My "Leaving Church" Story

Years ago when I first started taking blogging more seriously, I gave myself a few rules of things I will not blog about.

1) Political commentary.
As it is, there are enough opinions out there to sway the crowds one way or another. I don't need, or want to, start another heated debate. Words are only of use if they compel people into action.

2) Reactionary posts.
Because the blogosphere is a public forum, I don't need to throw out a passionate reaction to an event or something I came across only to process my thoughts a little further and regret a post a week later.

3) Personal drama.
Again, the blogosphere is a public forum. Unless healing and reconciliation have taken place, dirty linen doesn't have to be aired in public.

Today, I'm breaking rules #2 and #3.
I'm treading carefully with this post today because there are episodes that I'm considering writing about where reconciliation has not taken place, so I'll throw in a disclaimer early on that these stories are only shared to give credibility to the bigger story, and not to turn this blog into a bitch-fest.

So here we go. This is my "Leaving Church" story, a response to the recent frenzy in the blogosphere.

It began in 2005, when I came across Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz. I was on a student-leadership team in a Christian liberal arts college, and that was the book we were reading on campus that year. Miller's book articulated many of my frustrations with a brand of Christianity that I had been struggling with because it was getting too superficial for my liking, and made me want to apologise to every person whom the church had left a bad after-taste with.

A year later, as a ministry intern, I found myself watching theologians, professors of religious studies and retired ministers bickering amongst themselves about how much time our staff organist should be allowed to rehearse on the organ in the sanctuary. I realised then how broken institutions can be, and decided that if this is what becomes of theologians, professors of religious studies and retired ministers, I would never go to seminary, and never work in a religious institution (never mind that I had already "responded to my call to ministry"). I wasn't ready to completely abandon the institution--the church is family. Just because all the Big Brothers and Sisters screw up or don't play fair doesn't mean you disown them.

So instead, my first real grown-up job was at a para-church organization. Freshly graduated with the conviction that I knew nothing, I thought working at a para-church organization would still keep me involved in the local churches, but at a level where I only need to watch from the peripheries and not get tied up in the politics. That would buy me some time to work through my issues with the local church, find some healing and eventually start seminary feeling less jaded.

Maybe I only have myself to blame for getting overly-involved. But after a couple years of watching policy after policy being implemented that were quick-fixes to a more deeply-rooted problem without thorough thinking through of what long-term implications there might be to those directly affected by these new policies, one cannot help but feel even more jaded by institutions. And then I discovered more and more voices amongst my new-found community in seminary that resonated with my thoughts. Oh, I could tell you of the countless hours we spent dreaming up what Church could be like if we could just start our own church amongst our own circle of friends and not have anyone else join in--most of which happened while we were avoiding writing about sanctification and the likes of it.

But we all knew. We couldn't run away and start our own thing. Most of us who understood the history of our tradition, the Church of God Reformation Movement, started by DS Warner, knew that that was exactly how we started off. As students of Church History, we knew that it had been done before--countless times, even before DS Warner.

The summer of 2010, I had the privilege of spending a few months with a group in Berlin, Germany. This was a group that came together to figure out what Church meant in 21st Century Berlin, a cosmopolitan, global city that had moved on from the days where Luther's reformation had a significant impact on ecclesiology. The group in Berlin wasn't a sensation because they were trying to start a hip 21st-Century style of monastic-living. They were sensational because they were intentionally committed to community and to the spiritual betterment of each one in the group. But even more so, to the reality that engaging in community means engaging in each other's dirt and learning to fight fair when we disagree rather than say, I'm just going to go off and start my own thing.

Kelley Philips, my internship supervisor in Berlin explained to me that the statement, "If we would all just go back to the 1st-Century Church where everyone came together to take care of everyone else, the world would be a better place," had become a popular catch-phrase in church-language these days. But we often ignore the possibility that the 1st-Century Church probably fought all the time too, as they define what "fair share" meant. We paint idealistic pictures of what the Church should be or look like, rather than embrace it for what it is and try to work through those pieces. I could quote you one Bonhoefferian thought after another about the impact of pursuing human idealism instead of pursuing the reality of God, but the reality is, these are only words.

