Time is Not on My Side

This is the tenth and final post in a series about ways that I have missed the mark as a pastor. It began as a response to several articles about why young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here if you want some background to this current article.

I get so overwhelmed by the programs, meetings and all of the minutiae of sustaining a congregation that I don’t have the creative energy to explore new ways of being the church together.

In the 20 years that I have been responsible for the worship practices of various congregations I have seen a dramatic increase in the amount of time that it takes to prepare for weekly worship. When I first started planning worship I helped lead two worship services every Sunday morning. Each week we followed one of two liturgies that were printed in our hymnal. The three or four hymns that we sang would be chosen by the pastor from several hundred available in the hymnal. The order of worship was printed in a weekly bulletin and a worshiper could follow the service by turning to the correct page in the hymnal. Both services on a given Sunday morning were identical with the exception of inserting a choir or a baptism at one service or the other.

Today I am responsible to plan, oversee and, at times, lead four unique worship services every week. Each one has its own special order of worship. At one we use an organist and traditional hymns but now rotate between six different liturgies. At two worship services our contemporary praise band leads the singing but each has a different order of worship. At the fourth service, on Wednesday evenings,  an acoustic music group provides a mix between the traditional and contemporary styles.

All this variety means that more time has to be spent planning. There are elements of worship that change each week but are used at all four worship times (prayers, scripture readings, dialogs etc…). These changes need to be prepared up to six weeks in advance so that the teams of people who now choose the music for each service can coordinate the music choices with the theme and message for the day.

This variety also means that we have to prepare five bulletins to help people follow the order of worship. One bulletin has all the community announcements and an outline of the orders of worship. It is given to those who come to worship. Then we have a separate “leader’s” bulletin for each of the four services with more details and cues for the musicians and worship leaders.

Instead of a hymnal we use a computer, a projector and a screen to put all the lyrics to songs and hymns, scripture readings and prayers in front of the congregation. All of these things need to be put into the special presentation software not once, but four different times; once for each service. And heaven forbid that we put these words up on plain backgrounds. Artwork needs to be found, purchased or designed to enhance the entire worship experience and tie in with the themes and messages of the week.

Using the projector and screen also means that when I preach I have to prepare pictures and words to put on the screen. To do that I spend time searching for pictures on the internet or modifying pictures with Photoshop and then create a graphic presentation to go along with my sermon. This has easily added two hours to my preparations each time I preach.

All this extra work has been created just for worship. It doesn’t include required duties like teaching confirmation, staff meetings, council meetings, committee meetings and fellowship events. Each of these also has a certain amount of prep time and follow-up time. All of these things are primarily about keeping the institutional church running.

It doesn’t leave a lot of time or creative energy to explore new ways of being the church. As a woodcarver and someone who likes to dabble in other artistic ventures I know the importance of having enough time to let thoughts and ideas percolate before a vision or idea can take shape in your head. The church used to leave room for pastors and leaders to do that kind of thinking and reflection. But the extra worship styles, the outreach programs and the need to fund them all have robbed church leaders of that time. The irony is that these things are started in an attempt to breathe new life into the church and welcome in new people. But again, is making more people members of the church the same as making disciples of Jesus? (See my earlier post in this series Recruiting for Christ).

Concluding Thoughts

Ultimately this leads me back to the place that I started from. Should I expect the church in its present form to be transformed to meet the needs of the emerging culture? Or is something new being born outside the traditional confines that we have called church? But as my spiritual director recently reminded me, the Church is bigger than the membership of every congregation and as a disciple of Jesus a person could be working for the Church even if they no longer worked within the church. Maybe so many young adults are leaving the institutional church, not because there is anything inherently wrong with it, but because they are being led by the Spirit to start what will become a new expression of the church.

The only thing I know for sure is that I wish I had more time to explore together what it all means.

Being Slow to Change

This is the ninth post in a series about ways that I have missed the mark as a pastor. It began as a response to several articles about why young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here if you want some background to this current article.

 I apologize for being slow and unresponsive to the need for change because it’s easier to follow the path of least resistance (and there is tremendous resistance to the changes we are faced with).

