Actually now I have read it, and maybe you should too...
http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/06/12/church-no-more-part-1-%E2%80%94-walking-away-church
Church No More: Part 1 — Walking Away From Church
by Mark Sandlin 06-12-2012 | 10:00am
I'm rewriting the old African-American spiritual “Down By the Riverside.”
(Don't worry. It's OK . I'm a minister).
My new version goes something like this:
Gonna lay down my robe and stole
Down by the Riverside
Down by the Riverside
Down by the Riverside
Gonna lay down my robe and stole
Down by the Riverside
Ain't goin' to church no more.
Yep! That's it. This minister is walking away from church — well, at least for the next three months.
I've gone to church my whole life. Haven't missed more than two Sundays in a row in..., um, I actually don't think I've even missed more than two Sunday's in a row - ever. Not even in college.
As a matter of fact, while a lot of my High School youth group friends were spreading the wings of their new found freedom in college by not going to church, I was part of a traveling worship team that helped lead worship at churches all over the state. (I know, I'm a geek. OK, a church geek. OK! A church nerd — of course, back then with the popularity of dc Talk, I just thought of myself as a Jesus Freak. In a lot of ways I still am — the more things change...).
A few years ago I started a blog. It began as a way for me to say things that sometimes didn't feel safe or pastoral (or wise?) to say in church. (How sad is that — ministers not feeling like it's alright to say things that they actually believe in church? And I say “ministers” because there's a whole lot of them that feel that way. If you go to church, yours probably feels that way at least a little bit).
From the very beginning of the blog, I've written about the many challenges the church is facing (and frequently ignoring). I've come to see that, for all the good the church does for others, it is turning a blind eye to itself.
Clearly, this isn't true of all churches, but the Church as a whole is predominantly being eaten up by a variety of cancerous issues. At this point, it seems to me, those issues are not only built into the system, but are so central to the system that those who are a part of it find it very difficult to either acknowledge the issues or do anything about them if they do manage to acknowledge them.
Me? I'm a preacher. I'm all wrapped up in the system.
From the inside, it is truly difficult to gain perspective. Conceptually, I get why an increasing number of younger generations are flocking away from — well, the “flock,” but frankly, just seeing and acknowledging the “hypocrisy” (among the other issues to which they correctly point as the problem with church) isn't enough; I need to do something about it. So, it's time to get some “perspective.”
That's why I ain't goin' to church no more — for three months, that is. A week ago, I started a three-month long sabbatical. I decided from the very beginning that I would not darken the door of a church (with the one exception of a mission trip to the Dominican Republic with my wife's church).
Frankly, it feels weird/odd/relaxing/disjointed/freeing/wrong/good.
Why am I not going to church? Because a great deal of the people with whom I'd like to figure out how to be in ministry don't. They're not heathen. They're not un-spiritual. They're – well, just like me, except they have Sunday's off.
This is my hope for the next three months: I want to understand what it is that the “spiritual but not religious” like about not being in church AND I want to understand what I, a life long churchgoer, miss about not being in church. I'm also hoping that YOU will be in dialogue with me about this.
I'll be blogging my experience in a series called “Church No More” and I hope you'll follow along, make comments below each post and interact with me on the blog's Facebook page. You can even start right now by leaving a message about why your either do or don't go to church (and please don't judge other people's story, just leave your own).
Together we can begin to understand this religious/spiritual gap a little better and figure out how the people of God may once again come together for the good of the world and not for its detriment.
I suspect this journey will open my eyes to the new thing God is constantly doing. I hope you'll walk along with me and broaden my adventure.
Mark Sandlin currently serves as the minister at Vandalia Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, NC. He received his M. Div. from Wake Forest University's School of Divinity and has undergraduate degrees in Business Administration and English with a minor in Computer Science. He's an ordained minister in the PC(USA) and a self-described progressive.
Image: igor.stevanovic/Shutterstock.
http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/07/01/church-no-more-part-2-%E2%80%94-church-doesnt-steal-your-joy
Church No More: Part 2 — Church That Doesn't Steal Your Joy
by Mark Sandlin 07-01-2012 | 12:33pm
Editor's Note: This is the second installment of Presbyterian pastor Mark Sandlin's blog series "Church No More," chronicling his three-month sabbatical from church-going. Follow the links below to read his previous installments, beginning in June.
Church No More: Part 1 — Walking Away From Church
I lost my joy.
I suspect there are a few of you who feel the same way. Not that you aren't happy, but there is this deep place of celebratory joy which you once knew that really doesn't come around much anymore.