So what IS your leaving church story, you ask. I could tell you of the heartache of trying to find healing after that dark year in undergrad. I could tell you of the 4 years I spent defending an institution even though there were realities I faced everyday in that institution that discouraged me even more. I could tell you of how I beat up a TV in anger when this same institution told me they wanted no part in my involvement with the missio Dei since I wasn't one of them (ask my friends Emily, Ashley, Michael, Yocum and Jason. They witnessed the anger).

You want a leaving church story? I don't have one to tell you because after all this time, I haven't left. And it's not because I haven't wanted to, or haven't had the guts to. But it's because the Church is family. I can dream all day about being born into my ideal family, but it is in digging through the dirt with my real family that I can truly understand "For God so loved the world..."

Beloved Church of God theologian Gil Stafford is known for his words, "Be the Church." As I was ruminating over how to articulate my "leaving church" story, I found it ironic that we're talking about leaving the church when the reality is, we ARE the Church. How can we possibly leave the church if that requires us leaving ourselves?

Or maybe that's what it comes down to. Maybe we need to leave ourselves, our ideals and definitions of what Church should be, and just simply BE the Church.

"Well, God told me..."

"I get frustrated when people say things like, 'well, God told me...'. How do they know what God is saying? I've been praying about this for the last few months and I don't 'hear' God telling me yes or no. Yet they can so easily say "God told them." I go back to the scripture about God being with the righteous and I wonder if it's because I'm not righteous enough that I'm not hearing from God."

For a while now, I've been mulling over this part of the conversations Steve and I have been having over the last few months, trying to come to some conclusive thought about what it means to hear the voice of God. The reality of it is simply, I just don't know.

Steve brought up something the last time we talked about this. With the stuff he's been going through recently, he's wondered if it comes down simply to the fact that he could choose to say, "well, God told me to do this" when really HE was the one who made the decision because blaming it on God would be an easier way for people to not hate him or the consequences of his decisions.

It was something I resonated with because it wasn't too long ago that Heidi had to try and explain to the 3Ts why Jael was moving away from them. The conversation went something like that...

Heidi: Well, the government wouldn't let Jael stay. (referring to the immigration offices)
Toby: Well, I'll go kick them in their privates.
Heidi: Tob, I think even if the government would let Jael stay, I'm not sure that she would want to...
Toby: Well, I'll go kick them in their privates anyway.

It was a slightly humorous conversation (as are most conversations in the Freer-Fry household), but the realisation that I had actually CHOSEN to leave broke my heart. I couldn't blame it on immigration, or on God's will or anything of the sort. The reality was, I could have found a way to stay in Anderson (find some job that would basically sell out my soul and my calling, marry an American citizen just for the sake of staying, you name it). But ultimately, I made the decision to say yes to Westside Christian Fellowship. If I believe that God is a god of free-will, then of course I was the one with the free-will to choose to leave.

To try and explain it as God's will would probably be as blasphemous as saying I've figured out the way God thinks, at least about this situation.

I finally got to watch The Hunger Games recently. Scene after scene of Seneca Crane, the gamemaker dictating what to throw in to alter game-play left me wondering if that was how God manipulates our life paths. Not that God would throw fireballs or mutts our way, but it left me wondering if, for so long, my understanding of the way God works had been limited to the imagery of God being a gamemaker that controls the circumstances in our life path. When the reality is, if God simply IS, God probably wouldn't be overly-anxious about when we wander of the "right" path. If we are the imago Dei, then you'd think that surely we would have enough smarts to get ourselves out of being stuck.

Came across this NPR article a few days ago. Still mulling over this thing about hearing from God and the possibility that I've wandered too far off the "liberal" end of the continuum. If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Holy Saturday (thinking space)

After the frenzy of activity this week that began with shopping for chocolate eggs, it is now Holy Saturday.

The living space/office is still a disaster from prepping for this week, and I should probably clean. But for right now, I just need to sit and take in the melancholy of all that has happened.

