Floundering to Find Church

This post ends bleak but it is not the end of my story. Still, I will honor this moment. And the many more like it.

“Why don’t you give one of the mainline churches a try? You might not line up with all of their doctrine and methods, but many are still faithfully preaching Christ and you will at least be able to have a substantial liturgy.”

A pastor-friend said something like this to me and my husband while chatting with us on my patio. I let the idea linger for a while.

At the time, we were attending a non-denominational church that ministered to those deconstructing or suspicious of the church. I appreciated that the pastor and his wife were sensitive to spiritual abuse and had been through it themselves for standing up against child sexual abuse and cover-up. We liked that there was diversity in this little church plant. We liked that the maskers and non-maskers co-existed without making a political issue out of it. We weren’t connecting though. It’s hard to be vulnerable in these spaces. What we needed were personal invitations, not programs. People who genuinely wanted to get to know us. We had the pastor and his wife over for dinner and thought that went well. But we seemed to stall out after that.

And we were starving for some substance in the liturgy. There was only singing and a sermon. Not even a congregational prayer or benediction. And we were starving for substance in the sermon. The pattern seemed to be topical series of self-actualization with the help of a New Testament passage each week. It was better than the many other non-denoms that we visited with Christian nationalist tropes, but not much. It wasn’t really giving us Christ. I’ve learned that a lot of pastors of non-denoms who want to minister to those disillusioned with the church are reading Andy Stanley. I’m sure there are good reasons why he appeals to them, but they are completely unhitched from the Old Testament. So they miss the juice of the whole meta-narrative of Scripture.

I love that juice. Like the disciples hearing about it from the resurrected Jesus on their seven mile walk to Emmaus, my heart burns for it.

In February my body broke out in hives. I think it was anxiety from this church homelessness. We had exhausted the non-denoms around us (Some before even going. I’m looking at you, church with your dispensational end-times view as part of your website faith-statement…). So many churches were eliminated for their denominational track record with abuse and cover-up (I’m looking at you, SBC) or patriarchal hierarchy (no more, no more). The worst part isn’t my own longing and loneliness for church belonging. The worst part is that our youngest was turning 18 and my growing feeling that we’ve failed to show him and our two daughters beauty in Christ’s church. This is our last chance. Where is it? I pleaded with God about this.

We kept looking. And in our search we’ve seen numbness, starchiness, rigidity, spaces with the life sucked out of them, try-hards to make church cool, the gospel be made into a gimmick, weirdos, deceit, spiritual abuse, apathy, hate, the institution, corruption, and complete deconstruction.

I know church is for weirdos too, but why are there so many? Like Christianity turns you into one? Or worse. We’ve seen the worse.

“Mom, can I say something? I think you are stressing yourself out over this church situation. I see how it is weighing on you so heavy. I see your anxiety over it. It’s so heavy. We are going to be okay; you don’t need to hold this all.”

We were sitting at our local brewery having our Friday night burgers and beer. I was seen by my daughter. And she spoke into it. She was right. We are doing what we can. Do I really believe God will meet us here, too? That he can reach my kids who’ve developed fantastic bullshit detectors when we walk through church doors? I’m terrified that they’ve lost hope in what is real.

Will we find the resurrected Christ in any of the churches around us?

The next morning, I journaled: Today is Saturday. It seems Jesus is in the grave.

I know that isn’t true. He’s shown me himself, new life, over and over. That’s why I’m still listening and looking (Song 2:8). The words of a father begging Jesus for compassion for his son—if Jesus can do anything—rang in my mind: “‘I do believe; help my unbelief!’” (Mark 9:24)

Is there a more real prayer than that? Why does it take a boy possessed with demons for us to dig it out of us? Or a city full of churches devoid of the resurrected Christ? Even as I know there are many in these churches looking for Christ, aching for Christ, and even experiencing his presence.

I still believe in Christ’s church because she is covenantally united to him; she is his body. I believe in the total Christ, Christ and his church. That is why he created. That is why he came. Became flesh. This is why he went to the grave with our death. She is a gift to him from the Father by the Spirit. She is risen with him, rising with him.

I journaled:

Lord, help my unbelief. She is fading from my vision. I need to just look to you. I wish I knew where the lilies were. My prayers are being strangled by my unbelief. Each time I think you’ve set something up for me, a new hope, gathering my family on Sunday morning to look for you with me, we are deflated. And I do that stupid thing us Christians are trained to do—looking for the good in this, scrambling for purpose and meaningfulness in the disappointment, the lesson that we are supposed to learn, the blessings that we are supposed to be thankful for so that you will give us the blessing that we are asking for.

You are the blessing.

Today is Saturday. The doom of Saturday. I can’t even find the garden where they have you. So I will just be sad. And mad. And pray for my unbelief—that my lament will not turn to despair.

Hold us here, Lord. Meet us here.