I believe we are in midst of changes in our culture and our world of Biblical proportions. I know this is hard to prove and that times of change always feel like they are much bigger than they turn out to be. But I’m not the only one who believes this is so. Watch this brief (3 min.) video by Phyliss Tickle. She is the one who first gave structure and words to what I had been noticing in our world.

In addition to the “500 year rummage sale” I would also add that some of these transition points in Judeo-Christian history also coincide with significant advances in information technology. The Exodus, and the beginnings of Judaism as a communal faith, happened shortly after the invention of alphabets and using clay tablets to keep records. Some scholars believe that the Ten Commandments were the first set of religious laws codified in writing. The great Transformation and the writing of the New Testament took place at about the time that animal skin scrolls were being replaced by the cheaper and easier to make papyrus. This allowed the Gospels and Paul’s letters to be easily copied and distributed. And every student of the reformation knows the roll that Gutenberg’s printing press played in distributing catechisms, leaflets and even Bibles to more and more people.

Today the changes in information technology are astounding. Computers, smart phones and search technologies have simply transformed the way we store information (digitally), the way that it is shared (social media sites) and access we have to that information (all the time and everywhere). These changes are fundamentally changing the way we understand ourselves as humans and the way we are connected in community. At the risk of exposing myself as a TED Talk junkie here is a video talk by Amber Case (who calls herself a cyborg anthropologist) making a case for the ways technology is making us even more human.

When we begin to think about ourselves as people and as communities in different ways than we have in the past we get into all sorts of murky waters. In the past 100 years our culture has been struggling with gender roles and sexual orientation. We see changes in the relationship between parents and children at all stages of life. Work roles are changing from the thought that we are only a cog in the machine to being part of a collaborative team. We argue about our place in the earth’s ecology and just how much impact we really have. And what can it possibly mean for how we understand our place in the universe when we start imagining multiple universes or the simple fact that our universe is so much larger than we ever imagined?

The truth is, trying to keep up with the changes on a personal level is exhausting. Trying to make sure that a whole congregation full of people keeps up is even harder. As a rule, people are resistant to change. Change on this magnitude and at this speed only make it worse. Additionally,  many believe the church should provide an anchor in the storm of change or that it should provide black-and-white answers to a world that is shaded in gray.

I’ve been involved in this business of change in the church for over 20 years now. At times we debate (and debate and debate). Other times we wait to see what happens. And yet other times push to make the changes only to find that it is only one step in a process that is going to take many more steps. So for the fact that I am so tired of pushing for change and trying to get people to even see the need for change that I sometimes just give up, I’m sorry.

The world needs more than this from the church and its leaders. We need to be more inclusive in our conversations and try harder to understand what people are experiencing in these changes. We need to let the gospel speak to us all. And we have to understand that it is okay if we don’t understand it all. Perhaps the time for reflection will come when the changes have run their course. Maybe what we need now is to simply help one another through it.

Doubt and Certainty

After taking a few days off from the blog to prepare and participate in the religious observances of Easter weekend I’m back at it. I had hoped to finish this series during Holy Week but found that I ran out of time and energy. This is the eighth post in a series about ways that I have missed the mark as a pastor. It is a response to several articles about why young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here if you want some background to this current article.

I participate in a church culture in which any kind of doubt is viewed as suspect and I tend to hide my own struggles with faith behind a veneer of certainty. For that I am sorry.

Well, I did it again. Just yesterday. As the pastor who led Easter worship said, “He is risen!” I responded, “He is risen indeed!” The thing is, I didn’t just join in this Easter tradition.  I was the one who pieced together the parts of the liturgy in which we said it. I was responsible for including it in our worship.

For a Christian there is no more important article of belief. We believe that Jesus rose from the dead. To affirm that belief with certainty has been the definition of Christianity for a very long time. A Christian is someone who believes that Jesus is God and that he died on a cross and was raised from the dead. It has codified in creeds and doctrines for thousands of years. For many, many people, if you can’t say that Jesus is risen from the dead with certainty then you aren’t really a Christian.

As a part of the religious establishment I find myself participating in this culture out of habit and out of a sense of obligation. These are the things that have been passed on to me. It is what I have been taught in my upbringing and in seminary. It would seem downright weird to hear the congregation respond to “He is risen!” with a resounding, “We have no doubt something important happened but can’t be certain exactly what.” I can call what I do tradition but when tradition fails to convey meaning then it has simply devolved into a habit for me.