There was a time when I was a pretty joyful guy. Not “blind to the world's problems” kind of joyful, just “blessed to be blessed in the midst of this mess” kind of joyful. Lately though, I've found joy to be an increasingly difficult thing to come by.
The thing is, I have every reason to be joyful. I'm lucky enough to be married to an amazing woman — truly amazing. I couldn't be prouder of my kids who, in an age of “be different just like us” are very much their own kind of different simply because they aren't afraid of being themselves. My personal interests, like my blog, just keep getting better. I have some of the best friends in the world. Yet, I'm not the generally joyful person I once was.
It's a dull malaise that I just can't quite shake. I don't like it. Not one bit.
Recently though, I've been catching little glimpses of my joy making cameo appearances in the storyline of my life. I like it. A lot.
The question is, why now? Why not back then?
I can't say that I have the complete answer yet, but I am beginning to have some insights to it. The first glimpse happened at the Wild Goose Festival in Shakori Hills, NC. Frankly, given the setting, I did not believe for one moment that it was where I'd start sorting out my joy.
It was on a piece of tick-infested farm land with temperatures and relative humidity in the nineties. I'd gathered with a bunch of strangers under an oversized, white tent that was purportedly meant to provide a venue for musicians and speakers to present their gifts, but it seemed to be equally adept at trapping the heat and humidity pouring off of all those gathered. Joyful, right? Admittedly, I wasn't so certain.
I was there to see David Wimbish and the Collection. In their own words they “play music that sounds a little like a train-hopping vagabond tripped over a drum-set and fell into the orchestra pit. Their live show feels a mix between Charlie Brown’s band and a live game of Tetris, but in some kind of wild multiplayer mode where everyone can participate in whatever way they’d like.” Having now seen them, I concur. They are sort of like Mumford and Sons to the fourth power being forced to play random instruments. You know — really, unusually good.
The concert started with an empty stage. The guy two seats over from me starts in on his mandolin. (Why I didn't notice that the guy two seats over from me had a mandolin is beyond me — lets chalk it up to the dull malaise). The next thing I know folks scattered throughout the crowd are standing up and singing as they make their way toward the stage. It was like we, the crowd, were the band. Little did I know how important that was.
Let's cut to half-way into the show. The Collection was good — ridiculously good and they had more energy that a five year old on a sugar high. Lead singer and primary composer David Wimbish was singing/wailing lyrics like, “I think God's eyes must be the rainbow. Somehow, when he looks at me he thinks that I am pretty,” that just hit you right between the eyes and take your soul to a place it can just barely remember. And when he goes falsetto/upper range? I'm convinced it's as close to flying as I'm going to get with my feet in the dirt.
There is a good-natured mosh pit of bouncing twenty-ish somethings with a few of we more stately folks mixed in physically expressing their appreciation for the music and the show. But it is more than that. They are free. Maybe it would be more descriptive to say their souls were freer than I'd managed to let mine be. Either they were already there or the music was giving them permission. Either way, it was beautiful.
So, with a mesmerized smile on my face and in my eyes, I sat at my table in the middle of that oversized, white tent watching this celebration of life break out. And that's when my joy remembered who it was and made a brief, but (not surprisingly) joyful appearance.
It is more than difficult to describe what it felt like, but I do think it is ultimately related to why they call the gathering the Wild Goose Festival. There's something very natural, common and every day about it and at the same time it soars.
Have you ever lost your car keys and did that less-than-clever little exercise of going back to the last time you remember having them as a way to figure out where you lost them? Well, after being reintroduced to my joy (not everyday pleasure, but spiritual joy), I did that with my joy. I decided to figure out where I lost my joy.
Here's the thing folks, while there were certainly lots of contributing factors, I think I lost it in church. All the rules and regulations (formal and informal); the right way and the wrong way to worship, sing, dress, act; the constant judging and gossiping; the hypocrisy of spending massive amounts of money on keeping the church running rather than on keeping folks off the street; the justifying of excluding certain people all in the name of a loving God – well, all that stuff, it took my joy. Maybe all that stuff just overwhelmed it. Either way, the church stole my joy.
The rest of my time at the Wild Goose gave me more sightings of my joy and, since then, I've been slowly nurturing the little guy back to health. This time I plan to keep a little closer eye on it and I'm not willing to lose it again. So, something has got to give. I'm already thinking about what The Church That Doesn't Steal Your Joy will look like.
In many ways, I think I saw it in that oversized, white tent in the tick-infested fields of Shakori Hills, NC as the band rose up from the midst of the crowd and pulled us to the stage with them. As we danced and sang together, without judgment about each other and lost for the moment in the joy of the moment, with help and encouragement from The Collection — we were the band. We were the joy-makers.
