Navigating Hard Church
An ethnography of the American Church, Church is like hockey and hospitals, and what to do when you don't feel safe
Just Jesus. We were on the third song by the time I realized this is what the hipster-looking vibe on the wall stated. My heart swelled. Seemed unlikely anybody would put this on their wall, so few talk about justice and Jesus.
But now I don’t think that was what they meant.
Ethnography
I went to a friend’s church this Sunday. I try to visit a unique church service at least once a month. My goal is to attend services as if I am an anthropologist, visiting spaces that represent each perspective of Christianity. The study of culture runs in my veins. Besides, if we are all one body, then I figure I better get to know my spiritual family.
Actually, it goes a lot deeper and is much more raw than simple ethnography. It is about healing. It is to examine what I believe. And it is to imagine what it means to be the Church outside walls by observing churches within walls.
I’ll share the details about this ethnography of mine another time, maybe in a decade or two (I have no clue how long this will take). But I can tell you about this week. This Sunday morning I was at a small (but packed-out) non-denominational church. I assume it was a Bible church or at least an evangelical church. It was actually not unlike the faith community I am most connected to now (albeit with a lot less Pentecostals jumping from the seats).
Actually, I don’t know if that is true. Maybe that was what I enjoyed most about it—I had so little to go on I couldn’t really make any assessments. It begs the question—how much do we really need to know about another community and to agree on in order to worship together?
Home culture
I was surprised how much I enjoyed this service. I felt embraced by the familiar routine. There were welcoming people, who I didn’t know—refreshing with no complex histories in the way. I loved knowing my toddler was safe, playing in a room nearby. My teen counted three people who spilled their coffee through the service while I enjoyed my own tolerable cup of joe. I wanted to hear someone preach whom I’ve never heard teach. And I wanted to sing. According to my daughter, I sang much too loud. It was great.
In any room, I’m often the first to point out that within a heartbeat, tradition can become religion. I also firmly believe that a church service isn’t actually Church—any type of church service is just a small microorganism of a living and breathing body. And yet, I still love the spaces, movements, and actions I’ve participated in most of my life. When I’m not afraid anyone (including myself) is going to be harmed, church services can feel like home and be a soothing balm. What isn’t always so clear is whether they feel good because of my home culture and heritage, or because God’s Spirit is at work there.
Hospitals
Guess what? It has officially been a year since I’ve been a hospital patient! (Yay!) Having been admitted twenty times in recent years, I have a lot of complex feelings about them. In the couple months leading up to last week—the epicenter of big trauma anniversaries—I kept feeling like I needed to preemptively check myself in because I knew they’d keep me safe.
Church is a lot like a hospital.
Hospitals can give me panic attacks; I’ve had terrible experiences at them. These terrible experiences have largely been from my suffering body. But they aren’t limited to that—the poor choices of doctors, rude nurses, and the red tape of management have also greatly harmed me.
Hospitals have also kept me alive. They’ve heal me. They’ve cared for me and fed me. They’ve given me hope and a path towards wholeness.
Hospitals are a dialectic, and churches are too.
(It was hand soap that clued me into my confusing dialectic of feelings about hospitals, if you want to read that here.)
When you can’t stop looking for what is wrong
The last thing I wanted to do was look at the doctrinal statements of the church I visited on Sunday. I didn’t want to know about their politics or drama. I wanted the glossy surface of a magazine, and to not open its pages, going deeper.
Even as I walked in the door, I wondered if I could go into that building and not be judgmental.
The last time I went to a church service, I wondered who I could bring with me without them feeling rejected.
In fact, I'd say other times I go to church services, I am hypersensitive to anything that could be interpreted as unsafe.
Most of the time in my sermon notes, I type out the culture wars and misaligned assumptions that are brought up over the course of the church service. I examine each sentence, marking down what I agree with and don’t agree with.
Or I'll wonder if I will get sick again. After all, we are standing so close together, and a stranger is breathing near my neck.
Other times when I visit churches, I find myself looking to see how much diversity is on stage and in the room at large. This wasn’t something I was told to do, over time I’ve just become more aware of this. What are women doing during the service (what would I be allowed to do here)? Is there enough space for a wheelchair to pass through (also me, a couple years ago)? Would my teens’ controversial friends experience God’s love here? Maybe these markers won’t totally be indicative of how a church welcomes, or what their policies are. Even so, it is likely that these will reflect in the space the church has created.
I find that even though I do these things, it annoys me that I do them. I don’t want to be consumed by all these thoughts. They’re contrary and feel so against. I’d rather be present! I’m pretty sure the point of a service is to connect with God and his people, to encourage and equip each other. Wouldn’t it be nicer to go to a church service with my guard down?
