:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

There is one thing that I really, really dislike about moving.

It’s not finding cheap and reliable high speed internet. No, I spent two hours on that yesterday, and that’s still not the worst.

It’s not signing on to an electric company that literally pledges on their home page to fight EPA regulations.

It’s not finding a good co-op or farmer’s market.

We used shipping containers, so I don’t have to drive a truck to Columbus.

The part of moving that I really, really dislike is finding a new church.

It’s like crashing a party you haven’t been invited to. Sometimes you’ve dressed up when everyone else got the text about wearing flip flops and shorts. Sometimes you stick out like a red shirted communist at a Tea Party rally in your liberal Birkenstocks that cower before smartly polished leather shoes.

I’ve been on both sides of this. It’s natural to expect that a group of people will create a certain culture and group identity when they gather together. I think it’s natural to have a hard time breaking into such groups.

I still don’t like it.

However, the pay off is excellent. We visited exactly one church during our time in Connecticut, and after enduring two pretty horrible Sundays, we started meeting people, joined a small group, and developed some great friendships. As we grew in our church, I watched a bunch of people step forward to reach out to visitors. That gave me a lot of hope.

The hard part about visiting a church is that it forces you to consider what really matters most to you and what you’re willing to give up in order to be in a healthy community. One couple visited our church in Connecticut, and they left because we let women teach and don’t give an altar call each Sunday.

I scoffed at his closed-mindedness, but then I thought about our upcoming church hunt.

I really want to belong to a community that values the leadership and wisdom of women as God-intended equal partners with men.

I really don’t want to belong to a community that ends each service with drizzles of piano and an impassioned plea to flee the fires of hell and commit yourself to the Lord right this very moment because you are in danger of the fires of hell if you die tonight, yes, this very night… friend.

Hooray for Christian unity.

I’m both trusting God and nervous about this, which means I need to work on trusting God a bit more in this area.

All of this brings up questions for me about how the body of Christ works, where we draw our lines for unity, and the role of personalities and culture in our worship. I appreciate the diversity of traditions because in some ways they represent different ways of connecting with God. Simple church, contemporary music church, traditional church, and liturgical church all have their places.

Where will we end up? That is a question that I both want to avoid and desperately hope to answer.

A former pastor of mine used to say, “When you find the perfect church, don’t join it. You’ll only ruin it.” That advice rattled around in the back of my mind when I began trying to reconnect with the church after my burn out.

Could I find a church that lived up to my ideals?

Over the past eight years, I’ve had to rethink the church. And then I had to rethink my rethinking of the church. At some point in the next eight years, I may have to do another rethinking.

Much like a book or a magazine article, one draft rarely does the trick. It usually takes three or four revisions before putting together something useful, and I’m pretty sure that recovering from church burn out works the same way.

There will be false starts, mistakes, and wrong turns.

And if you can bear with me for another metaphor, when we have a bad break up with church, it’s tempting to run after another church that is the exact opposite. And sometimes entirely new churches have been planted in reaction against a supposedly “bad” church.

I used to dream about finding this perfect church that’s led by the second-coming of Paul. And in these churches everything will be amazing, encouraging, biblical, and free from conflict. You know, since all of the churches Paul led were amazing and free from conflict. Well, except for the Galatians. And of course the Corinthians. Come to think of it, the Romans had a pretty rough time as well…

There is no perfect church.

While stepping away from church and ministry in order to heal for a period of time has been difficult, the even more difficult part is figuring out positive, redemptive steps forward that will reconnect with physically present Christian community. Here are some things I’ve been learning in my current revision:

Ask God What’s Most Important

Since there isn’t a perfect church, you need to find the place where God wants you to be. It may be a living room full of Christians, a small church, or a huge old cathedral. Ask God to reveal what’s most important, and seek out a place with a similar emphasis.

We tend to meet and serve God in different ways. Christian community isn’t all about ourselves and our experiences, but it does help to seek out people who have a similar revelation of God.

