Unchurch

This is a difficult post to write because it really exposes my heart in a number of ways. Be gentle with me. This is long but I hope you will wade through it and give me some feedback.

Recently, Gary Means and I have been discussing some sort of idea we share.

It all started with his post "An Amateur Heretic", where he said,

"Perhaps it's time for me to resurrect my dream of creating an environment for dialogue about matters of faith, with the intent of pointing to hope in Christ, but without the heavy-handed evangelistic agenda. I just want to develop a community or a circle of relationships where people can explore Christian spirituality without fear or guilt, and where they feel loved and accepted precisely as they are, not as potential Christians."

and this post, where he asks,

"Is it possible for an Evangelical to work to create an environment where people are loved as they are, even if they are unlovely?" At the heart of the question was the Evangelical propensity to view all nonbelievers as potential Christians."

I encourage you to read those two posts if you want to know more about the context of THIS post.

For about a year a vision (I do hesitate to use the word "vision" because it has been so abused in my church experience, but for lack of a better word, I'm going to stick to it.) has been forming in the back of my mind that is along the lines of the two previous quotes. I think most importantly, I am realizing now that if another person sees there being a need for this type of thing, it's confirmation to me that there really IS a need. As Gary and I have not dialogued about it at length, I am not asserting that our approaches to this are identical; however there are similarities to what we each are thinking.

Here are some of my thoughts on what I call "unchurch":

There are obviously countless people like me who have distanced themselves from the church but not from Christ 9if you believe such a thing is possible) . Where are they? Are they all having church in a virtual world like I am? Are they out in the workplace or campus or neighborhood being Jesus to people? Where ARE they?

There is a great deal of research about the fact that people are leaving and why, but I have not heard a lot about where they are going when they leave.

The other thought I have is: what about people who are curious about Christ but would never darken the doors of a church because their interactions with Christians have been so negative - maybe encounters with marketing and manipulation and and coercion into "getting saved" or who have experienced intolerance either of themselves or people they care about?

So I want to qualify my thoughts here with a couple of things:

One: As I have finally been able to admit before, "church" isn't all bad. I have grown into the realization that Jesus comes to us however we need to meet Him. For many people the vital spiritual reality is still found in "church". Just because I didn't find Him there - well I did, but I guess things change - doesn't mean it's not a valid, not only valid, but amazing and awesome, expression of faith.

Something I have always believed when shopping for a product on Amazon, where people's opinions about a product are available: the bad stuff gets the most noise. You can always know that if a product sucks, you will hear about it on Amazon, like this product. But for every one negative opinion, there might be thousands of people who are perfectly happy with the product and just have never bothered to post a positive comment. But you can bet that if people have had a bad experience, they will rant about it loud and clear.

So with that, have learned that the people who have been hurt the worst by the church have the loudest voices. The people for whom church is a great, spiritually uplifting place usually don't shout about it. If that makes any sense. So it's easy to say church is all bad, just look at all the people who are miserable because of the church, look at all the problems it has, look at all the judgmentalism, etc...but in truth that is still only a small percentage of people.

And of course, our experiences shape our opinions, so if we have a bad experience with something, we will want to throw it out entirely. If a restaurant gives us food poisoning, we are likely to avoid that restaurant for a very long time, but that doesn't mean we will avoid all restaurants. Maybe we will avoid all restaurants for awhile, but sooner or later we will get over our aversion and we will eat out again.

I guess these last couple of months I'm getting over my aversion.

Two: I am coming to realize that God is still leading me into a body of some kind. I will never be one to say that if you leave church forever you can't be a "real" Christian. But I am coming to believe that those who leave the church "proper" will often be called into the body again (including me). I know this is a fearsome idea for some people, and I fully respect that. I'm not saying to worry about it. Stay out as long as you like, as long as you listen to Jesus.

And I don't want to ever invalidate the faith expression of anyone who follows Christ, as my friend Cindy has been talking about recently in discussing Scot McKnight's post "An Emerging Character: Inclusion Reaction".

One thing I learned after hearing Christine Wicker and Helen Mildenhall (who blogs at Conversation at the Edge among other places) speak at the RevCon is that some people who leave the church ARE leaving Christianity, too.

Helen is a former Christian, who says,

"These days I think I could convince people I’m an atheist. Yet I still want to live according to what I saw in Jesus’ life. I still remember what the Bible says and feel called to "respond Biblically" when I face challenging situations. Sometimes I wonder whether my strange, un-Christian practice of deliberately not cultivating a personal relationship with God hasn’t actually given him more freedom to work through me, not less."

Christine has written several books which explore a wide variety of belief systems and

"challenge to the traditional Christian insistence that God could only come to humans through a conversion experience with Jesus."

I have great respect for these women, I learned a great deal from them and I don't question their individual approaches to faith (or lack thereof) ... but I wonder if there have to be SOME church-leavers who are borderline "faith leavers" because they are unable to envision a Christian faith that is "safe" for them, but who WANT to resolve their spirituality in a relationship with Christ. What if there was a place for almost-atheist, or almost-Christian or wounded-Christian people to investigate their faith without pressure, without having rules and tenets and morals inflicted on them....

I know this might sound like UU, that's not where I'm going. I'm not at a place where I can envision living without Jesus, and I don't believe one can ultimately have a fruitful spiritual life without Him, (but I could be wrong.) Where I'm at with this, it's still all about Jesus, but respectful of where Jesus is meeting each person and recognizing that He does not deal with each of us in the same way. Likewise, I am willing to admit that all roads *could* lead to Jesus if one truly follows one's spirit. In other words, as Sunil Sardar says "I celebrate whenever a person converts to Buddhism, because it is closer to Jesus than Hinduism. And even Buddha points to Jesus". But Jesus still is the only way.

I know I'm not being very clear with my thoughts, they aren't all clear to me either. I'm just asking questions about whether or not it's possible to have such a "safe" place, for ex-christians, almost-christians, and mildly-curious-christians to meet and be mutually supportive of each other without judgement.

But is it truly possible to even have such a thing, a thing like Gary articulated in the quote at the beginning of this post? Is it possible to have a safe place where Jesus is still the ultimate goal? Or is it possible to have a place where people can explore Christianity without having conversion as an ulterior motive? Can I be true to Christ without trying to convert people?

I guess what I'm looking for here is the difference between a lifestyle of love and deliberate evangelism. Is there a middle ground? Is it possible for me as a Christian to truly unconditionally love (not just "tolerate") people without seeking to lead them to Jesus, and am I still a Christian if so?

I asked Gary how he would respond to someone who someone who says that if we aren't ultimately trying to evangelize or convert people then we are missing the point of God entirely.

Gary says:

"I can't find a single scripture where Christ tried to convert anyone to become a Christian. Not once did He have someone pray a sinner's prayer, or present them with the four spiritual laws, or ask them where they would go if they died that night.

On the other hand, He was extremely radical about His relationships and His actions. Today, the only way He could be as scandalous would be if He ate meals with African-American, HIV-positive gay prostitutes."

So these are some disjointed beginnings to something that has been trying to surface for awhile. i don't have any clues other than this nagging that won't go away and now confirmation from another person that such a concept doesn't make me entirely crazy.

Is it possible? I don't know? Will people want to come? I don't know. Where to begin? I don't know.

How will I know when I know? I don't know.