Letters From Leavers

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, frustration