For example, part of my healing process has been a deeper understanding of the Holy Spirit through my wife and in-laws. That means I can’t attend or serve in a church that isn’t comfortable with  listening to the Holy Spirit, hearing the Spirit, being lead by the Spirit, or acting in the power of the Spirit. That immediately rules out certain churches since I don’t want anything to interfere with the work God is doing in me.

Don’t Jump Right In

If you’ve been burned out by church or ministry, step in with caution and focus on getting to know the people in your community. It’s often easier to serve with others once you get to know them, so invest your time in worshipping together and getting to know one another first.

Chances are that you’ll react against certain things as you try to connect in a new community. It will take time to readjust and figure out what you think of everything. Certain things may grate on you. Don’t expect everything to feel right immediately.

Keep Hoping

If you’re going through a rough season of burn out or frustration with the church, keep hoping. There are Christians all over the place who have either gone through similar experiences or who can empathize with you.

It’s hard to find a community of Christians after wearing yourself out in one of them. However, keep in mind that God isn’t done with you, me, or the people in your former church. He’s doing good things in all of us, even if sometimes we can only see a half empty glass.

Jesus will build his church. The Holy Spirit isn’t burned out. I pray that wherever you’re at, you may find a community of Christians who can support you in your walk with the Lord.

We all need community, especially because none of us are perfect.

I tried to avoid the word “never” when I spoke about my future in the church. I knew I couldn’t return to the same kind of church and ministry that I’d come from, but I also knew that church did many things well. There were a lot of good people seeking God, and I couldn’t overlook that.

Everything wasn’t terrible.

The same is true for just about every other church out there. We may pick apart the service, the wastes of money and time, and the poor management of volunteers, but many churches are filled with good people who desire to worship God and serve others in community.

I’m thankful for that, even if the system itself is deeply flawed sometimes.

Though we’d always had some kind of small group or prayer group to meet with during the years following my burn out, I took my first tentative steps back into a more organized church through the large old doors of the Episcopal church in our small Vermont town.

Though the sermons didn’t teach me much more than Larry the Cucumber’s one-line lessons on Veggie Tales, I found a meaningful space to worship God with others. I was forced to stop, to wait, to pray, and to prepare myself to receive communion.

We weren’t quite regular, but I began to rethink church and my place in it. Though I had some legitimate reasons to be wary of church, I began to look at its dynamics, virtues, and faults with fresh eyes. Here’s what I saw:

Not Every Church is Dysfunctional

Some churches are healthier than others, and there usually are good things going on in even the most unhealthy churches. However, when you gather a bunch of people together and form an organization, problems will emerge because everyone has an opinion about the color of the carpet, the length of the sermon, or the places we should serve. 

Not Every Church-Attendee is Unsympathetic

As I shared my own story and struggles, I met many other Christians who have seen the same problems with the church. Some of them had to get out, while others worked within trying to make it better.

At the beginning of my crash, I didn’t realize there were so many sympathetic folks right in the church. Mind you, there were plenty in the church machine up to their necks who couldn’t reconcile themselves to my distance from the church. However, I met many church-attending Christians who were willing to walk with me during my time of healing and restoration.

God is in the Resurrection Business

While I couldn’t see myself returning to regular church attendance, God has gently guided me back to meaningful Christian community over the years. It has been a process, and I trust it will be different from everyone. So much depends on the kinds of churches in your area.

However, God can change us and the people around us. Don’t give up. He can heal our weariness, pain, and frustration. If you don’t have a physical group of Christians to encourage you, I encourage you to continue asking God to lead you to the right people at the right time.

Don’t Give Up

It was hard to confront my doubts about the church, walk down the red carpet of the Episcopal church, and settle into a cold wooden pew. I was uncomfortable, critical, and a little confused. However, as I tried to sort out the parts of church that I could hold onto, I found that God still had a plan for me in a Christian community.

When God is able to work in the lives of people, miracles can happen. He can heal you, me, and even our communities.

After participating in a variety of church meetings over the years, I wanted to share a little theory I’ve been working on based on some experiences, some ongoing thoughts, and some conversations. I don’t want this to devolve into whining or castigating everyone who doesn’t meet whatever my standard may be.

