Free-Range Christian

Yesterday I went to the library, and came home with the book "Quitting Church" by Julia Duin.  Duin is a long-time religion reporter for various publications, and a regular contributor at the "Get Religion" blog, which I have been reading for years.  (It is a blog about how the press covers religious news, usually poorly.)  But until lately I had not known she had published books.

In this post I am going to write about my own background and how I ended up quitting church.  In some followup posts I will discuss my experiences and thoughts about some of the topics she explores in the book.

My parents were church-going Christians, so I was brought up in church from the beginning.  We mostly attended Christian Church/Church of Christ congregations, which my father had grown up in.  After high school I went to Cincinnati Bible College, one of their schools, and graduated in 1972 with a degree in Christian Education.

For seven years I was part of a group of students and former students from the Bible college who operated a store-front mission church in a slum about a mile down the hill from the campus.  We did not have a pastor; all we could have afforded would have been a part-time student preacher--we all were or had been students, so we divided up the duties and did them ourselves.   I preached several times a month, led singing, served on the provisional board, was treasurer for a while.

Over my lifetime, I have been part of 15 other churches.  About half were Christian Church congregations.  Of the rest, two were mainline Protestant--a Disciples of Christ church, and a rural United Church of Christ (the locals paid very little attention to the denomination--the part-time preacher who served them and two other small churches every Sunday was usually a Methodist student minister).  Of the rest, one was part of the discipling movement for a while, one was an independent church, one was an Assemblies of God church.  

And one was the Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio--the only mega-church I have been part of, and also the best church I have ever seen.  They didn't get to be a mega-church because of a spectacular preacher; Steve Sjogren was good, but not earth-shaking in the pulpit.  But he and the others who started that church stumbled on a new idea--they called it "Servant Evangelism" in the beginning, later shifted to the term "Kindness Outreach."  I have concluded the reason for their success was that they gave ordinary people things to do to express their faith outside the church doors, all week long.  Most Saturdays they had some kind of outreach going on somewhere in the city--and you didn't have to be ordained or take Bible college classes to do it!  They grew to a peak of 7,000 people; they also planted around 3 dozen other churches.  For a while they were running 7 services each weekend--their building was built to accommodate about 600.  When they did build a new building, they cut back to only three services--they chose to spend more of their budget on outreach rather than a bigger building.  I might still be there, but we had to move to another city to be available to care for elderly parents.

For most of my adult life, another factor in church life has been small groups.  I have been involved in them most of the time since my late 20s.  Some were okay.  A few were very good.  The worst I have been in were led by either preachers or professors; I concluded the skill set needed for those is not conducive for good small group work.

Of the groups that I have been in over the years, the best were those that did more than just study the Bible and discuss.  One of my early groups--and one of the best--made a choice:  we were all young couples, some with kids, others without.  But we all moved our residences at times.  A few had been stuck moving without help in the past.  But we made a custom to pitch in whenever someone moved...we would change our meeting to Saturday, show up in the morning to load the truck, and go over to the new place to unload.  The ladies in the group would bring food for lunch, and help with packing and unpacking.  One major thing I learned from that group is that you get to know people a lot better when you do other things with them besides Bible study!  There is something about working together that builds stronger relationships.  Sadly, most churches don't do much of that.

Sadly, the move to Indianapolis in 2006 was what started me out the back door of the church.  We visited an assortment of churches--most of the Vineyards in the city, and a few others--and never felt at home.  Part of it seems to be the local culture; Indianapolis is a very different city from Cincinnati, going back to the early settlers.  Some of it was that so many churches were trying to grow to mega-church status, but they couldn't make it happen.  And some of the problems seem to relate to other items Duin wrote about in her book; I just was not so much exposed to them until leaving the Cincinnati Vineyard.