The problem is that traditions do carry meaning for a lot of people. Just because it has lost its meaning in my life doesn’t mean that it has lost meaning for everyone. So I feel obligated to use forms of liturgy that convey certainty of belief for other’s sake.

One of the biggest surprises I have found in ministry is the way people pin their beliefs on their pastor. Peter Rollins explores this in his book Insurrection at length. In my experience people have attacked me for expressing even the slightest bit of doubt or for even questioning an article of faith. It seems that many people simply want to believe in belief. When they struggle in their own lives to believe, they want to know that someone has the kind of unshakable belief they aspire to. Often that person is a pastor. So when the pastor hints at personal doubt it forces others to deal with their own questions and uncertainty.  Maybe forcing them to do that is the loving thing to do. But this comes at a pretty serious cost to the pastor who is willing to do that. People will try to destroy or get rid of pastor as being “unfaithful” before they turn to the pain of their own shaky faith.

The other reason I hide my own struggles with faith is because it can indeed feel like I have lost my faith. It can feel like I’m abandoning so much of what I believe when I start asking myself questions like, “Can I be a Christian even if I admit some uncertainty about Jesus’ resurrection?” or “Is this passage from the Bible really what God wants for us or was it inserted by someone for other reasons?”  If I combine these feelings of lost faith with the insistence of others to be rock-solid-certain of my beliefs then add that to the sense of obligation I have for those who rely on the traditional forms of expressing faith, I sometimes feel like I have no choice but to hide my struggles behind a veneer of certainty.

One of the most amazing discoveries that I have made recently is that I can enter these places of doubt and questioning and still have a strong faith without ever coming to a resolution about them. There is something much deeper than the questions and doubts. And as unsettling as doubts and questions can be I also find a great comfort and even joy in the fact that I can explore these dark places. Now as I read the Bible I see more and more uncertainty written within its pages. I see people and communities struggling to come to grips with the meaning of life. Sometimes they choose ways that prove to be beneficial and sometimes they choose ways that aren’t.  I’m also finding that I enjoy working with people who want to engage their own faith on a deeper level by struggling with questions and doubt.

The question that haunts me right now is whether or not the culture of certainty that has taken root in the church can be transformed. I am skeptical but not without hope. When I read articles by people who are leaving the church but staying engaged in their faith it gives me hope that even if the church can’t be transformed, a new way of being church will be born that will welcome all doubts and questions as a path to greater faith.

The Tidiness of Doctrine

This is the seventh post in a series about ways that I have missed the mark as a pastor. It is a response to several articles about why young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here if you want some background to this current article.

I’m sorry that I engage so much of what is happening in our culture and our world on a doctrinal level and not as a matter of faith that is sometimes messy and unsure.

My faith lives in my head.

This is one of the main criticisms of the mainline Church in America and Lutherans are champions of this kind of faith. It’s why we are so good at theology. We think about faith. This was the faith in which I was raised and, as one of my favorite songwriters penned it, “you can only grow the way the wind blows.”

But it’s also where I find I am most engaged with God. I love to meditate and reflect on what I see God doing in the world. I can spend hours trying to sort out the relationships that we humans have with both creation and the creator. I find peace while listening for the Divine to speak in a variety of ways (except when I experience frustration at hearing nothing or hearing something that I don’t want to hear). I find joy whenever a new insight inches me closer to understanding what this life is all about.

To be honest, though, I like living out my faith in my head because it’s safe. It’s like sharing your faith in a sermon. Many people think that preaching in front of a large group is difficult but, once you get over the fear of public speaking, you soon find that sharing what you are thinking in a place where people aren’t (usually) welcome to respond, refute or rebuff can make a person pretty bold. (If you haven’t already, see my post from a couple days ago From Authority to Resource to get an idea of the kind of authority that is granted in preaching.)

I also like to let my faith live in my head because it is always a bit neater and more tidy than in the world of emotions. I can sort things out and categorize them. I can rationalize and reason. I can remove myself from the roller-coaster ride that emotions take us through. Again, it’s all about finding a safe place. So when someone comes to me with the raw emotion of life’s messy issues overflowing around them, retreating to the safe confines of religious doctrine is my first response for all these reasons.

