david hayward. artist. cartoonist. teacher.

I love being interviewed. It’s an enjoyable process for me. It helps me not only articulate what I’m going through, but it even helps me to understand what I’m going through a little more clearly. Each interview is interesting in its own way. Just last Sunday night I was interviewed by Caffeinated Faith. Check it out. I was surprised what they dragged out of me about my departure from my role as pastor of my congregation.

I listened in on their conversation after they interviewed me. You can too at the end of the podcast. One guy said that when he heard they were interviewing nakedpastor, he expected me to totally trash the church. But I didn’t. But they believe I said a lot by what I didn’t say. Take a listen here.

I am amazed by how different things come out in an interview. These guys were very interested in how I left the church. During our discussion, I discovered that these guys also have interesting relationships with the church.

The longer I’m out, the more people I meet that have left the institutional church. For various reasons. You can name them all. Abuse. Fed up with the silliness. Intellectual dissonance. Tired of the politics. Victims of fallout. On and on. A person struggles within the church for so many reasons. Then another person finds herself outside the church and struggles to define her faith without the institutional structure to dictate it. Another person experiences intellectual conflict with traditional faith and dogmatic theology, and to keep his own integrity and not offend his conscience, he has to choose to leave the church and as a result the faith. I’ve always been interested in this person.

I strongly believe we need to interrogate, investigate, and fabricate new ways of understanding truth, articulating theology and defining faith in a way that doesn’t offend our conscience or our intellects or damage our selves. This, I believe, will bring true wellness to our spirit.

This interview convinced me of this even more.

I had a great conversation with the guys over at caffeinated faith. The interview will be podcast later this week. I’ll let you know so you can listen to it if you want.

One of the issues that came out in the conversation was, of course, the church. I’m not “going” to one right now, and if my memory serves me, I think most of them aren’t regulars anywhere, for one reason or another. Many of my family and friends aren’t either. Our attachment and commitment to the organized church is suffering.

This is a generalization, but I’m seeing a progression (or digression)… a movement from within to without the church. I am speaking of the organized church. The institution. I see different groups and our movement among them:

1. Those committed to a church and regular attenders.
2. Those who have a church but aren’t regular.
3. Those who consider a church their own but don’t go.
4. Those who’ve left the church but not their faith. They might go to an alternative, like a house church.
5. Those who have a Christian heritage and have no connection to the church nor the need for it.
6. Those who have a Christian heritage and have left the faith.
7. Those with no Christian heritage and have no connection.

Like I said, this is just a generalization. And it applies to what I’ve seen among my family and friends.

I have compassion for all these people. The organized church has had a historic monopoly on who is in and who is out. Many of these people still play by the church’s rules and understand themselves according to the church’s agenda, and therefore either find that they are excluded from the church and therefore alienated from the faith. They are either endorsed or disqualified by the church’s standards. It is good to doubt, question, explore and discover one’s own understanding. It is even necessary. But for many of the people I know this has been an illicit affair that cost them their membership within the church and even the faith official. Why? Often it’s because they still define themselves by the power’s definition of them.

Each one of us needs to come to terms with our own discoveries and understanding and live with confidence accordingly. We mustn’t allow any power or authority to define or determine our spiritual status. This doesn’t mean we reject the church. But we can, and indeed must, reject its poor opinion of us.

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I had an interesting and enjoyable conversation with a young man today. He wanted to talk with me about building a community based church. He said that there are all kinds of materials out there on traditional models of doing church. But there is hardly anything out there concerned with building a church that emphasizes relationship and community. Almost all material out there is on how to tweak style, not substance. He asked me if I knew of any. No, not much. He said that he’s saved a file of all my posts on community. He wanted to talk with me about it. So he called me and we had a good chat.