I’d like to offer these thoughts as four goals for every church, not as judgments of what we are or are not doing. These are things that are worth pursuing. I’d like to know what you think of this and whether it may help us sharpen our focus as we gather together.

I think if a church can do these four things, then it’s on track with the Kingdom of God and the general trajectory of scripture:

Worship

Worship is the one thing that we know churches should do. Sometimes our worship veers a little too much toward our own experiences of God, but it is important for Christians gathered together to worship God first and foremost. Jesus is the head of the church, and therefore we enter his presence with the praise and thanks that he is due. Worship can take place in music, spoken word, prayer, or other acts in community.

Fellowship

Whether fellowship with God and fellowship with one another, churches should be drawing near to God and in the process of meeting God they will find their unity with one another. Not every church that worships God authentically moves into fellowship with God, but it is often the aim of most churches to both worship and to meet with God when they gather.

Transformation

While it’s wonderful to have fellowship with God and one another, meeting God should push us toward the next step of allowing God to transform our lives, to free us from sin, and to empower us to live holy lives. Fellow believers have the important role of building one another up and making sure that we leave our gatherings with greater freedom and in deeper commitment to God.

Service

When we meet our God who transforms and empowers us, the next logical step is to join him in his work among others. This could include serving fellow believers, but should not be limited to that. The church that meets God and experiences his healing power needs to be willing to share it with others. If that’s not happening, then we need to ask why.

Final Thoughts

I think most churches try to do at least two or three of these things well, but all four are necessary for our communities to become outposts for God’s Kingdom. When we talk about why we gather together as Christian communities, I think these are the four categories that should drive our prayers, thoughts, and plans.

Each piece flows from the other. If we’re missing one piece of this, we aren’t fully embodying the Kingdom of God in our churches.

It’s hard to demonize someone after you share a meal together.

I’ve seen folks on the ideological right paint those on the left as freedom-hating regulators who want to squash freedom and ruin America. I’ve also seen folks on the ideological left stir up fear of right wing bigots who want to take over America and run it according to their narrow moral visions.

Each side is unable to countenance the views of the other, demonizing them as ridiculous, nuts, freedom-hating, bigoted, and non-sensible.

I used to be a pretty strident advocate for the right, but over time I met homosexuals, supporters of abortion, atheists, sundry Democrats, and a host of other sub-groups from the left.

On several occasions I shared meals with these people, and as my own views shifted and developed, I learned a bit  more about where they come from. I don’t agree with all that is on the right or left, but now that I know people on both sides, I feel like I can converse freely and understand where people are coming from. This helps me stand up for what I believe without demonizing or writing off those who disagree with my perspective.

When I think about the kind of community that Jesus wanted to create, it’s no mistake that that his final days on earth centered around a meal. Fellowship, prayer, theology, and worship can all be linked in many ways to this meal that Jesus instituted.

Sharing a meal with someone creates a certain degree of common ground. Once you’ve sat with someone for an hour or so, you probably know a little bit about this person’s family, background, and reasons for his/her beliefs.

Several of the courses I took at Biblical Theological Seminary took place over entire days, allowing us time to go out for lunch and dinner together. We didn’t always stick to theology during those meals, but we did manage to forge some pretty powerful bonds that continue to this day. In addition, I found a lot in common with the guys who came from very different theological or ideological backgrounds.

If we’d only debated in class, I would have certainly been inclined to write some of these folks off. However, our meals together forged a greater sense of community and common ground in Christ and in other areas as well. I was better prepared to hear them out and to learn a thing or two from them.

When most Christian theology takes place in classrooms and Sunday School rooms, as well as the contexts of Bible studies, I wonder if we’re missing the crucial component of a community-building meal. I know of many small groups who have adopted a meal-centered format, and have seen it work really well on many occasions.

We need to think a bit more about ways we can make our discussion forms more conducive to fellowship and community—letting our theology grow and develop in the context of meals. If the medium is the message, and Jesus used a meal to teach some of the most important aspects of salvation and theology, then we cannot ignore the ramifications for us today.