The thing that I am being forced to learn is that faith doesn’t lead to a safe place. That’s where we want to end up: In a place of safety and comfort. But faith (and life) leads us to places of risk. As one conference presenter put it, the major stories of the Bible are all about leaving home, over and over again. Life is a constant leaving of the places where we have become comfortable in order to risk and grow, not just for ourselves but to help others grow as well.

I am constantly learning and relearning the importance of staying in the moment no matter how thrilling or anxiety-producing it is. I am a firm believer in a ministry of presence; just being there with people in their sufferings and joys. But it is never my default mode of ministry (or existence). I have to catch myself as I turn to doctrine to tidy up a messy situation and be mindful to just sit within the pain, the tension and even the delight. That doesn’t mean I can’t reflect upon it later or that I can’t help someone else reflect on it when they are ready. It just means that sometimes I have to experience life before I try to make sense out of it.

Obliviously

This is the sixth post in a series about ways that I have missed the mark as a pastor. It is a response to several articles about why young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here if you want some background to this current article.

For being oblivious to the deeper concerns of your life that peek out at the edges of our conversations, I am sorry.

This one is on  me. Personally.

I’m just not very good at listening to what is buried in our conversations.

I know pastors who can scan their congregation during worship and identify the people who are struggling with something in life. They can, with just a word or a look as they shake hands, determine that something is amiss and they are sure to give a call or drop a note to invite that person to open up. And it isn’t just a gift that some pastors seem to have. I’m sure you know someone who just seems to be able to tell when you are down and they have this way of making you feel better in the midst of your suffering.

But it’s not me.

Oblivious is the right word here. I am usually so wrapped up in my own head that I can’t even tell you how I’m feeling, let alone be aware of what the people around me are feeling. No matter how hard I try (and believe me, I do) I can’t seem to get the hang of it. I don’t believe it’s a matter selfishness either. I believe that it’s a spiritual gift; one that I don’t have.

That doesn’t mean that I have an excuse to be unsympathetic. It just means that people need to spell things out in order for me to catch on. And a lot of times they can’t because they don’t know what’s bothering them. But other times it gets buried in our conversations because it’s hard to open up and let one’s self be vulnerable.

It sometimes amazes me that I still have a job when I think about the number of times someone thought they had opened up to me in a vulnerable way and I just missed it. Then my obliviousness is interpreted as uncaring or even contempt. By the time it finally gets back to me, and someone explains what I was supposed to see in the first place I have a lot of apologizing to do. And sometimes, unfortunately, it is not enough.

I wish I could blame this one on our shifting culture, or on the fact that I am busy making sure other aspects of my job are complete. But I can’t. This is just one that I’m not good at and I’m sorry. Just please don't stop trying.

And speaking of being vulnerable: Here are a couple of talks by professor and researcher Brene Brown on the subject. They are well worth the time to watch. Both videos are about 21 minutes apiece. I hope you enjoy them.

From Authority to Resource

This is the fourth post in a series about ways that I have missed the mark as a pastor. It is a response to several articles about why young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here if you want some background to this current article.

For believing that the one-size-fits-all model of spirituality and piety was ever a real thing that could be attained with enough training or persuasion, I apologize.

As I go through this week I am finding that writing these gets harder and harder. I have been struggling with this one for years and I find that I am not the only one who has trouble with it. Lay people are struggling with this one too.

In a wonderful TED Talk about learning through our mistakes, educator Diana Laufenberg shares how her grandmother attended a one room school house to be educated. She went because that’s where the knowledge was: stored in the teacher’s mobile memory device (her brain). When Diana was a student her parents bought a set of encyclopedias. She didn’t need to go to the library anymore to get information for a report since she had access to a reliable memory device at home (books). Today, with computers and even smart phones we no longer have to go where the information is. It comes to us. Instantly.

This change in where we store and retrieve the knowledge we need to learn and grow means that the principal role of the educator has changed. A teacher is no longer the authority who carries information in order to pass it along to someone else. A teacher is now someone who facilitates interactive, self-directed learning. It is a process that avoids rote memorization of facts in favor of learning by exploration.