Beyond attendance
Maybe the reason I enjoyed the church service was because I was entirely able to avoid accountability. It wasn’t “my” church service, so I didn’t have to participate besides acting like everyone else attending. I am not responsible for that church’s policy, how they love people, or how they worship God.
In my own rendition of something Francis Chan once said, “We were given ice skates to be on the hockey team, not given season passes to watch the game.” From this perspective, this Sunday I enjoyed a hockey game. I might have liked the play and hot dogs, but I don’t own any of their jerseys or have their sticker on my car. I haven’t committed to them.
What gives me the right to do an exegesis on these random church services I attend?
For when you don’t feel safe in church…
I had a conversation with my therapist about how much this frustrates me, the three percent of a church experience that I can get stuck on, when the other ninety-seven percent might be great. I judge myself for my judgmental attitude.
She has a different perspective. If that three percent is setting off warning bells that tell me that my values, my friends, or I am not safe, it shouldn’t be surprising I would get stuck on the three percent.
Oh yes. I forgot that I have a body! And that it responds to thinking I am in danger! If I have panic attacks about the hospital, of course my nervous system would respond to my experiences of being harmed in churches. It makes sense that I’m trying to figure out if I’ll be okay while trying to protect myself from potentially new traumatic experiences.
I’m not saying there aren’t times we are simply critical, outraged, offended, or even unforgiving.* However, instead of swiping these feelings under the rug, under a sham of non-judgement and/or a facade to hide our hurt, we can ask God to meet us in them. I thirst for the God who gives me grace, the restorer of ashes and broken bits of clay.
*Unforgiving in the sense where we are able to take steps towards forgiveness, or even reconciliation, but we are unwilling to meet God’s outstretched hand in movement.
The “When I…” list
Over the years, I’ve needed extensive of grace to meet me where I was in different moments. Here are some of them:
When I don’t want to attend or participate in church services
When I get stuck on something that preacher said
When I feel a tug-of-war between examining doctrinal statements and ignoring them
When I’m triggered by the white board directing members to meet up the stairs (and there is no elevator)
When I feel unseen and get defensive by what that person said about vaccines
When I don’t see any brown, black or Asian brothers and sisters on stage or in the seats
When I am awkwardly avoided or waved to by someone who never reconciled with me
When I get grossed out by all the visible wealth or an extensive hierarchy that is separating people within a space or community
When the pastor says “my hot wife,” but never passes her the mic
When I feel exhausted just looking at all the work that staff and volunteers are doing to pull off their church event and can’t stop wondering if they will burnout before ever knowing their value
When the gospel is trumped by culture wars and binaries
I don’t know what your “When I…”’s are. What makes your body tense in a church meeting? Maybe you can make a list like I do, to take notice of what you are reacting to and begin asking why. You aren’t evil for feeling/thinking these things. You don’t have to let them go unnoticed, for there is time for you to heal.
God isn’t about us trying to solve a problem about whether we should go or not go to church services, or what type of services we should go to and on what day of the week. He isn’t about impressing the religious with all that.
What God is all about is meeting us in our place of need. Isn’t this what God meant when he told Paul,“My grace is sufficient for you. My power works best in weakness.”(2 Cor 12:9)? Whatever that looks like, on any given day, with him we can be secure.
Just Jesus
Even after enjoying and connecting with everything during Sunday’s service, I still found something to trip over. It hit me that the church’s “just Jesus” meant “only Jesus.” I felt disappointed. How could I be disappointed that a church is proclaiming Jesus? After all, he the foundation—the who of it all! Maybe for them it was an affirmation, a rallying point. But I thought they were boldly proclaiming a primary element of Jesus character, and such a powerful one this Holy Week.
Instead of dismissing this disappointment as stupid, though, I paid attention to this negative three percent. And I realized my disappointment was because I thought I could belong more fully with this group. I hoped maybe they wouldn’t reject me for being a justice-loving follower of Jesus, as many Christians do.
It turns out that in this case, my negative feelings were because I want to be accepted. Oooooooohhhh. And so I remind myself that God is my security and that there is still a good purpose in worshiping with his people.
It’s going to be hard
That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Actually, it was a little bit hard; and for many of us, attending church is hard. But connecting with the Church doesn’t happen by avoiding difficult feelings. Rather, here is where we meet God—even when we don’t fully feel like we belong with the people who proclaim they are “Just Jesus’”.
Attending church while healing from hurt is anything but simple. Finding or forming a faith community that feels like home is no walk in the park. Following Jesus while eschewing religion extremely complex. And yet here we are, with one another, still pursuing the one who claims to give life, and life to the fullest.
Life to the fullest, even with his Church.
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On Average Advocate this week: We Can’t Escape Real Life While Changemaking