I Am an Exile

 A while back I found a book by David Kinnaman, of the Barna Research Group, at a thrift store.  The title is "You Lost Me" and it is about the departure of Millennials from the traditional churches.  [Barna Group prefers to use the term "Mosaics" for that generation "because it reflects their eclectic relationships, thinking styles, and learning formats, among other things." p.246]  Kinnaman actually sorts these wanderers into three distinct groups.  Some are what he calls "Nomads"--younger people who have drifted off after growing up and leaving their parents' home for college or work, but are likely to drift back as they marry and start families.  Many  people of previous generations followed that pattern.  A second group he calls "Prodigals"--people who grew up in the church, but have now rejected the faith and have no intention of coming back.  The third group he labels as "Exiles" which he defines as "those who grew up in the church and are now physically or emotionally disconnected in some way, but who also remain energized to pursue God-honoring lives....One hallmark of the exiles is their feeling that their vocation (or professional calling) is disconnected from their church experience." [p.75]

I am not a Millennial or Mosaic; I am part of the post-WWII Baby Boom generation.  But I am an Exile, by Kinnaman's definition, and have been for a while.  Even during my many years in churches, the only "vocation" that got much attention, in nearly all the congregations I was part of, was being in "ministry"--preacher, missionary, Bible college professor, and in later years, worship leader.  Nobody seemed to care what the rest of the people did from Monday through Saturday, as long as they tithed their income to the church.  Even when they did a sermon or teaching series on "spiritual gifts" most people got excited about the "gifts" that would get them up on the front platform, not things they could do outside of the building during the week.  When I was finishing high school and preparing for college, at the church my family attended in the northern suburbs of Cincinnati, those of us in the youth group who planned to go to Bible college were a notch above the others.  The rest were just going to college or jobs--we were going into "full-time Christian service."  That was the prevailing attitude in many churches in the area in those days.

Over time, it turned out my "vocation" was something else.  In my late 20s, my wife and I bought a run-down house and fixed it up.  "Rehabbing" was a big thing in the older neighborhoods of Cincinnati in the '70s, and back then it was focused on homeowners doing it themselves.  Most were younger people like us, and they did not have the money to hire contractors to come in and fix stuff.  (If they did have the money, they could have bought a fancier house elsewhere.)  But I found that I liked doing it.  And I had learned how to do research in high school, so I was able to learn to do more and more.  By the time we were halfway through our second house, I was working on other people's houses and getting paid for it.  It turned out I was good at sorting out problems in houses and finding ways to fix them.  Even now that I am mostly retired, I still do some of that for family and friends.  I may not do all the fixing, but I can help them figure out the problem and how to solve it.

There's a saying attributed to the Amish:  "Work is worship."  I am afraid that attitude was mostly missing in the churches I grew up in, and still is in the majority of churches today.  All too many Christians do not have that idea.  In the years between graduating from Bible college and learning to work on houses, I had jobs under two different men in a franchise organization.  The first, in Cincinnati, held to more of an Amish view:  for him, being a Christian in business was about servicing his customers well and treating his employees well.  The second, who I worked for in Indianapolis for a year, thought being a Christian in business meant going to all of the Christian Business Men's Committee functions.  He eventually became a bigwig in their organization.  By the time I left that job, it was obvious to me that both his customers and his employees had little respect for him.  But he is still highly regarded by the CBMC and his local church.  I guess he has his reward....I personally prefer, mentally at least, to take the Amish approach.