Dear Faith-Shifter (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Faith-Shifter,

You hold such a tender place in my heart, you who once felt that everything was sure, you who once felt certain of God and religion, of church and ritual and the blackness and whiteness of rightness and wrongness, goodness and badness. I shifted many years ago and continue to shift—not away from God—but away from some of the certainties of my youth, away from the coded language of a larger religious identity that was shared by a group of people I love to this day. I shifted because too many things felt wrong about our Way of Being. And so much of that Way hung on me like an ill-fitting garment; and, there was too much jargon that those outside our tribe could not understand.

I will always love the Church (of course I love it—I’m one of its pastors); I will always love the way the Spirit has of speaking and moving and wooing us. I will love the Bible, its complexity and mysteriousness and truths-held-in-tension-ness.  But when we love so deeply, Faith Shifter, and are simultaneously so at odds with pieces of the tradition of our forefathers, or at odds with the ways the timeless has been trapped in the temporal, with the distorted expressions of the Love of God, and when we’re in search of some fresh way to express faith, questions, and mystery--it can lead us to loneliness. We belong and we don’t belong. We believe and we don’t believe (certain things). We wonder when no one else wonders. And we wonder if we are the only ones observing as if through a window the party we've long been invited to attend.

I was reminded in my reading this week of how, when we shift, the increased distance we feel from those who were once (or still are) our tribe often extends to a loneliness toward God. When we shift, it may seem that God shifts too. I have felt a distance, yes, over many years and winters and questions, that perhaps stemmed from the belief that Once We Lose Our Faith in God or God’s Church or God's Church's Answers, then so has God in us. But, if I could, I would spare you the necessity of this Distance, dear one. To assert that God has lost his love or faith in us is to assert that God is as splintered and confused and fragmented as my own (in seasons) battered heart. I have come to find out, after and even in the shifting, that God wasn’t far, not even as far as the snowflakes drifting three inches from my December window. No, he was on the inside of the pane, in my breath blown upon it, in the lungs that exhaled all my questions.




***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Dear Pastor's Kid, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Pastor’s Kid,

You’ve heard the stories about Jesus and Abraham since you were in diapers. You know that God is Good and Jesus Loves You because The Bible Tells You So. You’ve sung the Sunday school songs, performed in the Christmas programs, and just because you’re you, have corrected the theology of the younger ones who wanted to know if angels and Santa were in cahoots, if the Easter Bunny was as real as Jesus. Also, you take science seriously; you wrestled with creation theory, held intelligent conversations about how the theories of evolution and God-as-Orignator might somehow fit together like a puzzle, and not be at odds as so many people seem to think they are.

And you know so much about the Bible—names, spouses, plot twists, dates—that I’m surprised to hear you casually recounting the stories. You don’t know it all (how could you; how could anyone?), but I’m sort of impressed. You’re invested, in other words, in figuring this whole God-and-the-Bible thing out.

But, you’re also worn out on God Stuff.

When I suggest reading the Bible out loud to you and your sister, or when there’s some new thing for kids at church who are your age, you'll sigh and say, “Do we have to? I already know everything there is to know about this stuff.” And sometimes, when you come home from youth group, or you hear about a church event other kids are going to, you sigh and say, “I’m just gonna feel guilty because they’ll tell me I should be telling people about Jesus. And I just don’t want to.” And not wanting to makes you feel like a very bad person.

I will commiserate with you because--listen--the last thing I want for you (or anyone who loves Jesus) is to feel like you have to perform for Him. It's not what anyone has meant to convey to you, but somehow the message has gotten scrambled over all these years.

Here's the problem I've started to clarify: So much knowledge about God, so much immersion in “church” and the Bible to the exclusion of knowing God with your heart just as much, is counterintuitive if not downright damaging. All of those facts and figures and names and verses could trick one into thinking that they have this God-thing all figured out, that this mass of information is all there is to gain. 

That kind of knowledge is dangerous, love, because like a vaccine, it so easily inoculates us against the most important things--it works against our Searching, against our Hunger and Finding Out With Our Hearts and our Souls who God really is. Those things, dear one, are what I most want you to inherit--not the satisfaction of memorizing verses and references, not a sense that you have "arrived" in church-land culture.

If taking back some of the Vacation Bible Schools, some of the forced Sunday school attendance when you were just not "into it" meant opening up your curiosity and encouraging your questions, I might do it. And even though it's not my first choice, that is why I'm letting you go to the junior high dance and giggle in a corner with your two girlfriends rather than make you go to the church youth conference. Maybe--and this is my prayer--your spiritual hunger will grow best in an echo-y gymnasium full of shy seventh graders. Maybe you will search for God right alongside bowls of Chex mix, cups of fruit punch, and Pharrell Williams through the sound system.

