It’s a strange thing to come back home.
For half of my life I grew up here, it was all I knew, all I’d known, and then the second half I spent in so many places.
Until God brought me back here, back to that same town as that first church, and the area that held so many memories. And so many questions.
And it’s a strange thing, to come back and it be so different, and me be so different. It’s jarring. It’s eye opening. It’s unnerving.
And the part of me that resents not having a solid church foundation growing up also gives thanks for it- because when there is no solid foundation to begin with, the rebuilding requires much less deconstruction. In so many ways, as I drive past that gated-off church building, I can see how then and since then God was working to yet bring me that solid foundation and not let me settle for anything else in the meantime.
When this series began I commented that it had taken me a while to talk about it here because I thought I couldn’t quite find the words. Couldn’t quite sort it through. Couldn’t quite process it enough.
But now I know the deeper reason. The root reason it took so long to speak up, to share, to sort through it. The reason I had no words.
It’s the pain. The pain of it all, the pain of facing it and reckoning with it.
It’s the same reason I don’t talk much about my barrenness, a shattered fertility that came too young for me and the times since then that I have ached in my whole being to be pregnant again.
There’s just some wounds that hurt so much, so deeply, and they squeeze at your identity and leave this vacancy that can hardly find a voice.
And that was church hurt for me for so long. This miscarriage in the Body of Christ. This barrenness of Church.
It was the pain that kept me silent, and still keeps me there in a lot of ways, and I knew that by speaking it at all I had to acknowledge the reality of what happened to me, and especially what happened in me.
And what happened to so many others. And this is what compels me to speak. If it was a pain I carried alone I could bury it. But as “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” asks in its last episode, how many people are hearing their stories reflected?
How many people are hearing their stories reflected?
I think about how many of you I’ve heard from. And how many I personally know with stories of pain from their church experiences. I think of Mars Hill. Ravi Zacharias. The SBC abuse report. What seems like an endless stream of hurting.
And this pain? This pain I feel and countless others feel as they flee the church- it’s so often an ignored pain by the church. The topic taboo. Silence pious. Sufferer shamed.
But suffering is so much more severe when it’s experienced solo.
And so one of my goals in writing this series has been to let the church-hurting know they’re not alone.
And the other main goal is to leave with the message I always ended my semesters with when teaching sign language: “Follow Jesus.”
Because honestly, the church may be worried about what they look like and pastors may be worried about keeping platforms and there may be a lot of pomp and circumstance. But if we don’t reckon with the floods of souls walking away from church and leaving the faith completely, what will it even matter if our church doors stay open?
That first red church building I grew up in has closed doors, and so many have closed hearts to going in the still open ones at other churches. Deconstructing has become synonymous with walking away from Christianity. But as Paul Tripp says, “We should all be deconstructing our faith, we better do it. Because our faith becomes a culture, a culture so webbed into the purity of truth that it’s hard to separate the two. I celebrate the church of Jesus Christ…but I’m sad for the church.”
It can feel like the only options are to grin and bear the harm in the church and take a “nothing to see here, folks” approach, or to deconstruct completely and be done with the faith. But I’m hopeful there’s a third option. One that does require a lot of deconstruction, deconstructing of all the bad ideas that have been tacked on to church, of all the bad practices and bad excuses and bad behaviors. Deconstruct that.
Deconstruct what’s unbiblical. What’s wayward. What’s harmful.
Church hurt creates a void. A void they may then ironically judge you for. But this emptiness, this is where God can rebuild.
And so we can look to Him, and see where we’ve seen Him, and smile in hope at where He’ll lead us.
I’ve asked the question, “Have I ever really been to church?”
And the answer is yes- sometimes when I thought I was going to church, I did. And sometimes I thought I was going to church and maybe didn’t really.
And sometimes I went to piano lessons and didn’t even realize I was going to church.
I’ve been in the ashes of rubble. And while the pain has been brutal to face, for the first time I look at the rubble and smile because for the first time I have hope at what God will rebuild.
And so I leave you with the trifold repetition that I left my students with each semester:
Follow Jesus.
Follow Jesus.
Follow Jesus.