Three Years After Church Walls Crumbled
Do orphaned believers have a reason to return to church?
COVID-19 (and all that came with it) hadn’t even begun to dawn on the horizon when I knew something was about to shake. I was already pulling on my boots. I didn’t yet call myself an “orphaned believer,” but my relationship with the Christian Church was about to change. Call me crazy if you want, but I had a vision.
A Vision of Crumbling Walls
There are a few types of visions. There is “A Dream,” like Martin Luther King Jr. had, and many of us still carry. Then is a vision, like the hopes and goals that are creatively plastered on a vision-board. Then there are the visions of mystics, the type that are either supernatural, or just plain crazy.
This vision was the mystic kind. It wasn’t a trance, nor was I drugged up. Like the times I’ve had them before, it was as if a faint movie was playing in my mind, layering over reality. It doesn’t feel as though it is something my imagination is conjuring up.
Strange, maybe. But in my tradition’s way of following Jesus, pictures and prophesies aren’t uncommon, even if still special. And the only way one can know for sure if they are real is if they unfold before your eyes in the physical.
Below you can read what I wrote while trying to describe the vision I saw:
"The walls of the Church are built of stone and brick; tall and towering like a citadel around us. On the walls there are established spaces and rooms with people in them, built into the walls. [Like ministries and programs?] They will violently shake, crumble and fall, like Jericho's walls.
Then we will have a choice. We can spend our time trying to rebuild the wall. In the vision there is a strong sense we will be missing out, that it will be futile, a waste of time if we go that route. God is doing a new thing, inviting us into it by inviting us out of what was.
Others grabbed their arrows and their family's hands—each other's hands. They navigated over the rubble, climbing out over the broken bricks and into the world to learn how to be God's Church there, among the people. Those who didn't climb out over the rubble, into something new and unknown would miss out on this new thing. The people of the Church would have to make a choice between new and unknown, small and together, or large and established as of old, rebuilding the church walls as they knew them before."
Shaking and Wounding
When COVID-19 shook, racial tension shook, politics shook, and when evangelicalism—especially that brand that many of us call Christian Nationalism—quaked and began to crumble, I wasn’t surprised. I looked around me for some hands to grab a hold of. We could begin climbing out over the rubble.
That’s when it became complicated. I couldn’t find the hands to grab! Everyone was flailing or trying to push rocks off themselves or their loved ones. So many were injured. There were a lot shouting at each other about rescue efforts. I couldn’t guess the death-toll—of how many had died to Christianity altogether? Then before I could even blink, people had already begun hiding in the wall’s few remaining alcoves, huddling tight.
I didn’t expect so much crushing. And as I looked down on myself, I was shocked to see that I was one of the wounded, bloody and bruised.
An Outbreak of Deconstructing
Deconstruction is the term many followers of Jesus and former Christians use to talk about reassessing their beliefs, their religious traditions, and work though the trauma they might have experienced under the name “Christian.” If you aren’t from a Christian background, I can only imagine that this would be a fascinating phenomenon to observe (if you’re even aware of it happening). But in a matter of years, tens of millions of Americans are finding themselves in this space.
I didn’t need to know the term to be slowly deconstructing my own beliefs for the last couple decades. This came out of a combination of caring about justice, being a student of cultural anthropology, and having a sincere desire to discover truth and who God really is (not simply blindly follow a religion). But since the figurative earthquakes externally occurred, in addition to my personal life-or-death experiences, I’ve found the term “orphaned believer” to resonate more deeply than deconstructing.
Orphaned Believers
This week, two of my fellow Hope*Writers released books that might be pillars in the middle of the rubble. They come at the topic of Church from totally different perspectives.
In Orphaned Believers, Sara Billup talks about my subculture—growing up in an evangelical home, parents straight from the Jesus Movement of the hippies. She takes our hands, guiding us through a gentle examination of our shared stories and history. She reminds us that we belong, even when we can’t align with the version of Christianity that has wrecked havoc on our nation. Yet, nor can we leave it, for we truly have found hope in the transformational power of the good gospel. She reminds us that although we feel alone, we still have a home as orphaned believers.
I’ve been following Sara for a few years now. She has convinced me that maybe, just maybe, it is still worth rebranding the name “Christian.” With her, I have been able to ask hard questions without selling out, and I am able to accept where I’ve found myself, even if not really fitting with the evangelical culture of my youth. Its nice to know I wasn’t the only child who semi-regularly panicked, thinking the rapture had happened and I was left behind! (For you non-evangelicals out there, this is based on an end-of-the-world theology that assumes that believers will spontaneously disappear before a horrific seven year time-frame, concluding with the return of Jesus.)
Return to Church
My other fellow Hope*Writer, Ericka Andersen, states that there are 26,000,000 women in the U.S. alone who’ve left their church in her new book, Reason to Return. Using research, she makes a convincing case to those of us swept away by this mass exodus to come back and find a faith community. Ericka still gives us space to heal from church hurt and reassess our beliefs. But she doesn’t let us forget the benefits having a church brings. Generosity, volunteering, using our gifts and having people are such vital parts of living fully alive. Even if our “church” looks different than it used to, there is too much at stake for our own well-being and the well-being of those around us to flounder faithless and lonely for years.
I haven’t read most of Ericka’s book, yet. To be honest, I’ve been timidly resistant, probably a perfect fit for her ideal readership. My own relationship with my local church has changed drastically in the last three years. Although I am not about to quit Jesus or his Church, I have been one-hundred percent on the edges and distant in my local congregation, unsure how to climb through the rubble and rebuild something new.
The Expansive, Big and Beautiful Church
Last fall, Ericka Andersen invited a few of us to share our experiences about church on her blog. I wrote, Experiencing Church: One Woman’s Lessons on What Church Really Means about how my view of church went from being large to small, and had transformed to being expansive once again.
Here are some snippets:
Long before Church on the sidewalk, I experienced a unique way of being the Church as a missionary in Hawaii/Fiji and then in Spain/Italy. There, we had a communal style of living, and spent an equal amount of our lives pursuing God, deeper community, and loving our neighbors with the good news.
We were a messy people and many of us were young believers. Yet, that meant expectations of church weren’t established. The frequently seen side-effects of years in church life–religious security and pride in theological knowledge–weren’t part of our culture…
I lived in tension. I wanted to be the Church like I had experienced, wide, moving, alive! And yet, church-life consumed my time and energy. I constantly gravitated into heavy involvement in my local church’s meetings, leadership, and pushing ministries and programs. There was nothing wrong with these; many were considered the best church practices in America!
…But I was trapped by a religious hustle…
I’d love it if you read the full story here.
Climbing Over the Rubble
The jury is still out, but Ericka hasn’t yet convinced this orphaned believer to return— at least not to who I was and what I did before in my church context. And yet her and Sara’s words have forced the point. Although it is valuable to heal and reassess, there must still be a path forward. We can’t stay floundering forever. For me, that means brushing off and once again looking for hands around me to cling to as we climb out over the walls of rubble together.
If you are also an orphaned believer, what does it mean for you?
***For those of you who don’t find yourself in this demographic, let alone calling yourself a Christian, I am surprised you took the time to read this and I wanted to say thank you. I’d also love to hear your thoughts if you have any you would like to share.***