So by the spring of 2009, I left the organized church.  We looked for a house church, but Indianapolis is not prime territory for those.  George Barna wrote some years ago that the Midwest is the last stronghold of the traditional church, and I am afraid he was right.  I still have fellowship with other Christians; there was a group I fell into that year that met regularly, just not even as formal as a house church.  Some of the original group have moved away; others of us still get together at times.  And I have made other Christian friends online.  We are part of the group variously called "Nones" or "Dones" by some writers.  Some of us prefer to call ourselves " free-range Christians," hence the title of this post.

That is a summary of my journey.  I will have another post or two related to Duin's book in the coming days.

Not So Solid Teaching

The title above is from a chapter in Duin's book about why people leave churches.  And while I appreciate her efforts, I am afraid she barely scratches the surface.

I spent more than sixty years of my life in churches, usually there every Sunday.  In all that time, if I were to count the sermons that actually made a difference in my life, I would not even need all ten fingers.  The sad truth is, most sermons are made to follow custom, but they are not particularly effective.  Most local ministers are not particularly great orators.  I have known one who routinely took 45 minutes to preach about 25 minutes' worth of material.  He apparently did not plan his introduction and conclusion.  So he would get up and start speaking, wandering around for 10 minutes or more to find his way into his sermon outline.  And at the end he would wander around for 10 or 15 minutes trying to finish it.  I also knew a man who talked so fast that he could get through a half-hour sermon in twenty minutes.

During my time in Bible college, in the chapel services we heard almost all of the local preachers in the area, and many of the "Big Men in the Brotherhood."  One of the latter group was either so proud of one of his messages, or just didn't keep track of when and where he had used it, and preached the exact same sermon at our chapel three years in a row.  The professor who taught public speaking and homiletics (how to preach) had an impressive voice and was a dramatic speaker; I would have to say his content was not nearly as impressive as his delivery.

From what I have seen of Bible colleges, the professors of Bible and theology got most of the glory on campus.  But over the years, I have reached the conclusion that the greatest mind of all the men I studied under was John Richardson, the head of the education department.  He taught everything from an introductory course that was required for every major to small specialty classes of a dozen students or so.  But one of his mantras was "What's the worst method of teaching?  The one that's used ALL THE TIME."  Where he had to, he lectured; in the smaller groups, he preferred back-and-forth discussion.  He had a tendency to think outside the box, and take different approaches to topics.

So, in most churches, what is the method that is used all the time?  The sermon.  And even a lot of Sunday school classes use the lecture method, at least past the primary school age classes.

Add in the sad fact that most students in Bible colleges and seminaries are not the greatest scholars--the few who are usually end up as professors rather than local ministers.  I studied under some serious scholars; one of my New Testament professors was part of the group who produced the original NIV translation of the Bible.  But the vast majority of local ministers are not great brains.  They may be good Christians, trying to do their job well; but intellectually, they are average at best.  

One issue Duin mentioned was pastors downloading someone else's sermon outlines from the Internet, rather than composing sermons themselves.  That is just the latest version of an old custom.  Fifty years ago you could buy books of sermon outlines in the bookstore at my Bible college.  Those books would never have been published unless there was a demand for them.  But using borrowed material does not make one a better preacher--as one pastor she talked to put it, "If you do this regularly, your brain shrivels up."

One thing I have observed throughout my life:  people try to spend their lives doing or teaching what they learned when young.  I have seen professors who apparently had not learned much since they finished grad school.  (By the time they get into their 70s they may be clueless about what is going on now!)  I have worked with carpenters who were still mostly doing things the way they learned when they started out--and had a lot of trouble with new ideas or new materials (that is a major reason why home construction has not changed all that much in the last fifty years!)  And you can count on many local pastors going through their career the same way--it seems to be a common thing in human nature.

Pastors

Continuing my thinking about Julia Duin's book "Quitting Church," here are my thoughts on her chapter "Is the Pastor the Problem?".