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Monday Must-Reads (October 20, 2014)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

Happy Monday--there were lots of provocative reads that I bumped into this past week. And I'm sharing them. Much love and happy reading.

Shauna Niequist on pregnancy loss: The Pain Recedes and We Carry it Together

For those who want to don't want to lose time to Facebook: Why I'm Crazy Enough to Go for a Year Without the Internet

Because judging other people sucks: Why I don't breastfeed, if you must know...

For those who spend way too much money on Amazon: The Latte Factor: 8 Ways We Overspend

A lesson for leaders: What Mark Driscoll Teaches Us about Grace and Accountability

Enough said: women, men, & church; church: what hurts, what helps

If you suffer or you have little ones who do, here's another approach: Connecting ADHD and Nutrition

The Big and the Small (About Church)

A few weeks ago, a friend on FB reported that a church he and his wife had been attending for several weeks had a Sunday morning announcement that the church qualified for a 3.9 million dollar loan. My friend was baffled and asking if this was normal--do churches this size need loans this large? What ensued in the comments section of his post was perspective from all sides—from the eschewing of large churches in favor of smaller house-church-sized communities to those arguing for the possibility that such a loan was reasonable depending on the size of the church and its yearly income.  Others quoted popular authors who were mega-church-pastors-turned-house-church-planters and now criticize the industrial machine of the American mega-church and how it is so different from Jesus’ model—Jesus who disciple a small bunch of men and often turned away crowds.

It’d be easy to roll on the waves of this debate, tossing to and fro with each theoretical argument that doesn’t actually take into account the workings of the Spirit at my church in North Liberty, Iowa, in 2014. Instead of taking sides on the debate, I find myself wanting to throw away categories, to resist the temptation to classify one model as better than another and, rather, classify our own motivations, classify our own leadings as Spirit-led or not.

Here I am, on staff at a 500-some-member church that is only 8 years old. And we seem to keep growing as we show and tell people about Jesus. And if we keep showing and telling people about Jesus in the way we’re doing, it seems it would stand to reason that LIFEchurch will grow larger. And if so, how could we not keep making room for more people? (Note: this will likely involve leases and building mortgages.) 

The Spirit seems to be doing something in response to our telling people about Jesus, and we don't have the sense that we should start closing the doors and turning people away. More people come every week. More people return every week. And people report that their lives are changing. That their prayers are being answered. That they've found new hope in Jesus. How could I dream of turning them away because the Big-Church Model isn’t perfect? 

It isn’t perfect, I'll admit. It’s hard to organize good follow-up systems. It's hard to keep track of who's actually coming and what their needs are. It’s hard to get people plugged into meaningful relationships with smaller groups of believers (as opposed to all 500 that attend on Sunday) and it's hard to connect the right people with the class they are most in need of. And it's not the right model for everyone in every season of life, but we are sure trying to make it work for all the people who walk through the doors. And what’s the alternative? “Good luck finding a church where there’s an open seat for you”?

I'm happy to think that the formerly big-church pastors had good reason for resignation and for shifting gears, reasons that made sense for their own lives and callings and purposes. But we don’t. Not now. Not yet when it seems like we’re doing exactly what we should be doing, which is growing a church. 

Frustrating Things (About Church)

There is minutiae. The stuff that, if we didn't know better could derail a person, a ministry, a team, an entire church.  The minutiae in a growing church in a too-small building can look like things gone missing for weeks or months. Like my class supply box frequently disappearing. Like snacks for Sunday morning disappearing. Like holes in communication: the wrong person getting the right information and vice versa. Like our functioning women's toilets in the building have decreased to 50% for a short time and are now back up to 75% of prior capacity. Like we have no personal offices and no great meeting spaces on Sunday mornings, and I'm about to commandeer the out-of-service women's bathroom for strategy sessions. Like my "stuff" is divided between four different closets and rooms in the building. Whatev. Like I said, these little things are easily overcome with a dose patience and sense of humor. 

Others things are harder. Like learning to be comfortable and respectful with disagreement and different temperaments. Like gender and racial stereotypes that linger, spoken or silently present. Like how church systems and governments don't always seem to adequately reflect or express the Kingdom-come. (Oh, we're trying to get there, we are). Harder still: People scare easy and run away--right about the time I want to coax them to “come toward, come toward.” There are misunderstandings that could get resolved speedily through brave communication, but brave communication sometimes takes a while to work up to. Weeks, months. Years. I have been guilty of this. Also, feelings get hurt. Things are said that shouldn't be said, and there are consequences.