Somewhere between baking matzoh and reading scholarly reflections on the significance of this week, I was hit with the realization that what we are remembering is a universal event ordained by a God who loves the world and not just one group of people. (Don't worry, we're not going to get into the details of universalism here. At least, not in this post.)

I guess it really began nearly 2 years ago in what became known affectionately amongst ourselves as "The Blue Church" in Berlin that we visited on Ascension Sunday. The service was in German, but it wasn't long before my limited German vocab combined with my background of working with liturgy kicked in and I was able to follow along with the order of worship.

The service ended with the congregation reciting The Lord's Prayer together in German. It struck me then that even though the version of the Lord's Prayer I knew was in English, the reality was that the prayer could well have came into existence way before the English language even became established.

Suddenly my personal relationship and understanding of Yahweh became so small compared to vastness of church history.

I have a tendency to make comparisons or liken God to things. Arthur often throws in the reminder that God isn't bigger than, or stronger than or _________ than. God simply is; we are the ones who need to throw in the comparisons so that the limitations of our human mind is better able to grapple with the reality of God's existence. We are the ones who need to stick attributes to God--male or female, big or strong, for or against. We are the ones who need to sort it out, need affirmation of whether we are right or wrong in God's eyes. When the reality is, God simply... is. I am.



The reality of God is hit again this week as I threw matzoh dough in the oven, remembering the last Seder meal I got to be a part of. Between the road-kill that was used as the sacrificial meat and some of the less than reverent conversation happening, it probably wouldn't make it on a list of orthodox practices. But the orthodoxy and the reverence came not out of how the ritual was carried out, but that the act of gathering together for a meal to remember one of Jesus' last acts on earth mattered enough to this group of friends that even with all our unorthodoxy, it was one of the most sacred gatherings I've attended.

A year later and I'm in a whole different context, gathering with a whole separate group for this same act of remembrance. And once again I find myself thinking, the Gospel is bigger. God is bigger. And again, I'm reminded that God simply is. I'm the one that needs to stick attributes to God to help me make sense of that reality.


Earlier this week, I read something a dear friend of mine, Hannah Adams Ingram, wrote. Hannah is a scholar that I have a great deal of respect for simply because of her willingness to dig into areas that most of us would be tread cautiously around. Her Holy Week reflection made me confront some of the ways I've thought about Holy Week that I didn't realise weren't congruent with my personal theological conviction of a universal Gospel.

Growing up basically on the Equator, I had never experienced the seasons. In the days before Anderson and what I now think of as the beginning of my spiritual awakening, Good Friday and Easter were simply part of what we did in church. These 2 days bore as much significance for me as going to church every Sunday because that's what we did as a family.

Then Park Place and Seminary helped me pull apart more of the significance of Good Friday and Easter. Anderson winters probably pale greatly in comparison with Russian winters, but by the time February comes around, we're all ready for spring and new life and warmer weather, especially for this island-girl. It was in those years that I began to realise that until I can begin to grapple with the hopelessness of Good Friday, the significance of new life on Easter probably doesn't hold as much water. Easter became about pretty spring flowers, new life and Easter dresses because it was finally warm enough to wear dresses without freezing.

As much as I think Easter Egg Hunts are the cheesiest and laziest way to get away with pretending we give a crap about helping kids learn about the meaning of Easter, I'm caving because... well, I'm cheesy and lazy this year. Hey, I've only been here less than 7 months. Cut me some slack. But this week, Jonny, in his whimsical way, made me think about why we even include chocolate eggs in the Easter story. The reality is, Easter has often been associated with spring and new life, and the eggs were part of some pagan spring rituals. But here in the southern hemisphere, Easter doesn't mean spring just like Christmas meant water-fights at the beach more than snowflakes and sleigh bells.

Growing up, all my ideas of Christmas and Easter revolved around ideas from the northern hemisphere. I never thought to make a conscious effort to separate those ideas from culture or weather climates because the tropical minorities seemed to always give in to the temperate northern hemisphere whose voices were louder.

But if I still want to hold on to my theological stance of a universal Gospel, maybe it's time to give my ideas of Christmas and Easter a little more distance from culture and temperate.