For most people, inside and outside the church, it seems unthinkable to have a church without a pastor, unless it's just a temporary situation until a new pastor is hired.  But the truth is, the professional pastor is a human tradition, with very little evidence for it in the New Testament.  The Greek word poimen is usually translated as "shepherd"--because it normally referred to people who worked with actual sheep.  "Pastor" itself is a transliteration of the Latin word for shepherd.  There is only one passage in the entire New Testament that lists "pastor" among the leaders of the church--Ephesians 4:11-12.  "And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.  (NASB)  That's it--that's the only reference to "pastor" or "shepherd" in the functioning of the church.  Is that enough to justify the institution the modern church has built up?  Is that why we have a profession, a full-time job for most who are in it, starting with a degree from a seminary or Bible college?  Just that one verse justifies this whole edifice?

What about Paul's "Pastoral Epistles"?  Guess what?  Nobody called those letters to Timothy and Titus by that label in the early church!  That name was applied to them in the 1700s, after the modern institution of the pastorate had been established in the Protestant churches of Europe.  Actually, Timothy and Titus were part of Paul's missionary team, not local pastors.  They were sometimes on detached assignment--staying a bit longer after Paul moved on, to help get the new church established, or sent somewhere when Paul was unable to leave where he was.  But the strong indication they were not local pastors is in the closing verses of both II Timothy and Titus, where Paul told them to wrap up their work there and rejoin him.  He did not intend for them to stay there as local pastors!  They were on temporary detached assignments, not anchored to one church.

So the institution of the pastor is, at best, non-Biblical, a human tradition.  Does that make it wrong?

Well, to start with, it has created the clergy/laity division in the church:  an artificial distinction that divides the mass of the people from their supposed leaders, and all too often sets the leader on a pedestal.  Somehow, being in "full-time ministry" is perceived by most as being holier and more important than the ordinary church-goer.  It sets up a "first-class" and "second-class" system among the members of the body of Christ.  When I was in high school, in the church my family attended, there was a certain status implied if you were going to enroll in Bible college rather than a secular university.

This next part is personal.  During my years in preaching, I eventually learned that the biggest occupational hazard in professional ministry is that a person's pride gets wrapped around their position in the church.  In some cases, they just become a little too impressed with their own eloquence in the pulpit.  In the worst cases, it ruins the individual.  I saw it happen to one of my friends from college in less than a year. And I saw signs that it was happening to me.  I made the decision to walk away from preaching; I thought it was more important to stay close to Jesus than to be a pastor. Shortly after that decision, I came to know a man in his sixties who was so eaten up with pride that he could not tolerate any disagreement.  If someone disagreed with one of his ideas, he did not defend his opinion; he re-interpreted the disagreement as an attack on his office in the church, and defended his office tooth-and-nail, no-holds-barred.  This man had been a pastor and Bible college professor.  And in a period of five or six years he destroyed a very promising startup church; he ran off every other leader or potential leader, because of his pride.  And that church declined in number and soon ceased to exist.

Those two are not the only ones I have known with a pride issue--many of the pastors I have known as an adult have had some problems in this area.  Being on a pedestal and constantly in the spotlight does that to you.  I have known a few who have beaten it; some of them went through some kind of personal hell--for two, being kicked out of their lifelong fellowship over tongues may have cured them of it.

This issue of pride may well be a factor in the rash of sexual offenses that are troubling the church today.  The scandals in the Roman Catholic church may be the most covered by the press.  But the Southern Baptists and other groups are having to deal with it as well.  It has been going on for a long time--the minister who performed my wedding ceremony eventually got into an affair with the church pianist, and lost his profession and his family--50 years ago!  In her book, Duin refers to several of the big-name preachers that she knew of who ended up in scandal, and there have been more since the book came out.  Something I read many years ago:  psychologists and psychiatrists have been saying for years that often rape is not a matter of just lust, but of the sense of power it gives the perpetrator.  Who is the most powerful person in the church?  the pastor!  Given that kind of power, is it that surprising they fall into sexual sin?