The same can be said about church. I was trained to be the local authority on spirituality, scripture and doctrine. People came to church to learn what God said through the scriptures. Pastors and priests taught spiritual practices that reinforced what they said from the front of the church. We even wear clothes that symbolized the learning and authority we had acquired. (The clerical collar is a modernized version of the old doctoral collars worn by professors. In some denominations the pastor’s robe is similar to a graduation gown.)  

The thing about teaching a large number of people at one time is that you have to find a way that reaches everyone in the group. Basically, you have to find a one-size-fits-all piety. Then you try to cram everyone into that shape. You repeat it over and over from the front of the congregation. You back it up with bible studies printed by your denominational printing house. You invite other authorities with the same view point to “give a fresh perspective” to the congregation. And you limit the knowledge that you pass on, in part because you yourself have limited knowledge and in part because it's easier that way.

But in a world where finding information about other spiritual traditions and beliefs is as easy as typing a question into a phone or computer, people don’t need an authority. I am no longer the mobile memory device for spirituality in the community. I am another resource in the spiritual journey of each individual. At best I can serve as a trusted guide as people explore their own spiritual path. One size does not fit all in this new world. It probably didn’t in the past either but we all make do with what we are given.

In my ordination I promised to uphold the doctrine of the church (with the assumption that my tradition was the one who did, in fact, hold on to THE correct doctrine of all that is holy). I promised to be an authority. But now I see that what the community needs is a trusted resource. The transition from an authority to trusted resource is a humbling and difficult transition. In many ways it feels messy and out-of-control.

Moving from authority to resource means stepping away from the front of the community and walking with people where they are. It means letting go of the need to control details. It means being available when an individual is ready, not making them be ready when I am available. It’s a lot more one-on-one. It’s an overwhelming task in a large congregation. As people walk their own path they will make mistakes. They will venture beyond the bounds of “correct doctrine.” As they serve in the church community as part of their spiritual journey they will pass along bad ideas and misinformation about the faith. But they will also inspire others and give birth to new ways of understanding the mystery of the Holy.

Many lay people resist this transition because it means they have to be responsible for their own life of faith and that's a difficult thing to do. So I feel caught between the people who want me to serve as guide and those who want me to serve as authority. I find that doing both is impossible. I flip-flop back and forth and am aware that this isn’t helping. I am hearing God’s call to make the transition to resource/guide but don’t know how to do it. I’m still waiting to see how that might happen. 

Reducing Ministry to Numbers

This is the fourth post in a series about ways that I have missed the mark as a pastor. It is a response to several articles about why young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here if you want some background to this current article.

I apologize for using the metrics of business to evaluate the success of our programs as if the effectiveness of ministry can be determined by numbers, charts and graphs.

Here’s where it gets really difficult to apologize. I believe that one of the reasons the Church is so slow to change is that we rarely evaluate what we do. We assume that because something worked in the past it will continue to work just as well in the future. So we need to look with a critical eye at what we do to determine its effectiveness. Unfortunately we have adopted evaluation tools from the world of business where efficiency and profitability are the goals. Even when a congregation can come to some kind of agreement about its goals (which is rare) finding a way to accurately evaluate what it does is almost impossible.

I remember the first time I asked a group of church leaders, “Why are we here?” We were sitting in the church basement on metal folding chairs huddled against the darkness that enveloped most of the room since there was no reason to light the whole room if we were just sitting in one section. After a brief silence someone asked, “You mean tonight?”

“No,” I said. “I mean why is the church here? Why do we keep going to all the trouble of being a church here in this community?”

If you ever want people to look at you like you were the biggest moron walking the face of the earth become a pastor and ask people to explain the purpose of the church as if you had no idea. That particular night the best reason they could come up with was along the lines of, “Because that’s the way it is supposed to be.”

Over the past 20 years congregations have become better at defining their purpose and goals. My experience is that it helps a congregation understand that they can’t live up to everyone’s expectations.  In Acts 6 the disciples wrestle with the issue of how to best use their time in service to others when some in the community begin to complain. They eventually decide that a particular ministry is important enough to continue doing but that it needed to be done by someone other than the 12 apostles. Even in the early church they struggled with both the purpose of the church and evaluating the effectiveness and details of the ministry.

