Why We Left the Church
I grew up in church. It was very evangelical focused, always bringing in new people and doing alter calls. But the numbers never grew, as there were always as many people leaving as there were coming in. The leaders at the church always painted it a certain way; like some people can just never be happy, always looking for something that isn’t here, easily offended when called out for their lifestyles. When I asked my mom one time why people were leaving, she said that every one had a shelf life there. At some point, everyone would leave, even us, in time, it was just different for everyone. As an adult, I can see how the pastor was relentless in his pursuit of new, but wasn’t great at taking care of those who were there, serving. There were very strict rules of conduct to lead and if you disagreed, it was his way or the highway.
I also grew up attending Christian schools. We learned about different church doctrine, history, memorizing scripture and even using it as facts in research papers. When we were newly married, early twenties, we joined a church plant. It had a lot of other young couples, mostly seminary students, we easily connected with. In a lot of ways, it gave us community and like minded friends, some of which we are still friends with today. We quickly got plugged in small groups and volunteering. Jake played guitar in the worship band 3 out of 4 Sundays a week. I became the volunteer communications and events director, in charge of the website, weekly bulletins, volunteer sign ups and events. We easily volunteering 10+ hours per week with our church, happily, for awhile at least. When a new idea of keeping church members accountable to tithing 10% by asking them to share their income amounts to the church was suggested, Jake adamantly opposed it in a meeting, causing the pastor to ask him to lunch the next day. At that meeting the pastor told him to never question him in public again or we would be asked to leave the church. Shortly after, we left on our own.
After leaving that church, I prayed daily for many years that that specific church was doing more good than harm. I was worried about the people who were still there and how they were being impacted. At the time, I thought it was just that unhealthy church. I hadn’t begun to unpack the environment of the church I grew up in. Instead, I kept it neatly tucked away in my brain and heart, in a nice little package.
Next we joined a mega church. It felt like the first healthy church we had ever attended. I felt so lucky, for many years, that we found the church we could raise our future children in and feel good about. Several years in, I ended up on staff again, as the communications director, but this time as a job, not as a volunteer. There were so many questions I had about the way things were set up or programs we were building that I never got clear answers for. Looking back, there were so many red flags I ignored. I told myself there must be something I’m not understanding that others do, with a blind trust my best interest and God’s will were the driving force for these decisions. I didn’t realize what a dangerous place that was to be. Not that church, that mentality.
Even after stepping down from being on staff when I had my our first daughter, I told the pastor that being behind the scenes reassured me even more how happy I was to attend church there. I put a lot of faith into that place, as many of us do. I had reconciled the fact that there is no perfect church, but felt maybe ours was pretty close. When I would hear of church scandals I would reassure myself, that my church was healthy, and it wouldn’t happen there. Until it did.
After leaving that church amidst a surprising scandal, we hadn’t really landed on a new church home yet. We were attending different places, but reluctant to get plugged in like we had been in the past. During the Covid lockdown we stopped attending church for the safety of our young children and the more time that went by, the less important it felt to go back to weekly attendance. The draw to church and the guilt for missing started to diminish. We started to revel in our slow Sunday mornings as a family, without the rushing, and dressing up and showing our Sunday best. We were no longer volunteering in the capacities that we had in the past and it was refreshing to not have that responsibility. We were able to finally admit we were burnt out. We even started to wonder if our slow Sundays as a family, enjoying quality time, might even being serving God more than the hustle and bustle of what we were used to. I started to finally understand the song, Easy Like a Sunday Morning. I never understood it before, because Sundays volunteering and getting small kids to church on time never felt easy!
When we were engrossed in church culture, I wasn’t able to see my signs of burn out or the guilt and shame that stemmed from it. I was so deeply devote I would never question if those feelings were good, bad or healthy. And there lies the problem. There were times I felt and was even told, that I couldn’t stop serving because if I did, who else would do it? I had been told that my job, as a volunteer, was to fulfill that role whether I wanted to or not. If I couldn’t do it, I had to find a replacement and if I couldn’t, tough, the job had to be done. Whether it brought me joy or dread didn’t matter. I felt trapped in the way that I truly did have a choice to leave, but felt I couldn’t. There have been a handful of my friends from church who all left around the same time, for similar reasons and haven’t returned. As I have been removed from church, I have been able to unpack some of the unhealthy belief systems taught to me at each one. I’ve allowed myself to see with fresh eyes the shame I’ve carried, the pressure to be a certain way and give of our time and resources. I’ve begun to not only unpack it, but label it as church hurt, something I thought I was untouched from. I’ve been able to see the ways the belief systems shaped me and how many of them didn’t serve me well. And throughout that process I realized, it wasn’t just that one church doing more harm than good, but maybe every church.