Here’s some of the things we talked about:

1. There are no rules to follow. If few are doing it, then they are doing it in their own unique contexts with their own unique people in their own unique way. There aren’t grand general rules that apply to all situations.
2. It’s like being a pioneer or an explorer. I have a good friend who teases me about comparing what I did as a pastor to being an explorer. I admit: my physical life is not in danger. I’m not living on seal blubber and sucking on snow in sub-zero temperatures. The dangers I faced are different. But they are just as real. It is no joke pioneering this kind of church community. It is serious business. And it takes a great deal of courage. But if you value it, it’s worth it. What materials are out there on doing what he wants to do? Hardly anything. Are there materials out there on how to be a pioneer? What does that take? Guts. Resilience. Period.
3. I compare what I was trying to do with being a family. My family would rebel if I tried to be their autocratic, charismatic, visionary leader. Businesses and countries are a whole other matter. If you want to build a corporation, then be that kind of leader. If you want to build community and be a part of it yourself, treat it like family.
4. Flexibility. You have to do it one day at a time. Although you might have some general values that you embrace, strategizing weeks or months or years ahead is a futile exercise. It’s like your family: you have values. You can generally plan ahead. But if you have kids, you know that each day is a new day and must be executed freshly.
5. Be openly humble. Admit to your people that you don’t really know what you’re doing or how this is going to turn out. You are learning one day at a time. You are learning and discovering together. You are not the all-knowing leader.
6. He was concerned about burn-out. Lisa and I found it interesting that we couldn’t tell if we were always working or if we were just always hanging out with our friends. That’s what community is. I rarely met people in my study. I always avoided the feeling of clinical. That’s not family. Rather, we always met over coffee, lunch, or wine in the evenings. And Lisa and I made it a point of taking an evening or two to ourselves and a day on the weekend. Easy-peasy.
7. Smaller groups help glue the community. Each smaller part strengthens the larger part. This is where everyone gets to play, experiment and experience community up close and personal. However… and this is something else I’ve discovered over the years… a smaller group with disgruntled members can cause problems.
8. Chaos theory: it is messy, unpredictable and unattractive. When people discover a place where they can experiment in authenticity and encounter the authenticity of the other, sparks fly. Some start fires that destroy. But some start fires that warm the heart. People won’t flock to it for it’s appeal. But those who want to experience community will trickle in.
9. This kind of community can attract very needy people. Some stay and find healing. Some stay until they figure their needs aren’t being met according to their liking and leave. This can include the pastor ,)
10. My experience is that money can be a problem with this kind of community. If you want community, it takes volunteerism. Which means you can’t employ the tithing campaign. You will rely on people’s goodwill. Which sometimes runs thin. But those who believe in what you are doing and value such a community will bless it beyond their means.

This is just a start but I ended at 10. I like lists of 10.

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I don’t subscribe to using IC to stand for Institutional Church in a negative or pejorative way. Institutions can’t be helped. Biblically, institutions are of the created order. They just are, just as we are. My own immediate family is full of institutions. Marriage is an institution. Family is an institution. Public education is an institution. The government we find ourselves under is an institution. Even our supper is an institution. We have instituted it almost every day at around 5pm that all five of us sit around the table and eat together, as much as we are able.

The problems would start, however, if it felt like an institution. If it becomes forced, contrived, demanded, required, staged, and it no longer is permeated with grace, love and care, then the natural truth of it dies and only the institutional and organized shell remains.

The great American essayist Wendell Berry writes in his excellent essay, “God and Country” (in What Are People For?):

It is clearly possible that, in the condition of the world as the world now is, organization can force upon an institution a character that is alien or even antithetical to it. The organized church comes immediately under a compulsion to think of itself, and identify itself to the world, not as an institution synonymous with its truth and its membership, but as a hodgepodge of funds, properties, projects, and offices, all urgently requiring economic support.

This is why I think such voices such as Berry’s, who is often called a prophetic voice in America today, are needed in this world. He helps us differentiate between the truth of, say, the church, and the false of, say, the accretions that attach itself to it. I recognize that even though I am no longer on staff at an institutional or organized church, I am still a part of the church and desire to be a responsible member of it.

It is my community. So it is my personal challenge to be a part of the institution in a responsible way.

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