comfortable—where we feel like we fit in perfectly?

Whether we welcome affinity groups or we try to fight them through building generationally integrated small groups, there are real challenges to community and belonging.

When I tried to find Christian community again, I had no idea where to start. How could I find a place to belong? When I used to think about belonging in a community, I could only see:

• Our backgrounds are too diverse.
• Our experiences are too many.
• Our outlooks are too limited.
• Our wounds are too deep.
• Our commitments are too powerful.
• Our fears are too great.
• Our boundaries too many.

Three years after returning to church, I have a bit more perspective on that Sunday morning where we gave organized church another shot. It was so hard, so very hard to park our car, and walk into a building filled with the grins that every church visitor gets—grins that are rarely ever followed by an introduction or meaningful conversation.

I’d seen these grins at other churches we had visited during our seven year sojourn outside of a church. The lack of action that followed those grins told me: “We’re glad to see you, but please stay the hell away from our personal space.”

That’s what most church visitors see. That’s what I’ve seen too often as a church visitor. I’m sure I’ve given out those meaningless grins and handshakes to visitors more times than I can count. Once someone actually walked over and talked to us that first Sunday, I was finally able to face all of my baggage, that long list of bullet points that prevented me from belonging.

If you can survive the first visit, you face the daunting task of finding your place among hundreds or more people with a variety of interests. Where do you even begin?

This is an area where book publishing has helped me deal with rejection, failed conversations, and attempts at relationships that become dead ends. Sometimes you just can’t connect with people without facing the possibility of a limp handshake or a phony smile. My only hope over the years has been reaching out and remaining proactive.

I would have never found a place to belong without starting conversations, asking people about who else attends the church, and telling people what I care about. When a couple at our new church reached out to us, I was able to return the next Sunday and the Sunday after that, facing the possibility of rejection with renewed determination to overcome it and belong. However, I only had the courage to become proactive after someone reached to me and told me that I was welcome and valued.

I soon found people who read a lot, who garden, and value creativity. I had to seek these people out after services. I set up meetings at a café. I attended a small group. I volunteered for a ministry that connected with the passions God has given me.

The hard part about finding a community where you can meaningfully belong is that you need to begin with a flimsy handshake that means basically nothing. However, a handshake can be treated as a dead end or you can grab on to that person and learn about each other.

For years I made the mistake of assuming that all Christians viewed visitors as a threat to their neat and tidy social groups. That has been true in some cases, but as I’ve belonged to several churches, I’ve witnessed people who have really struggled to figure out ways to welcome visitors.

Those handshakes really can mean something. They aren’t necessarily a way of shooing me away after doing the bare minimum. Oftentimes, a handshake is a lifeline, welcoming me into a community. Everything changed when I took hold of that lifeline and held on for dear life.

Sometimes our worlds need to fall apart before we’re ready to let go of things we were never intended to have. For me, I had to let go of my control and idealism about church before I could belong to community again. For our new church in Connecticut, it was figuring out how to recover from the loss of its lead pastor to a scandal.

We were made for each other really—a messed up person trying to rediscover community in a messed up church trying to rediscover community. We were both asking the right questions—finally.

When I met with the teaching pastor, who had taken over for the resigned pastor, he bluntly told the truth about the church’s history. That’s one of the things I loved about this pastor and this church. There was no dressing up the story. He taught me so much in two years by virtue of his example.

Our pastor knew significant mistakes had been made, and part of the problem was the lack of oversight for this independent church. He needed to find accountability and guidance as he sought out the next step for this community.

Looking Back the Right Way…

Sometimes I think we look back in order to preserve something. We look back to a particular church or church model or Bible story or whatever ideal we have, and we try to replicate or preserve it. Then someone like me tries to use that ideal to control my current community.

Our pastor wasn’t doing that.

He pastor looked back to his history to get his bearings and to find our church’s identity? Who are we as a people? Why do we act in the ways we do? What drives our expectations?

He held loosely to any notion of the church’s current identity and focused on what the history of the church, both recent and ancient, had to teach him. That helped him ask better questions and seek better wisdom while praying about the direction of this struggling church.

Speaking for myself, I spent too many years trying to define my identity in the present, trying to forge a niche for myself. I mean, this emerging church thing that was so huge during the 2000-2010 timeframe was all about answering the question, “Who am I if I don’t fit into the church as I know it?”

My failure was an obsession with defining myself today and failing to understand what historical aspects of Christianity had shaped my identity. “Where are my problems coming from?” is a much better question than, “What don’t I like about church right now?” I asked too much of the latter and too little of the former.

Certain branches of theology proved quite flimsy and unhelpful to me. Certain styles of worship simply failed to connect with me. The more I looked at the diversity in the history of the church and the ways various Christian camps had impacted me, the more I began to see how I’d reacted to and been shaped by each.

I belonged so well in my new Connecticut church because it had a stronger emphasis on worship, prayer, and the Holy Spirit—in addition to the cultural issues I mentioned yesterday. There was Bible teaching, but based on where I came from, I knew that attending church, for me, was rarely ever about learning something.

It just wasn’t.

I desired to worship and meet with God. I wanted to receive prayer. I wanted to learn about my friends. I’d immersed myself in the best theology had to offer, and it just didn’t draw me near to God in the same way.

However, the most important thing I learned is that we’re all wired a little differently.

Teaching Me a Lesson About Worship

A friend of mine is just about the most practical, kind, and caring Christian you could ever meet. He also attends a church that basically preaches solid doctrine for 45-60 minutes. There are a few songs, but those are just a way to stretch some muscles before the main event.

My friend has never been happier. It’s exactly what he needs.

I visited one Sunday, and I just about fell out of my chair from a mix of boredom and despair. My friend smiled as he soaked it in.

After the service, someone asked me about the church I came from, and I described my church in Connecticut.

“Oh,” she replied. “Then this must have been hard to sit through.”

The grace and generosity of her reply startled me. Yes, it really was. I would have died before admitting it, but her kindness cut through my façade.

My friend’s church wasn’t a place where I could belong, but it was so incredibly perfect for him. I was free to not belong there. I could go back to my church in Connecticut without feeling guilty. In fact, for the first time in my life, I was genuinely happy about belonging in my church.

My guilt had been washed away because I saw for the first time that we all have different paths for approaching God’s throne of grace.