But if we do not have professional pastors, who will lead the church?  The New Testament teaching on local church leaders is found in Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus.  Elders and deacons were the original pattern:  "An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, uncontentious, free from the love of money.  He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?); and not a new convert, lest he become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.  And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he may not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil."  I Timothy 3:2-7, NASB

How does that compare to taking kids just graduated from high school, giving them a few years of specialized college classes, and then putting them in charge of churches?  If you hire a new pastor from out of town, how do you know all the things Paul cited about that person?  My own experience was that the Bible college I graduated from did not do that much to vet their students.  I had to submit a letter from my pastor or other church leader vouching for my character--that's all.  Did they actually know that much about my personal character?  Not really--they only saw me on Sundays!  For how many pastors evaluate their members, look for the quote from Wesleyan pastor Robert Girard in my post from Jan. 11,2022.  I strongly suspect the majority of Bible colleges and seminaries are no better, based on what I have seen of preachers over the years.

Over the centuries since the Reformation, there have been a few groups that bucked the system.  The modern Quakers now often have pastors, but for most of their history they did not.  From what I have read of the Amish, they pay their bishops, but not their local preachers; many of their local groups meet in homes rather than church buildings, and each group has three or four men who handle the preaching.  They work for a living all week and take turns preaching on Sunday.  Apparently it is considered a burden rather than a higher status.  But the history of both groups is a story of persecution by both Catholics and other Protestants.

Duin has another chapter on "Not-so Solid Teaching."  I will deal with it next.

Stalled Movements

 This will likely be the last post I write about Julia Duin's book "Quitting Church."  The next-to-last chapter of the book is "Bewildered Charismatics" about people wondering what had happened to what seemed to be a strong and growing movement.

Over the years, I have been part of several Christian movements:  the small group movement of the 1960s and after, the Christian homeschooling movement, the discipling movement, the charismatic movement, the praise and worship movement, the Vineyard movement...I was interested in the house church movement, but there was not much of it where I lived.

I also grew up in a denomination that grew out of a movement in the early 1800s--the Campbell-Stone New Testament Restoration Movement.  Their goal was to break free of denominations and creeds and unite Christians around the New Testament pattern.  Many of their early preachers would not take a salary from their local congregation; they chose to support themselves by farming, writing, teaching or other activities.  They did believe in financial support for foreign missionaries, but not their neighborhood pastors.  But by the late 1800s, most of their churches were back to paying their pastors; and by the 1960s what had started as a reaction against the rampant sectarianism of the early 1800s had become one of the most sectarian groups in the US.  They had also split into three groups--the liberal Disciples of Christ denomination, the independent Christian Churches, and the acapella Churches of Christ.

Between the history of the group I grew up in and the experiences of the modern movements I had been involved in, I reached a conclusion about Christian movements.  Typically, they have a useful life of about twenty to forty years.  After that, they usually don't go away or disappear; but they quit "moving"--they don't learn any more, they don't gain any new ground, and often they actually backslide a bit from their original ideas and practices.

I experienced this in the praise and worship and charismatic movements.  I was in places where we were singing the "new music" back in the 1970s.  Back then, we did not have PA systems or even bands--if we had a two or three guitar players who could take turns leading the singing, it was good enough.  In the '80s, bands were coming in, and things got more active; we stood up and sang our hearts out, danced in the pews, and sometimes broke into marching around the room as we sang.  But even then, the music was starting to be commercialized.  By 2000, much of it needed a band and backup singers to make it work.  In recent years, I have been hearing that in some churches, most of the people no longer sing; they sit in their chairs listening to the concert.  And in what I have personally seen of the current music, I am not all that impressed with the melodies or the words of the modern products.  And even the Holy Spirit seems suppressed; apparently in a lot of congregations, there isn't much prophecy from the people--they expect the pastor or guest speaker to tell them what the Holy Spirit has to say.

I am now 72 years old, and a lot of the excitement we knew when I was in my 20s and 30s has subsided.  I am afraid that's what people do.  When God moves, they are caught up in it for a while, but eventually they sit down and start building a monument to what God did.  That's how most of our modern Protestant denominations started--Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Christian Church, Pentecostals, and more.  But I have chosen to skip the monuments and keep my eyes open for what God does next.