I was curious about how Kiwi culture would influence my worldview when I decided to move here. The shopkeepers still throw me looks of curiosity because I clearly look Asian but sound so American, so I still need to work on my accent. But those are only surface changes. There's still work to be done with the heart to reclaim indigenous faith practices, and to make sense of this universal Gospel.

Easter: We Have a Problem

Holy Week has, in the last few years, replaced Christmas as my favourite part of the church calendar. This year, however, I'm fretting. Allow me to chronicle my Holy Week experience from the very beginning...

At our leadership retreat in November last year, we decided that every school holiday, we were going to try and plan some activity for the kids centering around the themes of love God, love others. So for Easter this year, since it's right around school holiday for term 1, I thought we'd get the kids to put together food hampers on Palm Sunday and take them to visit the folks in hospice on Easter Sunday.

After weeks of calling around to various places, I was told there isn't actually a hospice on the peninsula. The closest one would be about 20 minutes away in Central Auckland. And since hospices are kind of zoned into districts, because we're in West Auckland, the folks in Central Auckland kept re-directing me to the West Auckland folks, who in turn, told me they only have a site office and don't actually house patients.

Right around then, the folks from St Paul's, the Anglican Church that we rent the building from, contacted Chad to ask if we would be interested in doing something together over Holy Week. Part of it involved me taking fliers to the SUPAkidz (the Bible club we do at Matipo Primary) kids, so Chad forwarded the email to me. St Paul's has a ministry called the Selwyn Group that visits with some of the elderly and shut-ins on the Peninsula. So here I was thinking, problem solved! Now all we have to do is to get the kids to make some kind of craft to take to them, which would have been feasible since up till 2 weeks ago, we were averaging about 8 kids each week.

Jonny, who has been my key resource/idea person suggested that we could do harekeke weaving (Maori flax-weaving) with the kids on Palm Sunday, so here I go again, calling around to different places trying to find someone who could do that with the kids. It wasn't until last weekend when I was at a Scripture Union children's ministry conference that I discovered that Nina, who does SUPAkidz with Steve and I, was able to do it before she had her significant memory-loss. So again, here I was thinking, problem solved!

Then last Sunday came along. Our average of 8 kids grew to 13. I panicked slightly, and ended up sending an e-mail to our contact with St Paul's to let them know that we had a slightly bigger group. They suggested that the since their Selwyn group was kinda small and we don't want 13 kids packed into one house, that we divided up the kids into 3 different groups to do things. I wrote back and said, great idea, we'll find enough adults to come along so that we can split the kids up.

This week, PJ told me excitedly that she knew of a few more families that were thinking of coming to visit this weekend. So I thought, great, we'll make sure we have enough flax for 20, assuming that the 13 who were here the week before would still show up.

We didn't get 8.
Or 13.
Or 20.

We got flippin' 28 kids.

I wish I could have taken a picture of the maxed-out sanctuary today. Or the look on Uncle BK's face when he walked in, shocked, then not sure where he was going to find a seat. Or when Jonny walked in today (late, as usual), found a seat, turned back to me and mouthed, where did all these people come from???


By some miracle, we ended up with enough flax for everyone, managed to keep kids relatively controlled today, and hopefully everyone went home feeling like they learnt something about Palm Sunday. Who knows. I hope they at least found something that would be enough reason to come back next week (besides their parents dragging them here, of course).

Except now I have a problem. I have one week to figure out what we're doing for Easter. The Easter Egg Hunt will still be on, but I'll probably need to go to a wholesaler for candy. It really is a great problem to be having (I'll admit that I left church tonight with a stupid smile on my face), but it still is a problem. I'm only hoping I don't do my head in trying to get Holy Week sorted that I completely miss the point of it in the first place.

But for now, it's time for bed. There's lots of work to be done, but I have a feeling if I stay up any longer, I'm going to end up doing myself in analysing every part of the WCF story, trying to figure out what it is that's drawing the crowds in.

Because at the end of the day, I know it only happened because there's a Sovereign One at work.

Easter: We have a problem.

Those of you who pray, we'd really appreciate you thinking of us this week.