Every time we planted a church, we felt like we were doing something totally different. Without fail, we realized we weren’t all that different and people that came caused us to morph back into a very similar model as all the other churches.
Nevertheless, we instinctively knew how to create a service that touched people in some way. It’s much like directing a play or movie. Once you accidentally do it right, then, it is just another version of the one before with a few tweaks.
The congregation thanked me for the “fix” and then also told me how it went away on Monday morning. I suppose that’s why they came back the next week.
After a while, even though I wanted to be humble, it felt good to get that feedback. Laura described in our book, how it was scary to her to hear people put me on a pedestal, but after all that’s physically where I was (on a stage).
I started to believe the hype, and thought to myself, “maybe I am something special.” When people came to me with questions, I assumed I could find the answers even though many times I was doing Google searches just like they were.
The more ideas I had, the more money I needed to make those dreams come true. We talked about communicating vision, but what we were really doing is convincing people help me make my dreams come true. They would give me money and their free time, and I would take the credit for leading this endeavor.
The enticing part for them was that they felt like they were working for God, so it felt very noble and gave them a satisfaction and a feeling of holiness. All of this busyness supporting the organization that we created actually took time away from intimacy that was needed to heal people’s wounds, but we tried to ignore that fact.
We all felt good because we were accomplishing something. And, our collective trauma kept us all coming back for more.
Churches are most delighted when they are in a building program, even though Jesus seemed to be encouraging people away from buildings. As the organization grew, it’s needs became greater. More money, more time, and more new members to support it.
We often call the church a family or a community. When Laura and I took time off from organized religion, we stepped back and analyzed this assumption. What we realized was that the Western church is really not a good model of community. There is a lot of spiritual bypassing for expediency sake. The organization takes priority over the individual. And there’s a little time for real intimacy.
Most of the community is focused around common enemy intimacy (hating the same people) and accomplishing the organizational goals, along with feeding our insatiable desire to alter our emotions.
A family that doesn’t have time for intimacy is a family that has lost the plot somewhere along the way.
When Laura and I took some time off from organized religion, and at first we had withdrawals. Shouldn’t we be somewhere? Shouldn’t we be doing something? I sort of missed preaching and we both missed the emotional feeling of a church service. But the withdrawals subsided and we began to enjoy just being together and spending time in solitude.
The other thing that happened is we found people in the desert that were similar to us. Because they were not engaged in an organizational church, they had time to listen.
I recently stated, “Maybe instead of listening to sermons we should have been listening to each other.” I realize we can do both/and, but it doesn’t seem to end up that way. The organizational functions and goals always take priority.
Religion plays on our natural need for connection. Because we are hardwired this way, organized religion promises to meet that need. But it is really more like a drug that keeps us coming back and never really satisfies the deep need.
We have much simpler practices these days. They don’t require transportation. They don’t require a cathedral. But they’re much deeper than anything we experienced before. We have started healing and we are adapting what we do to who we are.
Since I was clergy, I can say this with confidence. I think we need to move towards totally deconstructing religion, which like myself, may involve clergy stepping down and doing normal things and churches closing down to become better versions of what is necessary.
Just like everything, it may take a while. But I suspect the pace of The Great Deconstruction (as Brad Jersak calls it) is increasing.
So do the evaluation today and join the discussion.
https://amzn.to/3Y9BChE
Be where you are,
Be who you are,
Karl Forehand
Photo by Pavel Danilyuk: https://www.pexels.com/photo/communion-trays-and-chalice-beside-a-wine-in-bottle-on-brown-wooden-table-8815067/
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