Mark Sandlin currently serves as the minister at Vandalia Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, NC. He received his M. Div. from Wake Forest University's School of Divinity and has undergraduate degrees in Business Administration and English with a minor in Computer Science. He's an ordained minister in the PC(USA) and a self-described progressive.
Image: Man walking away, by igor.stevanovic/Shutterstock.
http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/07/12/church-no-more-part-3-%E2%80%94-c-word
Church No More: Part 3 — The 'C' Word
by Mark Sandlin 07-12-2012 | 10:10am
I have a confession.
(That's rich, right? A minister confessing.)
I have a hard time telling people I'm a minister. Yes, really. I actually tend to handle it this way:
Person: “So, what do you do for a living?”
Me: “I'm a minister... (appropriate pause)... but not the kind you just pictured in your head.”
Sad, I know.
Honestly though, it's worse than that. I'm even very resistant to calling myself a “Christian.” And I'm not even close to the only Christian who feels that way! It's so bad that I have this very conversation with people all the time. There seems to be some kind of “Believer-like-me Radar” which tells people it's safe to talk to me about not liking the“C” word — CHRISTIANITY.
You'd be amazed at how many people resist calling themselves Christian — or maybe you wouldn't. Maybe you are one of us.
The “C” word just isn't what it used to be.
A number of researchers over the last few years (most notably David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons who published their results in unChristian) have found that the word “Christianity” has many more negative connotations than positive ones, at least in the minds of the general public.
Want to try a few of them on for size?
Hypocritical.
Irrelevant.
Anti-homosexual.
Judgmental.
Okay, that's enough. I'm getting depressed.
I've been on sabbatical from ministry for a little more than a month now. I decided from the very beginning that during the three months I'm on sabbatical, I will not go to church.
I've never done that for more than a couple of Sundays in my whole life. Ever. And it worried me.
I'm finding that not only did I not need to be worried, but I don't actually miss church much.
Don't get me wrong, I really miss the people (the actual church) but I simply don't miss what Church has become. I don't miss the dogma. I don't miss the hypocrisy. I don't miss the judgment. I don't miss all of the stuff that Jesus didn't like about organized religion during his day and age. Go figure.
I'm left with this thought: “How am I supposed to follow Jesus when the place I'm told I'm supposed to do it invests so much energy in the stuff that Jesus didn't like about organized religion during his day and age?” Isn't that counterproductive? It's no wonder that so many people are walking away from church, never looking back and, in doing so, finding happier lives. The “C” word just isn't what it used to be.
Church has become about following the Church and all of those who hold power in it (both formal and informal power). Silly me, I thought we were supposed to be following Jesus. The reality is, when the rest of the world can rightfully look at us and calls us hypocritical, judgmental and irrelevant, and say that we are much more defined by what we are against rather than what we are for — well, we are not doing a very good job of following Jesus. We are not being very good Christians.
My time away from the Church has helped me see more clearly that the Church is increasingly full of Churchians rather than Christians. We've become so tied up in the power structures and dogma of the organization that we've lost focus on the “Christ” in Christian.
We put polity before people and trade love for law. We follow the Church not Christ.
If you stop and think about it, with all of that in mind, it makes a lot sense that people are leaving the churches to find their spirituality. What I still need to ponder on this journey is, can the Church change?
What would that look like?
Would it make any difference at this point?
How can we honor and respect those who have left the Church (for many valid reasons) and be in ministry with them?
Can we make the “C” word mean what it used to mean? I sure hope so.
The journey continues...
Mark Sandlin currently serves as the minister at Vandalia Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, NC. He received his M. Div. from Wake Forest University's School of Divinity and has undergraduate degrees in Business Administration and English with a minor in Computer Science. He's an ordained minister in the PC(USA) and a self-described progressive.
http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/08/03/church-no-more-part-4-%E2%80%94%C2%A0i-dont-want-go-back
Church No More: Part 4 — I Don't Want to Go Back
by Mark Sandlin 08-03-2012 | 10:53am
Come Together and Listen by Robert Two Bulls
Chronicling Belief's Strange Wonders by Brittany Shoot
College Students Find Life 'Better Together' by Eboo Patel
Why I Love Credit Unions by Rose Marie Berger
New and Noteworthy by Julie Polter
I love the Church. I have literally been going to church my whole life — that is, until two months ago.
Then I stopped cold turkey. You can read about it in my post "Walking Away From Church."
