Should I Stay or Should I Go?

7/25/2017

Do you feel heard?
Do you feel valued?
Do you feel respected?
Do you feel like maybe you see God differently, but you're both seeking after God's best for all people? For the world?

I had a conversation with a good friend last week about when to leave. The friend has stayed and stayed in hard places of theological disagreements that they see negatively impacting people they love. My response was that it's hard to know when to leave.

Many people have this really intense break up with propositional evangelical theology. But some of us had a gradual one. Little gentle conversation, by probing questions, by reframing of scriptures that had been bereft of context...Little by little, or as my friends in Rwanda say "Slowly by slowly," we changed. We changed because a hand full of people were willing to stay and have conversations with us. So when do you leave?

My friend recounted that it was one such stay-er who planted the seeds that lead them down the road of transformed theology. Without that stay-er, who knows where my friend would be?

It's hard to know when to leave.

But here's the thing: the people who are rich soil for theological shift, I know us intimately. We listen to the hard questions. We might protest. We might proof text poorly. But we listen. We respect people who gently poke holes in a tapestry that could stand re-weaving.

I asked my friend: How do you think that stayer who sowed seeds for you left their conversations with you? Did they leave tired and exasperated? Or did they leave feeling heard if disappointed that you still disagreed? Did they leave knowing you heard them?

In the end, my response was: Consider being a stay-er so long as those you disagree with leave you feeling heard. Valued. Respected. Like maybe you see God differently, but you're both seeking after God's best for all people. For the world.

When you feel like you are constantly in game of dodgeball with opponents hurling the heretic word at you...consider not being a stayer. Creator crafted you for more.

And with all of this, hear the word: consider. You and God's Spirits are the very best at discerning what is good for you. My friend Paul Schroeder might say: "You're the expert on you." And! Get this, you can't make a wrong decision about staying or going. God and God's story are big enough and adventurous enough to bend with your choices. In high school there was a friend who I was basically dating but not dating as us evangelicals liked to do. He said the strangest thing to me about why we weren't dating: "I don't want to get caught outside God's will." That, my dear friends, is impossible. Stay or don't stay; God's will will accompany you wherever you find yourself.

For my part, I grew so very tired of fighting for a place of love and acceptance, a place of intellectual freedom and even play, a place where I could stop explaining how seeking justice was a Christian commitment and not some "liberal issue." I got bone tired of it all.

And I looked up from my bone tired tunnel vision, I saw a wide open field. Green pastures calling to come and play along toward liberating love and justice. For me, at that point, I couldn't say no. And leaving the home of my childhood for this new space to play and work has been more like coming home than evangelical church ever was. I want that for so many of us locked in the struggle. I want to fight you to bring you there with me. - I apologize if I have fought you to try to bring you over to play here. - You are the expert on you. And God's Spirit is a better guide than I am.

But I do invite all wondering when to stay and leave to let these questions be consistent conversation partners:
Do you feel heard?
Do you feel valued?
Do you feel respected?
Do you feel like maybe you see God differently, but you're both seeking after God's best for all people? For the world?

If you feel like it's time to give up being a stayer and you'd like a conversation partner or wonder what wide open pastures there are for playing and working at liberating love and justice, hit me up. I'd love to chat!

3 Comments

Rebecca Joy Sumner

i am a christian. pastor. liturgist. abolitionist. wife. neighbor. church planter. writer (ish). theologian (ish). artist (ish). and basically just someone who playfully clings to this radical thing called hope. specifically, hope that God's commonwealth of love and justice to come more and more with every new day.

Tannis

7/26/2017 09:45:58 pm

Wow! God's will will accompany me wherever I find myself. That is wonderful and really spoke to me. Thank you

Lela

7/28/2017 10:20:17 am

I recognize the gotta go feeling and the more like coming home!

Cat Sullivan

10/8/2017 06:52:02 pm

I left my church after being there for 35 years. But I did not leave from witnessing a lot of changes both internally and externally.

I came to church as an adult after being one of the “Jesus People.” I spoke in tongues and I found an ecstasy that far outweighed any drug I could have taken. But I also found that when real life came that rolling around, writhing on the floor and speaking gibberish was not working for me.

Then I lived through the deliberately designed evangel destruction of mainline churches that none of us had ever dreamed other Christians would ever do.

It seemed to me when it happened to us, that at first this “invasion” was something to examine deeply to take some serious looks at what being a Christian really meant. This was long before we knew about this deliberate destruction that we did not understand until decades later. It created a sort of schizophrenic confusion and concern about our own “real” spiritual values when many of our own beloved and dear members left. It created divorce, it destroyed long time friendships, ministers left their churches because they weren’t considered “Christian” enough, and churches often went down to nothing and having to disperse.

I remembered once when having a discussion with one of my church leaders what was the big deal? Why can’t some raise their arms in joy while others remain quiet? She said, “Well this was the way many of us felt, but the ones raising their arms told those of us who remained silent in our own deep prayer, that we weren’t real Christians because we did not do that.”

Oh. Yeah. That was something to consider since I knew for a fact most of my fellow members took their faith quite seriously, altering their own lives to fulfill what they saw as their own missions.

Yes this was horrible but it did produce some good results. While church attendances dwindled, those remaining were a core group of very dedicated members who deeply believed in their mission. During this time for example, food banks were created when the intellectual and upper class elites guffawed at the idea. Now it is an international movement and laws have been passed in order to make food available to anyone who needs it that feeds millions. Old outdated traditions were shelved; I have not heard the kind of anti-Catholic Apostle’s Creed for at least 3 decades which was repeated every Sunday until it was known by heart. Churches became less cluttered with American flags, various remnants of outdated protestant trappings; it became leaner and cleaner down to taking out our pews and placing chairs at the same level as the minister during worship. More women began to occupy our pulpits and the LGBTQ ministers and this community is now enthusiastically accepted.

I gladly continued to stay longer than most. But more importantly of all to me came when some Christians began to reach out to other faiths and embrace our own history with them such as with Muslims, Jews, and even with Hindus whose theology was far from our own. We began to see the parts of those faiths that we held in common. We tried to include them in our own missions such as working together to ease poverty in our communities. We respected their traditions such as vegan cuisine, attitudes toward others not like ourselves, and it was and is a ripe time to become “Good Samaritans.”

But I did leave when I saw my church could not reconcile things like loving their “enemies” for demonized populations living within their own communities and abroad. This did not just mean people “not like us,” it included the former convicted felon, the mentally ill, the ones who did not share our own idea of “sexual morals.” I do realize that this is hard to do, but as Martin Luther King said once while calling for more integration in our communities, “you cannot truly love your neighbor unless you BECOME a neighbor.” Yes this did not mean becoming a prostitute, but I sure need to be his or her neighbor in order to better understand who they are and their conditions.

But I did decide to leave when I realized that the church was resting on its laurels for all the good they had done. They did not seem to understand their work was just beginning. They keep applying bandages to issues who have wounded people so deeply that applying bandages is just not enough anymore ~ and frankly it was never enough. Yes, defying the Establishment and fighting to legalize SOME tent cities help a few. But the whole institutionalized dependence that the upper classes have upon using the poor to pay their bills, pay their taxes, do their work, and be their poster children, is not being examined.

I think I get it, I have been on enough boards to realize that those upper classes are what many churches depend upon to stay alive. But these churches if they wanted to, do have enough authority for

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

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Lead pastor at Our Common Table: A Christian Community of Welcome and Justice in North Everett

Rebecca Joy Sumner

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