REstory 14: Hostage or Hospitality

What are churches offering to people?

This week I want to connect some dots — you’ll recognize material from my “About” page, my first pinned post, and REstory 7. We’re six months in, and I want to revisit the motivation for Go Out In Joy.

Part of my story is an early faith shift that launched me into research — ten years before graduate school and before I even knew to call it research. I had grown up in church my whole life and gone to a Christian university, and I was shocked by how much information had been withheld. As I steadily began to access complex questions and deep resources outside my tribe, over and over again I thought, “why am I just now finding out about this?” I experienced an increasing sense of betrayal, even feeling lied to. 

But I also experienced deep joy — the possibilities for meaningful trust and transformation with Jesus were expanding. And eventually I began formal study and began to chase down my biggest questions; I found conversation partners and began to write about the learning processes.

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However, two master’s degrees later, I still wrestle with dismay over the “gap between the academy and the pew.” Too many rich resources and complex conversations gather dust on bookshelves and don’t make it from the seminary classroom (where a minister is being trained) to the person in the pew (or their adult children who have walked away from church.

Searching for conversation partners to navigate a pathway to Go Out in Joy is hard work. Especially in this age of over stimulation and saturation, filtering and sifting through unending available information can be exhausting — and that’s if someone makes it over the intimidating threshold of “where do I even start?” But healthy resources and honest dialogue partners do exist.

I know now that my own journey from questioning into research and eventually into reconstruction makes sense in the crumbling context of white, western, imperial christendom. In my first pinned post, we talked about how the decline of religious affiliation in Europe and the US is predictable, necessary, and on-time within church history. Which is why ministers and preachers should be preparing people for a generation in the wilderness, navigating transition into a reality that doesn’t exist yet.

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Healthier churches and ministers will be continually modeling deconstruction of incomplete ideas and reconstruction of healthier ideas with humility and joy — and love. We are loved into loving, and that is the healthiest posture for learning. 

Of course we should have been taught to expect to change our minds. But if we weren’t, it’s never too late to unlearn the fear hidden inside fixed faith. Fear keeps learning small, and elders and deans who do not prepare people for the larger questions of normal growth will be hindering the development of people in their care — keeping them hostage inside a monument instead of a movement.

It takes humility to admit we don’t understand everything about God. It will be those with the humble courage to learn what they don’t already know who will be able to intentionally widen their practice of hospitality to all kinds of learners. They will be able to offer relief and resources that give birth to care and community — and also joy.

The best hospitality makes you feel known by how the details have been designed by the one welcoming you, because they know what you need right now — and when we feel seen and known, we know we are loved! More on love again in a minute.

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I have been writing here in this space because of overwhelming need; these past few years I have been walking alongside more and more people who are: 

• weary at the frayed edges of their inherited Christian faith 

• angry at the discrimination within faith-based institutions

• discouraged with feelings of being “church homeless”

• grieving at the sour fruit of parents’ faith

• frustrated at the way God is portrayed in sermons

• bewildered by how churches don’t look like Jesus

• despairing at the selfishness of elders who won’t change

• disoriented without resources for reading Scripture with new lenses

• betrayed by their pastor’s lack of deep resources

• sickened at the abuse or manipulation of power in church

• hurt by church leaders denying or ignoring the pain they’re causing

Some are walking away. Some are staying and working for change from the inside. Some are finding welcome on a different branch of the family tree. Some are slowly piecing together new communities. Some are doing a little bit of everything. 

All are wrestling with weighty, robust questions.

Many feel isolated since it often seems unsafe to name their questions out loud, and many feel unsure where to find good resources. But as I said above, good resources do exist — but often outside the curated echo chambers of those who are called leaders in their communities. Few are receiving the care they need. I am curating this space where questioners can feel welcomed as they sort through what they’re carrying with them and engage wider conversations.

Back to love. My hypothesis is that it is love that motivates us to do the deep learning required for paradigm shifts. I want to point the way to loving God again — but not that God… so learning to love this God… maybe again… but maybe for the first time?

If you’re willing to trust this invitation, here you will continue to find reflections and resources for leaving hardsoil faith. If you’re interested, you’ll also find resources here for learning to cultivate healthier communities with Jesus.

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The name of this space is Go Out In Joy, which is taken from a reference to Isaiah 55.12. When read in context, that passage articulates part of Israel’s story of potential hope after loss. It paints a startling picture that faith sometimes requires leaving where you’re stuck. Even if leaving seems impossible, it may be the path to joy. Maybe the invitation to leave the wrong story is where we find God.

None of us is exempt from the need to rethink what we’ve already thought. Faithfulness to Jesus requires leaving the wrong story, even sometimes years or decades after thinking you had it all figured out. It is always hard, but alongside disorientation and reorientation, there is increasing joy.

So Go Out in Joy! And be led back in peace!

…and invite others along…

© 2024 Ladye Rachel Howell. All rights reserved.