Most profoundly difficult: With church (and the Gospel), there aren’t provable answers for everything. We have to live in this liminal space of not-proving and not-being-scientifically-sure of certain things in an age when so many want to form beliefs upon the foundation of empirical truths. But the Bible is not an almanac, an encyclopedia, a dictionary, a science book, a rulebook, a treatise, a constitution, a manual. It’s more like a traveler’s map. With hundreds of important landmarks—places where important things happened to people and people groups and where God happened to people and their groups. And somehow these landmarks are all connected. There was a journey from one place to another, from Adam to Christ and from Genesis to Revelation, and the journey was messy and complicated and filled with confusion and people running here, there and everywhere and worshiping the wrong gods and killing and oppressing other people groups and making rules that ultimately didn’t do any earthly or heavenly good. And one has to look at all that and work at deciphering truth out of the relationships between historical events, between narratives, between the story God wanted to write and the story of human action and history and the way in which God entered history, anyway, and did something good. And, oh boy, relationships are complicated (just ask anyone who's ever been in love); they are subject to interpretation; they are sentences eluding grammar, impossible to diagram.

Sure, some things are fairly self-evident when we look at the Bible's big picture, and we preach those things, we teach those things, we celebrate those things. We teach Jesus as God. As light in the darkness. As hope for the hopeless. And a bunch of other foundational assertions about this thing Jesus called the Kingdom of God. These assertions are like little pins on the map. Places of [unprovable, faith-filled] certainty. On one hand, this faith-infused surety about the pins on the map is oddly satisfying: I've lived with faith long enough to see it as the substance that keeps me connected to God, that keeps my eyes open for the ways in which prayer is answered, in which provision is offered, in which hope shouts louder than the sick child, the broken marriage, the mother's tragic death.

But, all of those things (the child, the marriage, the death) speak of mystery. Frustrating mystery. Disappointment. Oh, elusive answers! Oh, suffering in the midst of eternal hope. And we can only walk alongside and ask the questions together, digging for answers we may never unearth. 

All of this--the map, the pins on the map, the questions, the interpretations--is what we have to give away, to hand to believers and seekers. There is no manual when we want one. There is no cosmic Google search or ASK.com when it comes to the ways of the Kingdom. No mechanism for generating tidy answers and step-by-step instructions. Ultimately, what is frustrating about Church is also what is so beautiful: We have only this invitation from living words and a living God and a living Church. Listen. Pay attention. Come close. 

**If you missed it last week, catch up on the first post in this (About Church) series. 

Beautiful Things (About Church)

So many things have me thinking about church and church stories lately, especially Rachel Held Evans, who recently solicited readers' stories about church. I love her questions and I love her idea of swapping stories, so here's me daring to say that this is just one in a beginning of posts about church. And, if you're wondering, I did submit RHE a little something. If she doesn't end up using it on her blog, I'll share it here.

But for now, I'm drawn to her question: Tell me a story that encapsulates everything that is beautiful about your church.

I have too many stories.

Church is a constant reminder to me that God loves people better and more capably than I ever could. That I am a privileged witness, a pray-er and an exhorter who sometimes doesn't even have faith or hope on par with whatever healing or restoration that God eventually weaves into a mess--my own or anyone else's.  In other words, I can't even imagine the amazing God-fix that he applies to the seemingly hopeless situations and mindsets and people. And so, it's a delight every time to see him do it.

As a I work with other church staff to create atmosphere where people can become followers of Christ, it's beautiful to me when people show up and say, I'm here! in every aspect of those words. I'm here to give, I'm here to love. I'm here as a brother/sister/mother/father to anyone who needs one, I'm here in need of healing, I'm here to receive. 

Beautiful when someone moves from the shadows of destructive choices and behaviors to living in the light, to using their voice, to telling their story, to helping others heal.

Beautiful when a woman whose been accepted in no other community of faith turns to me and says, "I love this place. This is home." Beautiful that she fell in love with the real Jesus because real people loved her with real, unconditional love. Beautiful that she gave up the old life, the running, the throwing-herself-away so that she could drink of this community, of the strength of its relationships and of the water Jesus has to offer.

Beautiful, too, that I/you/we don't need to own everyone else's problems. We can love. We can pray. We can help. But we're not responsible or in charge. Except for ourselves. But that's another story.

Beautiful to let people live free this way. Without us reminding them of rules and shoulds and shouldn'ts.  Beautiful, instead, to ask questions, to point them to Jesus and let them follow his Way.

And beautiful is the relief of knowing I/you/we don’t have to have all the “right” answers, that we can embrace the mystery and tensions in the Bible and in the ways of the kingdom, that we can live in the middle-ground of the now and not-Heaven-yet with promise here and promise coming. That we can say “I know some things...I don't know everything...I don't know that." But most important: "I just know Jesus."

What's beautiful to you about church?