Now I know what some of you are thinking, that this is a blog written by a jaded Christian, with church hurt, a former church staffer who’s angry and broken. That maybe I am unwilling to forgive from a situation in the past, that was unique to that one church. In the past, I would have thought the same thing. That is actually far from the truth. Not only have I been able to acknowledge the unhelpful truths I clung to in the past, false truths, shame and guilt, but I have also been able to find healing and peace. Call me an optimist, but I still have hope for the church. I still see good in the church. I see how it can bring people community, purpose, and hope. It did for me for many years. I see how it can serve those inside the church and the needs of the community around it. But I also see how it can bring people shame, judgement and pain, not just for those who attend the church, but outside of it as well.
I struggle with the idea that the place that is supposed to feel safest to all, can be the very place we feel most judged. That the place where we are told to come as you are, isn’t actually very open to us doing that at all. Most don’t want us to come with our questions or doubts. That maybe they feel threatened by them, or worse, it will hurt their bottom line, the amount of money coming in. I struggle with my truth that when we were hurting most, struggling in figuring out how to be young and married, we told no one we were in weekly small group with, so no one judged us. We felt if we told our truth, they would no longer accept us. I ache for my LGBTQ friends who have a heart to serve God, who show up and learn later that the church views their sexual identity as wrong; proving that if we show our real self, we will be rejected. I wrestle with politics and Christian nationalism being preached from the pulpit, male dominated leadership, and fear based rhetoric in so many churches. I struggle with the fact that for years I was taught about the Bible primarily through a male lens. That my formative years in youth group, I was taught weekly about the dangers of sex, my duty to serve my future husband and the way to modestly cover my body to not tempt anyone, from a middle aged man forming the way I viewed my body, sex and sexuality as a whole. It has taken me years to learn how to unpack and heal from that. And at every church we ever attended we were asked to give 10% of income, even when we struggled to pay our own bills, and that we were called to give above and beyond our normal 10% to giving campaigns and special projects that were going on at all times.
You may be reading this and agreeing with every paragraph. Or you may be reading this and think you need to pray for my faith. I want to make one thing abundantly clear, you do not. My faith in God has actually not wavered. I actually feel a deeper sense of spirituality now stripping myself from the rules and regulations passed down to me from church. I don’t want you to invite me to your church, because I do not want to go. And I do say that with love. I am happy you feel connected and at peace where you are attending, I truly am. I am as well. And I urge you, in the energy you feel necessary to pray for me, instead pray for the health of the overall church; not to accomplish more for the kingdom, but to better serve its people in health and truth.
After being removed for a few years now, I see how easily we allow the personal doctrine of our pastors dictate our lives. It is easier to follow sometimes than to figure it out on our own. Believe me, I would have happily attended church the rest of life, continuing to ignore the red flags, pushing down the questions even when it didn’t sit well with me. I say that sincerely, I would have happily done it. It would have been easier to never pull the thread. It has left me feeling naked at times. What do I do with my time and energy if not in church? How do I go from such certainty in what I believe, to feeling so uncertain and unclear? Where do I begin unpacking what is true and helpful and what is not?
Until we can accept the flaws that come along with church, can we take steps to fix the system and heal from it. Too often manipulation, silencing of victims, sexual misconduct, cover ups, false truths for personal or financial gain, and abuse are also part of church culture. Not that unhealthy church over there, every church. When we are able to acknowledge its flaws, not defend them, only then can we rebuild them. Again and again and again.
For those of you that it has been difficult to read my words, I want to encourage you to look at the systems in your church and question them. The very thing you are groomed not to do. When things don’t sit well with you, don’t ignore it, wrestle with it. Don’t continue to blindly believe that your church is different. That your church is doing everything right or the people in charge have 100% pure intentions. That may make me sound like a cynic, but if you look at the data, more often than not, they do not. There is a bottom line in church they have to meet to pay the bills, and the line of winning souls for God and extra dollars to fund the programs is easily blurred.
If you are leading in church, it is your job to serve your people, not the bottom line. If people are burnt out serving, let me them stop. If people are hurting, encourage them to seek help outside of the church. Don’t be so ruled by looking the part of the perfect pastor that it shows the people in the church to do the same; that serves no one. Be a beautiful mess, a working progress, still figuring out the answers, you don’t have to know them all, how could you. Know the power and authority you carry in peoples lives and feel the weight of it, good or bad. Be slow to share absolutes.
There is nothing more true to me than the fact that as I get older, the less certain I feel about most things. And I think that is okay. The undoing, the unlearning and the unraveling can feel messy, uncertain and uneasy, but it is necessary to walk in true emotional health. For those like me, wrestling through what you believe and why, don’t let the uneasiness of it stop you. Press into it and you may be surprised by the peace that comes on the other side. True peace. And, I will continue to pray that the church, as a whole, is doing more good than harm.