Into the Far Country: The Spiritual Significance of Leaving Church

Is it Time to Explore the Spiritual Riches Outside the Church?

This post is going to be like throwing the Lincoln Logs out on the floor and worrying about building something with them later.  This topic has been gurgling around in my thoughts for several weeks.  I’ve even started a folder into which I’ve stuffed notes and book titles, but I’ve been reluctant to announce a series or publish a post.

Put bluntly: is leaving church a vital part of the Christian journey?

One reason I haven’t explored walking away from a congregation before now is because I’m a pastor, for heaven’s sake!  The biggest part of my job is getting people to walk in the doors of the church and to prevent people from walking out.  When someone leaves a church, they convulse the congregation–particularly if they walk away mad.  I think new church members figure out pretty quickly that the congregation is clutching them emotionally.  Congregations, which have been bleeding congregants for decades, need members.  They need them more than members need their churches.  This lopsided relationship makes the “church shopper,” or restive member, the most powerful person in the house.

Is there such a thing as a spirituality of wandering away?   I first realized that people were feeling safe to talk about leaving church when a women’s study group in my last congregation read Barbara Brown Taylor’s Leaving Church.  Later, my son in law, an editor for a theological publishing company, told me that a spate of books have recently gone to print on the topic of a post-church Christianity.

The State of Christian America

That people are discussing leaving Church shouldn’t be a surprise.  American churches, especially old line Protestants, have been emptying out for years.  I went through most of my 40-year career as a Presbyterian pastor thinking that my denomination was just blowing it and slipping in market share.  I’d look at the more evangelical congregations, with their laser focus on personal salvation, and think that the Presbyterian problem was our lack of commitment to  the main message.  But in 2007, the Southern Baptist Convention began losing members.  This development was heralded for me by a blogger, the late Michael Spencer, whose site, Internet Monk, predicted the “collapse” of evangelicalism.   I began to realize, that the problems with Christianity in America were more than just a market share issue.  It wasn’t that we Mainstreamers had become sclerotic, or even heterodox.  Everybody was dealing with their members slipping away.

As I settled into my last pastorate, which lasted 14 years, someone laid on my desk an article by Scot McKnight, which started another shift in my thinking about the condition of Christianity in America.  McKnight introduced me to the Emerging Church.  The whole “emerging church” phenomenon–whose leaders are nowadays regular lecturers at Presbyterian events–consolidated in my mind an awareness that even when pastors and members haven’t left their churches, they could be deeply dissatisfied.  One of the most influential of these emerging-type ministers, Brian McClaren, has set forth in his many books and workshops, a vigorous call for Christianity’s transformation.

The Toxic Congregation

Here’s another thing.  I’ve been a minister long enough to know that people’s participation in congregational life often brings zest and change into their lives.  Too often, however, church membership becomes a significant source of emotional upset, or worse, psychological trauma.  At present, I’m reading James Baldwin’s, Go Tell it On the Mountain.  More than a novel of Black experience of racism, Go Tell it On the Mountain is a sustained examination of the way that a church congregation can magnify family pathology and social oppression.

So, the general picture of people, dissatisfied and sometimes leaving their congregations, has been in my thoughts for a number of years.  This morning, this series of tweets (below) by Diana Butler Bass, a Church historian and advocate of Mainstream Christianity, relieved me of my hesitation about this topic and sent me to the computer to write this post.