The Discouraged Church Seeker, Part Three: When Your Opinion Probably Doesn’t Matter

1 The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, ² as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:

⁴ And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵ The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. ⁶ John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷ And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. ⁸ I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

In Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans writes,

Two thousand years later, John’s call remains a wilderness call, a cry from the margins. Because we religious types are really good at building walls and retreating to temples. We’re good at making mountains out of our ideologies, obstructions out of our theologies, and hills out of our screwed-up notions of who’s in and who’s out, who’s worthy and who’s unworthy. We’re good at getting in the way. Perhaps we’re afraid that if we move, God might use people and methods we don’t approve of, that rules will be broken and theologies questioned. Perhaps we’re afraid that if we get out of the way, this grace thing might get out of hand. Well, guess what? It already has.

So here we are. Part 3 (you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here). Which, I confess, involves some supposition on my part.

Here’s the thing: as I sat through the membership class at Church X, asking my questions and listening to other people asking their questions, the pastor gave the same answer at least four times in about fifteen minutes.

What he said: “Well, we’ve been doing this for six years, and it works for us.”

What I heard: We’re not interested in what you think we should try to do differently. We’re not interested in what might not work for you. We’re not open to feedback or input. We’re not open to change. We don’t want you enough to make room for you, to come alongside you, do your already existent life with you.

Or, If you don’t like how we do things, there’s the door.

He did offer to discuss people’s concerns in more detail outside the class, but my gut told me his offer was lip service, a means of ending the questions for the time being. And maybe–just maybe–I’m wrong. But even if I am, what matters was how I felt as I listened and questioned and shared. What I felt was unwelcome. Shut down. Like the smart kid in the front row challenging the teacher’s authority. Like the outsider who needs a pat on the head because I obviously don’t know what I’m talking about–you know, because I’m an outsider. I felt like my questions were a challenge, a nuisance, an irritation.

We’re not threats–not to Jesus or to the gospel or to the Great Commission. We’re not threats to love and friendship and grace. We’re not heathens in need of Christianity 101, either. We’re Christians who moved, for goodness’ sake. We’re looking for a family. We hold out our gifts with open hands. We simply want to connect and love and serve and learn and grow and be where Jesus is.

But I suppose, to the pastor of the six-year-old Church X, my questions might have sounded pretty threatening.

In Out of Sorts, Sarah Bessey writes,

One of the great surprises of the Church is the space to ask questions. Sure, there are some places and communities where that isn’t true; but in the Church overall, there is likely room for you–room to learn and change. And then to learn you’re not alone. We have company for the journey. There is a long legacy of troublemakers and question askers; there’s a lot more room than we think.

This is my hope–that there is a church where there is room for us to learn and change and ask questions and feel welcome here in Memphis. A church that is itself willing to learn and change and make room for us–who we are, just as we are. Because I will undoubtedly always be a troublemaker and a question asker. I’m never going to fit in a prescribed box. It’s not something I’m worried about, though, because I feel I’m in good company. Jesus was the greatest troublemaker, question asker, and status quo challenger of all time.

It grieved me to walk out of that membership class thinking we might not be coming back. That we’d possibly spent three months of our lives on a church that was never going to be the right fit for us. That we likely have to start over yet again, and if so, I have to tell L she won’t be going back to Sunday school. Oh, I suppose we could just continue to warm the pews in order to maintain our weekend continuity, but we want so much more than that. We want Acts 2.

Then, a couple of days ago, one of the women I’d met at Church X messaged me on Facebook. She’d read my earlier posts. She was shocked and saddened by our experience, and she wanted to reach out and tell me, she said, that the church we’d been introduced to in the membership class wasn’t the one she wanted to be a member of, either.

She wrote,

For days, I’ve been prayerfully considering how to best form a response that does not come across as defensive or seeking justification. And I certainly do not presume to speak on behalf of church leadership, simply as someone who loves and serves at [Church X], as imperfect as it is, with the absolute intention of swinging wide the doors for any and all who seek Christ . . . Within the reality of the Mid-South church culture, [Church X] was the first out of many churches where [my family] felt comfortable inviting absolutely anyone. Whether we agree with certain things or not, in our experience this is as close as we’ve been able to come to a more inclusive place where people can seek Jesus wherever they are on their journey. I know we are not perfect as a church, but I do feel like we have been a place where people who have been rejected in the past have found a place to be welcomed. Certainly that is my vision and I thought it was the vision of our leadership. . . . But if people are walking away from [the church] feeling like we are exclusive gatekeepers, not only is that a major problem, but it is exactly the opposite of what literally every member I know wants.

The deep acceptance and authentic relationship and common vision of the gospel [at Church X] is unlike anything I’ve ever found anywhere else . . . That being said, I’m troubled by your experience and have some wrestling to do with how to respond to it exactly. I’m back to just having faith that God is working this confusing situation out for good somehow. I’m fervently praying for you to have the discernment and clarity you need in this situation. I’m hopeful that a conversation with [our pastor] would address your concerns and give you the opportunity to be heard, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little apprehensive for you now. I know how painful it would be if it didn’t go well, but unfortunately, I can’t think of an alternative course of action. I like to think that the hearts of our leadership are as genuine and intentionally gospel-centered as they were on the day they began [Church X]. It will be a problem for me if that turns out to no longer be the case. Until I’m able to figure that out, I just have to trust God in the tension. And I’m trying to trust him for you and your family as well.

Her message made me pause and consider who the church really is. Is it the pastor? No. Is it the membership covenant with all its constraints? No. The church is people–her and the others she refers to, who want so deeply to be part of an inclusive community that’s following Jesus.

Since I got her message, I’ve been wrestling with the idea of setting up a meeting with the pastor to lay out our concerns–not as a bid for change, but because if you’re going to walk out of a church, the right and just thing might be to tell someone why, even if the information is not well received. It’s biblical principle (see Matthew 18) that if someone injures you, you should go to that person about it.

There’s no earthly reason why the pastor should embrace what I have to say–I’m just a visitor of a few months, an “outsider,” as he put it. He doesn’t know me any better than he knows the next person walking down the street. There’s no reason for him to afford me any credibility. And all signs indicate that he won’t. But I’m asking myself, as a member of the universal church, what is my responsibility to this little local church? What is my responsibility to the people who may walk through its doors after we leave? What is my responsibility to the person who reached out to me so lovingly? To the other members who, she claims, want to serve an inclusive church?

For that matter, what might God be trying to do here? What if he wants the pastor to hear what we have to say?

I thought this would be the last post in this series, but now I’m not certain. Like my faithful friend, I’m now trusting God in the tension, asking him what he wants us to do. If he is truly calling us to have a conversation, we know we have to go into it out of obedience alone, with palms open, expecting nothing in return. This is never an easy posture–not when you have a stirred-up heart.

Stay tuned.