This topic contains 32 replies, has 17 voices, and was last updated by 
-
Posts
-
This topic question was a suggestion from one of our members! How do we respond to questions that challenge us as to why we left the church, why we no longer believe the way we used to, and why we have changed at all? What are some suggestions, or some actual responses that you’ve used and found effective?
-
This topic was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by
David Hayward.
-
This topic was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by David Hayward.
I guess it depends who I am speaking with.
Some people ask me those questions because they are a similar journey and wonder if they will survive outside the walls of the church. To them I feel more like a coach or a mid-wife.
For those that are challenging me and my decisions, I tell them how my many years on staff has affected the way I respond in services. I am damn good at critiquing a service so that we can change it before the second one or fix it before next week. It is a program or a show for me. I don’t receive well in those environments.
The good thing about this response is that it gives me a reason to express why I won’t go on Sunday but why I am okay with others doing it.
If they follow up with other questions about where I get my community, accountability, teaching, worship, communion, etc. I just share how Jamie and I have created that in ways that much better fit our schedule, our preferences, and our journey. They usually don’t know how to respond. I feel that this group just keeps waiting for me to fall into sin. (OMG – I bet joining this group was what they were afraid that I would do!!!)
Thus far we have taken the approach of simply saying we are on a hiatus and this was true at first as we genuinely simply needed time away from the church think and evaluate outside of the toxic influence of religion. But lately that response has become very inadequate. We no long feel that we are taking a break…we have presently rejected the institution of church or organized religion. We think we are going to start saying that we are still followers of Jesus, but no longer followers of church. It will be interesting to see how this is received since for many in our old church…the belief is you cannot be one without the other. Still…I am much more at peace with where we are than I was say a year ago. I don’t think the accusations will bother me so much any more. And there may be some who struggle with the same issues as Chad has suggested. For those…the old “hiatus” answer simply will no longer do.
AnonymousGary, that’s good to know. We’ve been telling people we’re on hiatus as well, but we’re nearing the end of the time we had set for ourselves (we didn’t share the time frame with anyone else). Hubby & kids want to go back to a church, but I just feel so done with it all. I’m happy for them to go, but my worry is that the kids will absorb the same wrong messages as in our last church. I know for sure I don’t want my daughter in any church that sees women as incapable of leadership and preaching, and I don’t want either kid in a church that marginalizes LGBT people. Hubby sees churches as all pretty much alike and doesn’t really care. I need more time, but my daughter especially has hated our family quiet times on Sunday mornings. To her, church = fun.
Amy having children at home would definitely complicate the situation. When we left a previous church about 12 years ago for the same kinds of reasons we still had 2 school aged kids and did not feel right about taking them out of the church. (Looking back now we wonder if that was the right decision) Ironically we left one very right wing fundamental church and went straight to another just like it. I guess at the time we thought the problem was with the pastor rather than the institution. But of course we were still in the midst of really struggling with our beliefs. Not that we have them all figured out now…but we don’t struggle the way we used to.
Hummm… I’m at the two year ‘taking a break’ and that isn’t working any longer and I’m getting more questions. I like the ‘followers of Jesus but not the church’… but since my sister in law’s dad is a pastor and my niece’s dad is the music minister, hummm…. In fact, my nephew was visiting me from Alabama and met the music ministers daughter at my house here in TX. Yea, some of the 20 year old girls from the church hung out at my house because I was fun. Imagine that. Anyway… All my family had always been in church (me too). So now, friends and family can’t fathom that I (of all people!) am not in church.
I am happy being home on Sunday. My dogs don’t seem to mind that I don’t go to church. Sorry, I digress… There should be a good answer that doesn’t offend but doesn’t leave them open to try to talk me into getting back to church. I just don’t know what that is yet. I don’t want to have to debate the issue.
Guess I didn’t finish my thought…
In fact, my nephew was visiting me from Alabama and met the music ministers daughter at my house here in TX. … and he married her and took her back to Alabama and that’s how she became my niece (in law).
I think I have come to rather enjoy answering these questions because I have so much good material. It has had the side effect that few people that I knew ask me anymore. I think I like coming from a place where I don’t have to prove a particular point. I tell people that I’m interested in truth and where ever that takes me. When ever I find out something new and it makes more sense than what I believed before I change and it becomes part of my own narrative.
I think I’m like the Borg, “We will assimilate you!” I just don’t look like them. It always didn’t make sense that with all those cultures they absorbed they didn’t get a sense of symmetry and beauty. LOL
That reminds me of a talk called the Straw Vulcan. It refers to the straw man argument. Spock was a straw Vulcan because no matter how many times he observed humans being irrational, he was surprised every time. Logic would consider human irrationality in its calculations instead of ignoring the data. Hence the presentation of the Straw Vulcan.
Wow that was a tangent. LOL
LOVE IT!! Spiritual Nerds are awesome!! lol
AnonymousI tell people I have been set free. The Holy Spirit pulled me out of the Church. Maybe it was to protect me from them, or maybe it was to protect them from me! I tend to be an uncomfortable challenge for my more simple minded brethren in the formal churches. I get it. Church should be a wonderful place not a place of dread and dangerous people, as I see it being. I had to leave, really I guess, for the peace if brought to me and that my absence brings to those who choose to stay. I am not cut out to be a modern Christian Church person.
Richard says that he doesn’t have to prove a particular point. I can relate to that because I have an unorthodox faith that I don’t have to defend. As an agnostic theist I have far more empathy with agnostics and some atheists than I do with those ‘Christians’ who think they have all the answers. Perhaps I go somewhat further than most when I suggest that the God I believe exists will think no less of a thinking atheist who rejects what they are being taught, but who might be open to the possibility of the existence of a spiritual realm.
Spiritual nerd! Never thought of that before – not so much a spiritual nerd (I’ve been programming computers since 1967 – the perfect job for someone with Aspergers Syndrome) as someone who happily goes over the same ground again and again refining my own understanding – something I found difficult within the confines of church attendance!
Like Kathy I can say that I have been set free. I have recognised that many people (including my wife) need the security from listening to others and sticking to their traditions. One of the reasons I left was because I felt uncomfortable sharing my unorthox thoughts with others who just could not get their heads around what I was saying. I sometimes wonder if this is an ‘elitist’ attitude. What do you think?
I don’t know anymore! We started with, “we’re taking a break.” Now we are out here…and our kids want to go to youth with their friends, which is fine. But meh, we’re gonna stay out in this limbo land for a while… and it’s all good.
Well I have not actually encountered any questions as to why I have left the church, mainly because I haven’t actually properly left really and no one really knows about my aspirations to leave. I was originally at a very legalistic, reformed church and I left it with my partner believing its problem to be centralised on the pastor. We joined a new, perhaps non-denominational, church and the teachings there were excellent on the most part, things most of us here would agree with. But one month into our stay there, we were already assumed to be apposed to same-sex marriage and the LGBT community in general. It was clear after a while that the problems lay in the institution itself and the cracks began to show. I am still technically going to church but I don’t plan to stay, me and church community just do not mix and I would rather pave my own way to Christ.
Well I had an opportunity to answer where I was going to church just this past week and told him I was still a believer in God but no longer a believer in the church or most of organized religion. The reaction from my friend was a bit of shock almost since he and his wife had sat under my teaching in two different churches and no doubt he was not expecting any such response. I am sure when he asked me where we were going to church my response was something that never could have entered his mind. The whole experience was kind of surreal for me. In fact I found it rather empowering to voice my beliefs openly to someone who was still a part of the institution. He took it reasonably well…but eventually he pointed out how many lives I had touched for God through my teaching and the years spent in the Easter drama we were so heavily involved in. What struck me after it was all over and done was how he really seemed chained to the view that we only touch people’s lives and minister to them through the church.
One thread I think might be important to point out, several people have mentioned their children missing youth group, their spouses needing the structure and security. I think back upon all of my experiences with “leadership” and I wonder if we aren’t delineating two different things? I open it up for comment and consideration that we are talking first about the conviction many of us share that the institution has failed, is broken. For us, the betrayals by others have become too costly and the hollow hypocrisy rings too loudly in our ears. That part of church we leave to be free of the lie.
But many of us also mourn the loss of friends, of a sense of family that we got to choose. We are made for community and loosing that is devastating. The desire to “have fun”, to be together with others, to be in community is a powerful draw and apart from joining some other public service organization, is hard to replace. I know this forum is talking about how do we respond to challenging questions but our children and our spouses also matter. How do we respond to them? How do we support them without leaving them in harms way. Is that possible?
-
This topic was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.