In addition to simply needing a way to evaluate what we do I am also acutely aware that we have limited resources at our disposal. I have to be a good steward of what I have been given responsibility for. People also want to know that their money is being used wisely. If I can’t demonstrate some kind of return on their investment I can be sure that they will find ways to be generous with their time and finances in other places.

The problem is that the effectiveness of ministry can’t be shown using the metrics of efficiency and profitability. How do I evaluate the effectiveness of sitting with someone as they die? What level of efficiency is required to maintain a ministry that feeds the hungry without getting taken in by scam artists? What multiple choice answers do you put on a questionnaire to determine the impact of a sermon? How do I evaluate the internal response that parents and kids have when they see me supporting them at sporting events or music concerts? How do we determine whether it is a more profitable to use pastoral time having coffee with a congregation member or praying for the people who participate in ministries by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless or mentoring at-risk youth?

These things don’t fit on charts and graphs. There are no numbers that can easily translate the effectiveness of ministry that isn’t meant to be efficient. This was the struggle that met the disciples when the woman anointed Jesus with the expensive perfume (Matthew 26). The disciples saw a more efficient and practical use for the perfume but Jesus praised the extravagance of the act both for its symbolism and for the way it demonstrated the woman’s love and devotion to Jesus. We just can’t put numbers on love and devotion.

I want to be extravagant and generous with the love and resources that I have at my disposal. But I want to be a good steward too. I feel trapped. There is a need to evaluate what we do as a Church but the metrics of business can’t be the tool that we use. So for the way I have reduced people to percentages, statistics and numbers I’m sorry. 

Recruiting for Christ

This is the third post in a series about ways that I have missed the mark as a pastor. It is a response to several articles about why young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here if you want some background to this current article.

I’m sorry for the way I deceive myself and others about the real reasons for evangelism. Honestly, my evangelism has a lot to do with recruiting people to share the burden of ministry with their time, talent and treasures.

I am an introverted Lutheran of Scandinavian and German descent. Evangelism is not something I do eagerly. Or often. I just can’t seem to engage a stranger in a discussion about something as deeply personal as faith. And yet Jesus commands his disciples to go and make more disciples. (Matthew 28)

The way that I’ve done this over the years is to adopt a Field of Dreams approach to evangelism: Build it and they will come. I have focused my time on developing inspiring worship, engaging classes and programs, and fun fellowship activities. Then I employ “bridge events” that encourage congregation members to invite friends to “come and see” in the hope that they will want to become a part of the congregation.

I have begun to see that this type of evangelism is all about recruiting people to become members of the congregation (see yesterday’s post When Faithful Looks Like Me). The true reasons for my congregation’s evangelical efforts are revealed when we speak with muted hope about prospective new people who will help us do the work and support the congregation’s programs with financial gifts. Now there is nothing wrong with inviting people to invest their time and treasures in ministry. The underlying hope, however,  is that someone will take my place, do my work and pay my share. We want more people involved so we don’t have to do as much.

It’s taken me 20 years to see it but my approach to evangelism creates an addictive cycle: I create programs and worship designed to get people to join the church. More people in the pews equals more money in the offering plate. More money the plate means more resources to hire staff and create new programs and better worship. Investing in programs and worship draws more people. It just keeps going.

  If another organization invited me to join them with thinly-veiled promises of fellowship and fun and then expected me to joyfully hand over two or more hours every week and a percentage of my paycheck for the rest of my life I would be very suspicious. Yet here I am doing that very thing.

So how do I keep Jesus’ command to make disciples without selfish, ulterior motives? What does evangelism look like in a church that isn’t trying to fill the pews and offering plates? Is it even possible?

My gut instinct is that evangelism has to do with showing people, with my words and actions, how close the kingdom of God is to this life. It’s about caring for people without regard to getting something in return. It’s more about the way I live than about where I belong. In fact, it actually begins to look like ministry and service, not recruiting. 

When Faithful Only Looks Like Me

I am sorry for assuming that the only way to live a faithful life is the way that I do it, within the confines of a congregation like mine.

