The Umbrella: Engaging "Leaving Church" From the Grassroots

I recently facilitated a "Becoming a Younger Adult" workshop at a Christian youth camp. The conversations I had after led me to writing this post to share a few thoughts.

“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.” - Matthew 7:24-27


Ten years ago, when I was about to move halfway around the world, my youth group got me an interesting gift. It was an umbrella that had been signed by the people in that youth group that I loved dearly.

That umbrella has lived in the storage closet in my parents' home for the last ten years. Every once in a while, I would think about it, but not once did I think about taking it with me when I left my parents' home again after a visit.

I never realised it, but that umbrella was to become a symbol of what that youth group meant to me. Having grown up in a comfortable home and having attended church regularly, life was predictable and having a faith system was easy. And everyday, I woke up knowing what to expect. I would take a shower, sit down at breakfast, then hop on the bus and go to school. In many ways, life was as if I had an umbrella that would protect me rain or shine. The people who had signed that umbrella were, for me, symbols of constants.


Last December when I was back in my parents' home, I dug it out and used it on one of those days when it was pouring down rain. Mum had kept it tucked away and not let anyone use it because she knew I was sentimental about things like that. I found myself twirling the umbrella around and around as I walked to the train station, looking at all the notes and signatures on it. There was one in particular, signed by one of my youth leaders that said, "We will be waiting for you to come back." 

Half of those people were no longer a part of our church. A few of them had found other church homes to plug into, and I was truly happy for them. Some of them I don't hear from anymore. Of the two youth leaders that I had, one no longer attended church at all, and the other did so half-heartedly.

But they said on the umbrella they would be waiting for me to come back... Sigh.


As I continued reading the notes on the umbrella, I didn't realise that my feet were getting wet and muddy because I wasn't watching where I was going and had been splashing in puddles. I began to realise a lot of the frustrations I had about the church political mess I had found myself entangled with in the recent years might have been exactly because I had focused too much on the signatures on the umbrella.

Even if I were to have gone back, youth group isn't the same anymore. Church isn't the same anymore. And if I was honest, I'm not the same anymore either. How can you be the same when you spent seven years at a Christian university, watching your friends one by one fall away from the regular, predictable routine of going to church every Sunday? To be fair, we were in Christian community all the time, and had to be at chapel services twice a week, so was Sunday church really necessary? How can you be the same when, in those seven years at a Christian university, you had spent more than half of that time uncovering the brokenness and inadequacies of the institution, and the humanity and fallibility of her leaders?

I began to realise the certainty of that umbrella and that youth group was never going to be enough to protect me from the storms of life. The truth is, no physical thing would ever be able to provide enough protection from the storms unless I stayed indoors all day--but what would be the meaning of life if I only did that?

What I also had to realise was that the storms of life cannot hurt me. Neither do they change who I am. Because my foundation has been built on solid rock--rock that is more solid than an umbrella with signatures of people whom I once sojourned with. But maybe the problem was that I needed help remembering what my foundation was built on.

And so I stumbled upon mentors who refused to let me walk away. And friends who kept me accountable. Sabbaths I had to learn to take to shift my perspective back to the things that matter. Walks I had to take to remind me to breathe and there's a Greater Being holding things together.


Well, I thought it was finally time to take the umbrella with me this last time that I left my parents' home. If nothing else, it would serve as an illustration at the workshop I was facilitating. What ended up happening was that the umbrella never made it to Auckland with me. I was walking out the main doors at the Auckland airport when I realised I had left the umbrella behind. I rang the luggage office every day at least twice before I left the country again, and would get the same message that they would call me if they found it.

Truth be told, I wasn't entirely fussed that it got left behind either, because it almost made for a better story to tell.

By no means am I suggesting that youth group or church community is a bad thing that should be left behind. I'm merely suggesting that for some of us, just going to church on Sundays isn't enough. We need rhythm markers along the week to remind us of the things that really matter when it all hits the fan again.


So this: what are your rhythm markers? What serves as reminders for you to remember where to keep your focus on?

Aotearoa Diaries: 返来 Return

Hello, 2015. It's nice to meet you.

First things first.
The last 3 months have been a whirlwind. 6 countries in some 80 days. Whoa.

Would I do it all over again? I don't know.

Don't get me wrong. The last 3 months on the road have not managed to kill my spirit of adventure or love for the world. But maybe that's the problem. Travelling stirs up all kinds of thoughts, feelings and dreams that I'm not sure I have the energy to keep up with anymore.

Let me back track a little bit.

2014 was a great year. Sure, it might have been because 2013 had been one big hell-hole, such that 2014 felt like a completely different life altogether. And even though ministry-wise, nothing had gone as I had expected, things were slowly taking shape.

The only problem was the one main one I had been ignoring all year long hoping that some miracle would just take care of it. That money problem.

I don't like talking about financial stuff because it's awkward and I like pretending that ministry doesn't involve money. But we had reached a point where reality was sinking in: something desperate needed to happen with the finances for the ministry or it's not going to go on. Then some friends sat me down and had me actually figure out that we were only at about 20% of what we needed each month.

That was when it hit the fan.

In the 3 months that I had spent on the road, I had a couple of offers for full-time ministry positions with a more stable income. When the first offer came, I still felt very strongly about returning to New Zealand. That the chapter with The Bridge isn't over. How could it be when we still have plans and dreams for this year? But by the time I began having more conversations with people and the other offers came through, I began to wonder if returning to Auckland was a stupid idea. 3.5 years of living with limited resources and moving every half a year or so because I couldn't afford to pay rent was beginning to wear on me emotionally. It's one thing to say, "I choose to live by faith and trust that the resources will come in." It's another thing to face the reality that this "live by faith" mentality was becoming a waste of resources because it was greatly limiting the effectiveness of the ministry. I hated going in to the city because it was a 40 minute commute each way, and parking was limited and expensive (The cheapest Auckland city parking costs $3/hour for the first 2 hours, then $6/hour after that). How could I really call The Bridge a presence-based community ministry when I wasn't even all that present in the community?

And doesn't the lack of financial support coming in also translate to the lack of value placed in a ministry like that? And if no one believes in it, am I just wasting my time when I could be making a difference elsewhere?

And then Hong Kong happened. Here's another conference to go to. Another networking opportunity. Another go at seeing whether this money miracle will happen.

Well, what ended up happening, I did not see coming at all. This overwhelming sense of call to "返来" or "return" that I had promised in an earlier post that I would write about.

You see, at this conference in Hong Kong, there was an overwhelming number of Chinese brothers and sisters in Christ. From a very young age, I had been fascinated with the underground church in China, and my first real sense of call to ministry had, in fact, been to go to China. Ten years had past since then, and somewhere in that ten years I had forgotten about that nudging.

Then at this conference in Hong Kong, I found myself offering to translate for the overwhelming number of Chinese brothers and sisters. Because I had registered for the conference as a representative of the church in New Zealand, most of them were surprised that I was bilingual. In conversations with several of them afterwards, I found myself having to explain that my grandparents migrated to Singapore from China, and that I was actually a "华侨" or "overseas Chinese". I forgot that to the Chinese, even if I had never lived in China, the very nature that I was a 华侨 meant that China would still be home, or at least, the Motherland. Kind of like when my immediate family took a trip back to my grandpa's village in China. All the relatives there greeted us with the over-excited, "你们返来了!" (you have finally come home!)

In those moments of conversations with these brothers and sisters, I had several of them ask if I would "return" to China to work with their youth. They were impressed with my bilingualism and my understanding of spiritual things, and reminded me again that China needed people like me.

"返来" "Return"

There was that word again. I wondered what God was thinking listening in to all these conversations. God sure seemed to have a sense of humour about these things, and frankly I was getting quite annoyed.

I found myself explaining that there were Chinese all around the world that needed the faith we shared as well, and that those were the people I would work better with. Frankly, I have no idea where those words came from, but suddenly I found myself in the shower in my residence hall my freshman year of college again. It was ten years ago, but I recall having a chuckle at how all that weekend, I had been serving as a "translator" between a friend from Hong Kong and another one from Korea. Never mind that I didn't speak Korean--I had been exposed to enough bad English in my life that I was translating from one dialect of bad English to another. In that moment, I began to wonder if God would be ridiculous enough to call me back to Asia after I had finally settled down from crying about moving halfway across the world to the US.

Ten years later, at that conference back in Asia, the words spilling out of my mouth suddenly shed light on all the nonsense in that shower room. I would find myself "return"-ing-ish to Asia-ish, just not in the conventional way. Well, if everything else leading up to that moment in my life was anything to go by, "conventional" doesn't usually work out for me, so really, I had no reason to be surprised.


Still, I was undecided. There were overseas Chinese all around the world. Why did it have to be Auckland? Sure, there was job stability there, but there was no money to go with the job. 20% is still a grim figure, and I would be returning to Auckland with less than a month to find another place to live (my current flatmate is wonderful, but we've reached a point where it's no longer fair for her to keep offering me free accommodation).


Then those youth camps. Those blasted youth camps.

Since the first of the year, I've been at back-to-back youth camps. I generally love youth camps because I love camps in general, but even more so, I love being around the ridiculousness of teenagers. Except this time, my role was a bit different. Along with just hanging out with the teenagers, I also got to spend significant time with some of the youth leaders--young adults whom I had just spent a whole year getting to know. The more we talked, the more they shared their hopes and dreams, the more I began to have that sense that my journey with them wasn't over. It couldn't be.

But then what? There still is that grim reality of 20% (I hate numbers, but it keeps haunting me). And then the first nudging I felt about The Bridge returned.

It was January 2013 and I had taken 48 hours to go away to Wellington. The afternoon before I was to return to Auckland, I passed by a house. It was an ordinary house, and there was no reason for it to have stood out, but it did. I had already decided before the trip that I would be done with my assignment with WCF, and kind of figured at least part of the 48 hours away would be spent praying about next steps. Still, there was no reason for me to have stood in front of that ordinary house for so long, but I came home from that trip and asked my prayer circle to begin praying about a house.

Well, it's been two years since that trip. I'm still not sure what that house is about, but I have a stronger feeling than ever that it's going to happen, even if I have no idea how.

Over the weekend at that last camp I was a part of, we were challenged over and over again to make "Bold Crossings". Frankly, I had not given a second thought to the theme because I was there only to be a support person for the camp, and had even been pretty insistent on the first two days that I wasn't going to let it get to me. I was exhausted and ready for the busyness to be over so I could go away by myself to think and pray and sort things out.

Then that night, Clint talked about making the "Bold Crossing" to surrender. In our leaders' meetings prior, we were reminded that these messages could stir up some things amongst the youth that we should be prepared to deal with. I found myself thinking in my head, I've had enough experience with these youth events that I know what to expect. How different would this night be from all the others?

But that night, as Clint made the call to surrender, I found myself drifting to the back of the room, and from my corner, I found two of my people who had been going through some really challenging junk with their hands raised in the air. In that moment, there was no holding back the tears. I still had no idea what I was supposed to be doing in Auckland, but at that moment I knew God was doing something, and I wanted in. I wanted to stay.


So in conclusion, well... I have no conclusion. Except... I guess I'm staying in Aotearoa. It is good to return home.