Week 1: Back to Where It All Began

Who: Liz, Nneka, and Sydney

Church: City Collective (Non-denominational)

Lunch: Mac’s Kitchen and Bar

Topics: Community, Unity, and Deconstruction 

If you know anything about my church leadership background, you know how much I loved (and devoted) my life to discipling young women. My kids grew up with young adults coming in and out of our house EVERYDAY. Most Thursday nights we were busting at the seams as 20+ young women piled into our modest New England home for dinner. Then, we’d head down to the basement for teaching. (And these ladies were committed. It took us TWO YEARS to get through Romans.) Two of them even lived with us for a while.

So, I think it was only fitting that my first week was spent with three young women that I adore. Sydney is my eldest child, and she lives up to the title. While considerably disillusioned with the institutional church, she’s also the most grace-filled person I know. (And she’s had to extend more than her fair share of that grace to her parents.) Nneka is a force of nature and one of the most “real” people I know in Chatt. She’s acutely aware of who she is and who she isn’t. When Nneka enters any room, chances are someone knows her… and adores her. Liz holds a special place in my heart, as does her husband. In part because I married them, but I’ve also spent the past two years in a community group with them. Their house is one of the few in Chatt that I’ll drop in unannounced… or give a quick call announcing my immediate arrival.

These three are safe people to enter into deep waters for my first time out. I also know they happen to be wrestling through the whole faith existence conversation at the moment and, most importantly, they’d be honest.

And they were.

We sat at Mac’s Kitchen and Bar for almost three hours. (It’s a good thing the owners are friends.) And as the conversation unraveled, almost like a tightly wound ball desperately needing release, we began sharing some of our most guarded thoughts… only for everyone else to respond with a similar, “Oh my gosh, ME TOO!”

Deconstruction came up quickly. It’s such a taboo word in so many church circles, and I get it. As I write this, there are over 450,ooo uses of #deconstruction on Instagram. And I think that’s why I don’t really like using it. It’s been reduced to a hashtag, or a reason to disparage the institution of church… which SHOULD be criticized. But an overused hashtag can lead to the loss of nuance in a very important conversation, which is something all four of us are painfully aware of.

One of the ladies shared how she had been deconstructing so much of the harmful teachings her faith was built upon, like so many of her friends. But, now on the other side of that deconstruction, she was working to reconstruct, if you will; however, her friends have shown no real interest in doing the same, which makes finding community painfully difficult.

Someone else then added that deconstruction isn’t limited to faith and that she’s found herself deconstructing all aspects of her like. This prompted me to add a quick, “OOOHHH, SAME!” But shouldn’t that be the natural progression of someone deconstructing their faith? Our faith is the foundation from which we build our lives upon, so if we’ve built other aspects of our lives upon that foundation… things will inevitably fall apart. The infuriating irony is that we’ve all heard countless sermons built around Matthew 7 and the importance of building your lives on a firm foundation. We just never expected the shifting sand to come from within the “church”. (Please note: When I say “church” I’m referring to the institutional church and not the real Church. There’s definitely a difference between the two and we’ll spend a lot of time dissecting them over the next year.)

It actually reminds me of something one of my seminary professors said: Our greatest fear should be spending our lives climbing a proverbial ladder, only to reach the top and realize that we placed the ladder against the wrong wall. And I think that’s what so many of us have been doing, especially as politics subversively (or not so subversively) entered the conversation. (This isn’t something we really got into during the conversation, but it’s coming… faster than I expected.)

One of the ladies then said something really interesting to all of this: To even be able to deconstruct comes from a place of privilege. I’m still wrestling with this one and I know it will come up again. Something else said also gave pause to our conversation and I’ve been thinking about it this past week. For me, there was an elephant in the room, but I couldn’t find a way to tactfully bring it up. So, knowing that we’re friends I just asked Nneka the obvious: How does it feel being the only black person at our church? (I also apologized if my question was offensive.) Liz quickly added that she was also curious about this and Nneka just laughed. (That woman is ALL GRACE.)

She then went on to say that her choice to attend City Collective was “more about culture than color.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once observed, “Sunday is the most segregated day of the week,”shining a light on how church services in America are often racially segregated. The National Congregations Study (2018-2019) showed some progress toward integration, with the percentage of multiracial congregations increasing from 6% in 1998 to 16% in 2019. However, the majority of congregations remain predominantly composed of a single racial group. Given these statistics, Nneka’s statement about culture has led to so many more questions and revealed so much ignorance on my part.

Two hours into the conversation, we actually began digging into the sermon, which focused on the ways of Jesus and how we can adopt those ways into our lives. And like so many people I’ve talked to over the years, the obvious things came up first: prayer, reading the Bible, being in community. But then we began talking about actually LIVING a life of faith and not simply going through a daily checklist of activities… and for me that means living a life where every outcome can’t be boiled down to something I can do for myself.

It also means not keeping my calendar so full that I miss what the Lord has for me. (One of my goals for September: SLOW DOWN!)

As we sat there for almost three hours, I realized two important things: 1) My biggest fears (and disheartened feelings) about the church are not mine alone. 2) The underbelly of the institutional church is vast and complicated: Oppressive Paternalism and Superiority, Oversimplification of Complex Issues, Lack of Local Engagement, Reinforcement of Stereotypes, Personal or Institutional Benefit. It’s not, by any means, an exhaustive list, but it’s definitely something I’ll be going back to over the next year.

WEEKLY CHALLENGE: Give myself more room for the Lord to interrupt my day… and invite Him to do it.