 First of all I need to come to terms with the fact that I make this assumption regularly. I see it in the way I am disappointed when people won’t commit to a program that we implement. I hear it in staff meetings when we (with loving intention) refer to people who don’t belong to a church community as people whose lives are less-than-complete. Whenever I nod my head or commiserate along with another church member about those who “just don’t get it,” I live out the assumption that non-members are not as fulfilled or blessed as I am.

I think the obvious reason I do this is because it has been drilled into my head to think this way. Belonging to the community of believers is a large part of what Christianity is all about. And what better way to show that you belong than by participating in the activities of the community. Growing up, and even in seminary, I was taught that we are in competition. No one ever called it a competition but faith has always been referred to in terms of  “We” and “Them.” “We believe this way. They believe that way.” It was implicit in the descriptions of faith. You are one of us if you believe and behave the way we do. You are not one of us if you do otherwise. The social ramifications of being in a group or exiled from it are buried so deep in our heads that we barely recognize them even when they are pointed out.

Another reason that I assume the only way to live a faithful life is within a congregation like mine is because I want my work and my life to be validated. As a pastor I want to know that the work that I do has meaning and value to others. So as I preach and lead worship, as I teach classes and try to inspire people to live more selfless lives I want to know that it’s happening. For many reason I’ve come to equate participation in church activities with changed lives. No matter how many times I tell myself  that I am just planting seeds I really want to see the harvest to know whether or not my planting has been in vain.

As a pastor it is also easy to let the church become my whole world. I’m here at the church building or meeting with other church leaders or members almost constantly. I take continuing education classes sponsored by church agencies  My friends are members of the church or other pastors. It is a very insulated world in which I live.

A few years ago I began to get out of this insulated world. I took a continuing education class sponsored by the local university. Through that program I have met a several people who have shown me that Christ is at work outside of the church as much as in it. Then as part of a volunteer opportunity at my children’s high school I began meeting people who lived in very Christ-like ways even though they didn’t belong to a congregation. The peace, patience, kindness and forgiveness that I saw in them was in direct contradiction to a lot of the infighting I saw within the church.

Both of these experiences have helped me see another reason I continually make this assumption. It has to do with arrogant self-righteousness. I want to believe that I’ve made the right decision. I want to feel good about my decisions in life. Whenever someone decides to participate in a congregation like mine it’s like someone congratulating me for being on the winning team. Whenever someone goes elsewhere I find that I rationalize their decision so it doesn’t reflect negatively on me.

I want to believe that community of believers is much more than the people who show up for worship on Sunday morning. At some level I believe that it is. But I also want to be able to see it. I want to point at it. I want it to be visible when I have been told it is like the wind or like yeast in bread dough.  I can know that it’s there I just can’t separate it out and draw a circle around it.

Changing the way I think about this is turning out to be a long, slow transition made even harder by the abundance of people within the church who make the same assumption. With each passing comment I am reminded of my own false assumptions and my limited view of the work the Spirit is doing in the world. I understand the impatience of waiting for me (or others in the church) to bring my thinking alongside the evidence that I am being shown.

So please don’t believe that you have to belong to a church to be a part of the Church. The Spirit will provide community and support as you need it. Be open to the opportunities for fellowship, learning and worship that look different than they have in the past. That is where you will find the Church in faithful living.

With Apologies

Recently I have read some blogs by people who, by all accounts I can see, are God-centered people. What they have been writing about is why they, or others, have left the church. (Here are a couple by Christian Piatt: Seven Reasons Why Young Adults Quit Church and Four More BIG Reasons Young Adults Quit Church and one by Rachel Held Evans: 15 Reasons I Left the Church.)

My first response to these articles is, “Yeah. Me too.” These are the reasons I want to leave the church. But I can’t seem to do it for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that, as a pastor, my family and I depend on the paycheck that I collect for being a part of the church.  I truly believe that the Holy Spirit it at work outside of the institutional church and I want to be at work where the Holy Spirit is but I’m genuinely having trouble making the transition.

My second response is that I want to apologize. I want to apologize on behalf of the Church. But I can't. I can only apologize for the way that I have represented the Church as a leader and for the way that I have participated in the very things that have driven people away. I apologize for: