Almost a year ago I attended my last church service at St Lukes, a community I'd been a part of for over four years. Although there were many factors contributing to why I chose to leave, if I were to add all of them up in a neat equation, the other side of the "equals" sign would not amount to an obvious choice. I didn't leave because I was unhappy with the church, or because I'd been hurt (I hadn't) or because I thought I could do things better if I was on my own, or because two of our leaders were leaving. I wrote in my journal almost a year-and-a-half ago:

Right now my deep intuition is not to go to Sunday services. I'm not sure I understand that intuition and I'm not sure I can defend it logically, but that's my sense.

My decision to leave attractional, institutional church was influenced by the following:

Technorati Tags: Amahoro, Christianity, church, leaving church, N.T. Wright, Pete Rollins

• The idea of a faithful betrayal, that sometimes the only way to stay true to Christianity is to betray it in a faithful way.
  
  In the film "Amen" set in pre-World War 2 Germany, a Catholic priest is deeply disturbed by the Jews being rounded up by the Germans. As the Church thinks through possible responses, he poses a question: What if all Catholics in Germany were to convert to Judaism? Surely this would halt what was going on? His suggestion was passed over by his superiors. Finally, he takes his own advice, and exchanges his clerical collar for the star of David. He did this precisely because in order to remain true to his Christian beliefs, he had to betray his Christianity. This is the basic concept of a faithful betrayal.
  
  We see this in the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, where G-d commands Abraham to sacrifice his son. Putting ourselves in the place of Abraham, we can see his dilemma: G-d told him he'd be the father of many nations, and G-d told him to sacrifice his son. So his conflict is not just moral, but is between what G-d told him...and what G-d is telling him. He had to choose between mutually exclusive opposites...essentially betraying his son (if he killed him) or G-d (by not obeying him if he let Isaac live). Yet precisely because Abraham loved G-d, he follows His command...thereby engaging in a faithful betrayal. (Pete Rollins discussed these thoughts at a talk at the Greenbelt Festival in the UK in 2006. His new book which further develops these thoughts - "The fidelity of betrayal" - is due out in April 2008.)
  
  The more I thought about my engagement with church, the more I felt that a faithful betrayal was the appropriate response. What I knew at the time was how a decision like this is viewed: we (now) vindicate Abraham as a great man of G-d because he obeyed Him with faith (even though he was willing to kill his son), but this vindication is only made in retrospect. At the time Abraham made his decision, if we were his friends and he discussed what he was going to do with us, we'd all tell him he was crazy and stupid and probably needed to be locked up. This is one of the inevitable results of a faithful betrayal: the merits of the decision cannot be weighed at the time - only history can judge whether the decision was correct. So I knew I'd come in for some flak.
  
  What's also been interesting is that most Christians don't understand why I've left church. As I've said, even after adding up all of the reasons I left it still doesn't "click" into a satisfying answer - even for me! - yet I still know this is the right course of action. Most Christians whom I've explained all of this to usually put me in the "He's just dissatisfied with church" box. I want to say no! There is some dissatisfaction, yes - but that's not why I've left! Precisely because I believe in the Church so much I have to leave her, so that what I discover outside may help rejuvenate her and create possibilities for her.
  
  


• A decision is only courageous when no clear way forward identifies itself: if one alternative is an obvious choice over all the others, there is no choice to make.
  
  Pete Rollins again: "If you've got an army of 10,000 and you're fighting against 4 people with teaspoons, there's no decision - you fight! But if you're fighting against an equal size - or bigger - army, only then is there a decision to be made." This helped me realise that I could intellectualise my choices as much as possible and run them past others and create lists of positives and negatives, but no matter how I looked at it there would be no obvious choice to be made. There were no clear reasons as for why I should leave church, yet I still thought I should, but I was trying to understand the options so that something clear would present itself. And as I thought about what Pete said, I understood that exactly because no option presented itself as the logical option, I actually had space to make a decision.
  
  


• While I was thinking this through I had a significant experience at Holy Trinity Brompton in London which took one of the core practices of church and flipped it on its head.
  
  HTB is the home of the Alpha course - known worldwide for presenting the basic concepts, beliefs and practices of Christianity in a user-friendly way. I'd visited them briefly on a mission trip with the Baptist Union in 2000, but hadn't made it to a service. So my expectations were high when I attended their evening service...and as I sat through "just another worship service" a truth hit me in a way I knew would be true for me for the rest of my life. It said,

  "If I never have to sit through another sermon for the rest of my life, I'll be quite happy with that."

  
  What I appreciate in the Anglican tradition is that the central act of worship during a service is communion. Everything which happens points towards meeting Christ in the bread and the wine: having the pulpit as the focal point of worship seems counter-intuitive (and, in some cases, idolatrous). I've sat through many, many sermons in my church-going life. I stopped paying attention when I could identify what the preacher was going to say before he said it; what his supporting texts might be and what other options he could call on for exposition and application of the passage. Not that I had nothing left to learn! Just that what happened during sermons was usually not compelling, and didn't hold the attention of younger people (who are able to learn through different experiential media) for very long. (One of the reasons I enjoyed St Lukes so much is that I could not predict what Simon would say in his sermons.)
  
  That's not to say I've stopped listening! I have about 24 hours of N.T. Wright lectures that I listen to over and over again ("The future of the people of God" talks are his best). The two best live talks I heard last year were in a coffee shop and at a hotel: Brian McLaren on "Postmodern and postcolonial" and Kenzo Mabiala on "African postcolonial theology: the imperative to differ." I subscribe to a stack of podcasts (like the Emergent Podcast) and have recently started downloading daily prayers from pray-as-you-go.org to help me sustain a daily rhythm of prayer outside of a monastic community. I'm also reading a lot - the best books I read last year were:
  
  The Challenge of Jesus - N.T. Wright
  On Religion - John D. Caputo
  Simply Christian - N.T. Wright
  Emergence: the connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software - Steven Johnson
  Chaos: the making of a new science - James Gleick
  
  And after a year of not listening to sermons, I'm quite happy.
  

It's been a good year! I've met some really interesting people doing good things. I went to the Amahoro conference in Uganda on Postcolonial church in East Africa and was blown away by some great thinking. I took some flak for not being a part of a church. Some people were worried, others were encouraging. I came closer to forming my theological beliefs and understanding why I think what I think.

As I close this post, I think it's important to say that I'm not trying to encourage other people to leave church. I'll only do that if it's something G-d is calling them to, if they're in an abusive (emotionally, theologically or spiritually) church or if they could grow more in a different context (for instance, there is much about spiritual depth that Baptists can learn from Catholics).

Hey Roger... great post, you're a really talented and interesting writer. I was just wondering about your denoting God as G-d. I've seen this convention somewhere before and wondered about it. What's it mean?

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Posted by: BellClare 15 Apr, 2010 - 18:52:12

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