About a year ago I was reading Church After Christendom by Stuart Murray for a class at Fuller called Theology and Culture. Part of Murray’s book examines the “back door” of the Church and asks why it is that so many people are leaving. I got the idea to create a website called Letters From Leavers while reading that book. I wanted to give people who were “leavers” a chance to tell their story in the form of a “Dear John” letter. Letters From Leavers is just about a year old now and I never expected that so many people would interact with the site. I also didn’t expect to be a “leaver” myself.
I am 28 years old and for the first 27 years of my life I was in church almost every Sunday, and the times that I wasn’t there I was gone away at camp with the youth group. Since May of 2007 I have been to church twice. The crazy part is that I don’t really miss it; I don’t feel a guilt-ridden sense of obligation or duty to be at church on Sunday. My wife has asked me a few times since May if I wanted to go back to church and I quickly say “no” and then she says “me either” and we go about our day.
So what happened?
My leaving has been a gradual process. If I am honest with myself as I look back to February 07, even though I was working full time as a youth minister at a church and attending Seminary part time, I had one foot out of the “back door.” I wasn’t doing my job to the best of my ability and I had frequently thought that if I wasn’t working at a church, then I wouldn’t be going to one.
The one thing I was truly passionate about was a worship community within our church that I had helped to start and gave leadership to. I loved to plan creative ways for us to worship together. I loved working with the other pastor that also gave leadership to this community. I loved letting our gatherings come together spontaneously, led by the Holy Spirit, as opposed to the formulaic pre-packaged worship services that I had grown weary of. I loved being a part of an environment in which every person present was given an equal opportunity to contribute and participate, rather than sit passively and consume. I had grown tired of “church” but with equal measure I was excited about thinking of church in these new and different ways.
Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to see it through. The leadership of the church wasn’t pleased with the results of our efforts and we were basically asked to move on. I suppose it was mutual departing because like I said before I had been sensing it was time for me to leave, but the church certainly wanted me to move on as well.
Now I said before that I don’t really miss church, but that isn’t entirely true. I miss all of the things that I was a part of with the worship community I helped give leadership to. I miss the genuine relationships, the shared meals, the communal worship, and the creative expression. The truth is that I can still have most of this stuff outside of a church context but it is much harder to experience on a regular basis. I am so grateful that I still have relationships with so many people from our old church and that those relationships are bigger than having the same church membership. But as I said it is hard work to maintain that caring community that is essential for growing in faith, especially if you don’t see each other at church every week.
So I am left facing down my own laziness. Do I make the effort to “be” church now that I am not “going” to church? Can I still have the experience of a caring community of friends who do life together in spite of my tendency toward individualism? Am I able to serve others without the titles, resources or official backing of the institution known as the Church? Just some questions for me to think about as I lay in bed on Sunday mornings.
desire for community, former youth minister, frustrationEmail this LFL Content to a Friend
The difficulty with being one of the leavers is that you’re left without that precious fellowship. I longed for spontaneous, loving communion with the Father and his kids but now that I’m out of the youth ministry circle it’s a lot different. I have a story perhaps somewhat similar to yours… 12 years in youth ministry, worship leader, sick of the show.
I unplugged to go back to school and get a masters degree. Its been good but there are very few (if any?) passionate people outside the church walls in our area. If you’re going to see growth you’ve gotta drink the Sunday A.M. Cool-Aid. So it seems.
Thanks for the thoughts. Peace.
Jeff
Jeff,
Your image of drinking the “Sunday A.M. Cool-Aid” made me laugh. As I wrote out my thoughts for the letter I posted I wondered if there was a way to experience everything I am missing out on with church and bypass the stuff I could do without. I realize how consumeristic and selfish that sounds but it is where I am at nonetheless.
Thanks for your comments.
Tim
“Drinking the Kool-Aid” usually refers to blindly following of a line of (indefensible) arguments without thinking them through. They refuse any critical thought and stick tenaciously to an argument regardless of any evidence to the contrary.
So, you still wanna drink Kool-aid? It is so easy to develop the ?I am the only one Lord!” syndrome. There are many others like you. Check us out at http://lifeblog.co.nr/
Well three more months and it will have been a year since my first post on this site.
(http://lettersfromleavers.com/blog/2007/05/09/leaving-worcc-work/)
…So, where am I at after all this time?
I have found my Heart. I have found that loving those in my life like God loves them, whether they believe in God or not, IS community, at least some form of it. That’s what Jesus did anyway, lived His life around those who didn’t know who He truly was, loving them before they loved Him.
I do have a few close ‘Allies’ that I share life with, as we journey towards and with God.
There are others in my life that I have been humbly used by God to restore their hearts to Him. There are others in my life, that do not know God (yet), but they do know I Love God, and I love them, whether they do or not.
I am sure there is a lot more for me to learn, what it is we, or I, am supposed to do while we journey down this road with God, on this ball of dirt, waiting for the new heaven and dirt ball. I do know that if I simply love God and live Life, I can’t go wrong.
Rocco
Here are some interesting resources I have found in the past year…
http://www.revealnow.com/story.asp?storyid=31
http://www.thegodjourney.com/podcast.html
The following ministry has had the greatest impact on me, opening my eyes to who I am in God’s eyes.
http://www.ransomedheart.com/
Tim’s letter is revealing. It demonstrates that being young (twenty-something), computer literate, “connected” and having an understanding of a problem does not translate into a solution. I am fifty, and long before all the psycho-babel of the world-wide web existed, God led me on a solitary journey away, not only from the box of institutional relgion, but away from the box of modern American culture. I can attest that it was one HARD journey, and excruciatingly lonely. In the end, it was the loneliness the broke me.
Now according to what I understand about Tim, he is married, attends seminary - where he has contact with lot’s of other believers - and manages a website where he has contact with people all over the world; yet he still flounders as regards what his next step should be, outside the box of organized religion. Ain’t no wiz kid going to solve this problem - this isn’t politics, or computers, or physics; it’s a whole ‘nother canary.
As for me, I’m fed up with organized with religion, but so far everywhere I look (on the web at sites that treat the subject) I read a lot of complaining, but precious few solutions are put forward. Solutions are going to come through humility and prayer. Maybe God has started an exodus from the church at this time in history because of the interconnect possiblities of the web, but the glass screen of computer monitor has it’s limitations. To cite Tim, notice he has a lot of the social contacts but still feels adrift outside of the institution. I had NONE of Tim’s advantages. What’s more, Christ tends to call the lonely and the disposessed. I just read about a young Jew who is struggling mightily with the alienation from all his friends and family over converting to Christianty. We need to be able to offer a young man like that more than a website.
It’s time people complaining about institutional Christianity start putting foward ideas in terms of solutions, and less in terms of complaints (I am not saying Tim’s letter is complaining, I’m saying the overall thrust of the Post-Congregational Movements is complaining.
Tim this is almost identicle to my story! I was a youth pastor and worship director who left the church after Easter 2009.
I’d love to chat with you about the similarities to our stories and hear your thoughts on why we may have come to the conclusions we have. I find it amazing that we love on different sides of the globe yet share the same story…