Masses of people responded. It astounded me. Most ministers expressed concern saying things like, “My Brother, I am worried that you may be on a dangerous journey,” or, “I fear you may lose your faith.”
Frankly, what I heard them saying was, “Faith is so fragile it needs the Church to enforce it,” which only made me more certain I was making a remarkably healthy spiritual choice.
Former church-going folk frequently told me things like, “There is a large disconnect between the 'Church' of today and the teachings of Jesus,” and “I have found God in a dynamic, deep way and I love God so much more and for real now than when I was unwittingly trying to fit in with my church culture.”
I've been away from church for two months now and I have to say, I am more at peace than I ever have been. My faith is stronger than it ever has been. My family life is healthier than it ever has been. My desire to seek out God and follow the teachings of Jesus is stronger than it ever has been.
I do not want to go back to Church because life outside of Church is better. It just is. There's no dogma complicating the path to God. It is more than refreshing to escape the games church-folk play with the intent of establishing control and “rightness” on their part; it is life-giving to escape it.
Being able to preach the Good News — without worrying about which clique within the church will quietly use my perspective against me simply because they don't agree with me — has allowed me to honor the call God placed on me more than I could in an installed pastorate.
Yet, with only a month remaining in my sabbatical journey away from church, I'm already having to consider what going back to church will look like. I still have a month of experiencing, listening and learning to go, but I can already tell you a couple of things.
1) The Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR) are right in their critique of the Church.
We are fools if we don't listen extremely closely to them.
And 2) Their consistent complaint that the church is hypocritical actually diagnoses only the symptom and not the problem.
When I announced my sabbatical plans, it surprised me to receive feedback from ministers who had left the Church for good.
One said, “I was once a minister, but became disillusioned by the political influences in American Christianity.” Another said, “If it [Church] had been about the red letters [the teachings of Jesus] I'd have never left, but it wasn't.”
Put it all together and you get why not only will I go back to Church, but have to go back — even though I truly don't want to go back.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, “I love the Church" (or at least what the Church is should be), but we are not running off just folks who become SBNR; we are running off our own clergy!
We are fooling ourselves if we think it's “their” problem and not ours. We are fooling ourselves if we think that sitting in a pew on Sundays magically gives us the spiritual upper-hand when it comes to discerning what God wants from each of us.
A minister friend of mine, the Rev. Paul Rudolfi, once said, “Jesus never met anyone he didn't ask to change.”
What if the SBNR are the collective voice of Jesus to us, the Church, today? I think they probably are. They are asking us to change. It's certainly not all SBNR folk and, frankly, at this point a whole lot of them don't even care what the Church does or doesn't do and I don't blame them one little bit.
And yet, I hear their collective stories as a cautionary tell — a modern day parable, if you like.
The Church is hypocritical. Yes, there are exceptions, but the few churches who are exceptions know they are exceptions, which tells you a little something about the Church as a whole.
Hypocrisy is the symptom, not the cause, not the disease. The disease is eating the Church alive from the inside out.The quotes I shared from ministers who left the Church and never came back are just a peek at the disease behind the very real symptom of hypocrisy.
The Church has developed a highly sophisticated system that allows it both to quote the Bible and believe whatever it wants without regard to the scripture itself. That's not a particularly tremendous shocker, right?
Here's the thing, though: This way of operating has become so indoctrinated into the system — so artfully woven in and out of the dogma, governing structures and informal peer-approval networks — that it is nearly impossible for most people within the system to see it as hypocritical. It is the air we breathe, the support system which gives us meaning, the stuff of church life. It's how you fit in.
We've been trained to follow faithfully and not so much thoughtfully, which is probably why some ministers seem to think “faith is so fragile.” Then, when some of us do see the error of our ways and try to do the difficult work of turning the ship around, we find that the forms of government and the unofficial power brokers are designed and operate in ways that bend but do not break.
Even people who are sympathetic to the cause find themselves ultimately bound and constrained from affecting change because of the system within which they exist. The Church system produces the results it currently does because it is designed perfectly to produce them, and will continue to do so until radical change is instituted.
I'm going back, even though I honestly don't want to, because my time away has given me a little perspective on the disease behind the problem and I can promise you it will not change because of outside voices.
The change must come from within, and I, for one, still believe the Church is redeemable. I just hope it's not too late.
So, my sabbatical journey continues...
Mark Sandlin currently serves as the minister at Vandalia Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, NC. He received his M. Div. from Wake Forest University's School of Divinity and has undergraduate degrees in Business Administration and English with a minor in Computer Science. He's an ordained minister in the PC(USA) and a self-described progressive.
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