Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Leavers Letters
MMI recently pointed to a blog that is reprinting letters from people that have left their churches called "Letters from Leavers." Time and again as you read through the material there is a theme - the institutional church does not reflect the Christ the leaver has come to know.
No doubt in some cases that is a reflection of the leaver having come to know a very unusual Christ. However, the numbers would indicate there is a genuine problem there. Usually when I try to talk to church leadership people about this the response I get is always the same - "What are we supposed to do?" I want to take a brief shot at answering that.
Often when this reason for leaving is cited it is because the person that is leaving has been deeply hurt. That hurt is real, regardless of how trivial, unintentional, or contrived it may seem to you as church leadership. So what do you do? - minister to it. I would suggest two important factors in doing so. One, own that as a part of church leadership, it is your job to prevent people from getting hurt, even if you are not the offending party, and even if the offense is silly or imagined. Confess, ardently, your role in the church's failure. Then, I think some justice must be brought the to circumstance. The directly offending party needs to be chastised in some fashion.
This is so often where we really fall down on the job. Anytime we comfort someone that has been hurt, but fail to correct those who rendered the harm, the comfort seems like mere gesture - just patronizing someone. "Yeah, we hurt you, we're sorry, but we are not going to do anything to try not to hurt you again." Is it any wonder someone would move on in such an instance? The probablity of being harmed again is just too high.
Which is illustrative of why the reason for leaving being discussed here is raised even without apparent harm. To the leaver the church just does not seem serious about really trying to be God's institution. In many cases, far more cases than most would admit, the fact that we as the church fall radically short is not even acknowledged. But in those cases where it is acknowledged, there are generally no steps taken to change it - at least not the right steps.
An example - "the church is not warm." So you add greeters. Well, greeters make the door warm, but not the church. We don't need programs, we need change - in the lives of everyone in the church.
Admit, then act is the key. I know that action will be hard. I know that action will be resisted. But that is not the point. It was not easy for Christ to go to the cross either. But He did.
Related Tags: church, confession, confrontation, leaving church, admit, act
No doubt in some cases that is a reflection of the leaver having come to know a very unusual Christ. However, the numbers would indicate there is a genuine problem there. Usually when I try to talk to church leadership people about this the response I get is always the same - "What are we supposed to do?" I want to take a brief shot at answering that.
Often when this reason for leaving is cited it is because the person that is leaving has been deeply hurt. That hurt is real, regardless of how trivial, unintentional, or contrived it may seem to you as church leadership. So what do you do? - minister to it. I would suggest two important factors in doing so. One, own that as a part of church leadership, it is your job to prevent people from getting hurt, even if you are not the offending party, and even if the offense is silly or imagined. Confess, ardently, your role in the church's failure. Then, I think some justice must be brought the to circumstance. The directly offending party needs to be chastised in some fashion.
This is so often where we really fall down on the job. Anytime we comfort someone that has been hurt, but fail to correct those who rendered the harm, the comfort seems like mere gesture - just patronizing someone. "Yeah, we hurt you, we're sorry, but we are not going to do anything to try not to hurt you again." Is it any wonder someone would move on in such an instance? The probablity of being harmed again is just too high.
Which is illustrative of why the reason for leaving being discussed here is raised even without apparent harm. To the leaver the church just does not seem serious about really trying to be God's institution. In many cases, far more cases than most would admit, the fact that we as the church fall radically short is not even acknowledged. But in those cases where it is acknowledged, there are generally no steps taken to change it - at least not the right steps.
An example - "the church is not warm." So you add greeters. Well, greeters make the door warm, but not the church. We don't need programs, we need change - in the lives of everyone in the church.
Admit, then act is the key. I know that action will be hard. I know that action will be resisted. But that is not the point. It was not easy for Christ to go to the cross either. But He did.
Related Tags: church, confession, confrontation, leaving church, admit, act
