Beating the Curve: Faith without Sundays

Over this past month, thousands of churchgoers around the world have been settling into a new Sunday routine. Instead of heading off to their regular places of worship, they have adopted the wonders of modern technology to tune in remotely to their accustomed style of service. Some might have even changed routines, making use of the extra sleep-in on Sunday mornings and choosing another time for reflection.

For some, this has become an adjustment.

For myself, it has been the norm for the better part of the last decade. Despite the fact that I was a theology student for a quarter of my life, worked as a minister in pastoral roles, and was involved in music and young adult groups and youth activities for three decades, my Sundays over much of the past ten years have mostly had an absence of ‘going to church’. Sundays are either a rare sleep in, or an early awakening to two beautiful but presently-demanding kids.

This doesn’t mean I’ve not met intentionally, and regularly, with others for the purpose of mutual encouragement and sharing our faith journeys. But it does mean that the traditional shape of a ‘Sunday gathering’ hasn’t really been part of my recent story. For some of my friends, this is no big deal. For others, I may appear to have joined the masses of people who, over the last two decades in particular, have become ‘ex-church’. In terms of what was once such a clear vocation, it might even look like I’ve given up.

I haven’t.

And while I can’t speak for everyone who no longer attended Sunday congregations prior to the Coronavirus lockdowns, I’d be willing to guess that they haven’t all given up on their faith either. They haven’t given up, but neither can they give in. Let me explain…

To give up on something is to decide that it is no longer worth the effort. It is ‘too hard’. To invest more time is seen as of no benefit because, in a simple cost-benefit analysis, the numbers don’t add up. So to say someone has ‘given up’ may imply that they are lazy, that they don’t want to ‘put in the hard yards’. The implication is that this implies some weakness or fault on the part of the person who has ‘walked away’.

I don’t think that is the case for most people. The vast numbers of Christians who have left the church over the past couple of decades cannot simply be explained by ‘laziness’, some sort of motivation issue. That’s largely not what it is about.

Rather, I think the greater issue is about what people find themselves needing to do ethically and intellectually to stay in the church. In other words, it is not that they are not doing enough, but—on the contrary—that they have been very active. They have invested. They have participated. They have seen. They have thought. They have felt. They have experienced. And they have found themselves, in all good conscience—using brains, guts, social conscience, protective instinct, spiritual direction and common sense—unable to stay.

Before going any further, it is important to state that this is not a church-bashing enterprise, and it is not a binary “church versus the world” equation. This is not an exercise in finger-pointing, blame-gaming, or any sort of religious mockery. This is not a reflection on all churches, or the people who run them. Churches provide a place of belonging, a focal point for community. They enable expression for the artistic, guidance for people who are lost and struggling. They assist people in countless ways through welfare, education, counselling, volunteering, celebration and mourning. They provide hope in places of darkness. And most centrally for their purpose they represent a place of participation in, and experiencing of, a sense of God in the world. A deep part of me still wishes I was involved intimately, working as a colleague alongside my family members, best friends, and mentors who remain pastors or deeply involved in church work. The challenge of creating a sermon, or building a service that would help people reflect meaningfully on a range of topics, was something that gave me a lot of joy. There are wonderful people of integrity and faith within the church, and also wonderful people of integrity and faith beyond it. Let’s not use a binary division of ‘in and out’ as a measurement for what is going on here.

But, for this season of my life, I’m among those who have been unable to stay in a traditional church community. And while I’ve been involved in a range of churches over my life: newer churches, older churches, Bible-belt churches and left-leaning churches, I’ve probably come out of my journey so far a little wounded, while also witnessing the wounds gathered by those around me. As well as witnessing all the good, I’ve also seen people in congregations become isolated, marginalized, judged and divided. Bitterness, anger, agitation emerge in relationships, just like anywhere else. Misogyny, homophobia, and xenophobia somehow become present, often without challenge. Tradition overrules imagination on the one hand, while on the other business practices have become advocated as the best rule for governing community life, putting the ‘capital C’ into Corporate worship. And with those negative encounters, I – and others – haven’t been able to find a way to keep navigating something that feels contradictory to the very principles it was called to espouse. So when we’ve walked away, it is not about laziness—it’s about principle.

Now some people have a higher tolerance or calling to remain in this struggle. They see the current shape of church as something worth persisting with, and faithfully attend, commit, celebrate and support their congregations, warts and all. That is admirable, and there is no question here of the integrity of such people or the worthiness of their cause.

But it is not the same for everyone, and people I know have left the church because they don’t want to put up with ‘just one more’ negative comment about a divorce (yes, still!), a joke about homosexuality, a dismissive point made about women, or children, or of ‘non-believing’ friends. Or they have had enough of volatile church meetings, judgmental sermons, or a perceived prioritization of money, or buildings, or the quality of a music program over the quality of relationships. Or of being asked to give and give of time, money, energy, and intellect only to discover an abuse, or misuse of resources, and then being asked to give again.

I think for myself, what led to my own emergence from the Sunday routine (and all that it entailed through the week) was stepping back from church for what was intended to be a couple of months, and then finding myself wondering what the fundamental difference was between some of the behaviors I witnessed in the church, and those in the rest of the world. The biggest difference I could work out was that I could sleep in on Sunday mornings.

Yet in this space, I don’t actually find myself rejecting church. I just find myself constantly trying to imagine what it means for a twenty-first century community to best live out the vision of a first-century Jewish radical. Is what we have at present the right thing? Can I work with it best from the inside? Outside? Or start again somewhere else?

I largely find myself in this stage of ‘what now?’ Plenty of work is being done in the space, and I certainly don’t consider myself any Martin Luther as a lone original voice trying to reform the church in a new age. Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Diana Butler-Bass, Phyllis Tickle, Richard Rohr and Michael Hardin are all voices that I’ve heard along the journey that bring immense wisdom into the contemporary state of our religious life. And even beyond this family of thinkers, I think most modern Christian leaders would agree that something new needs to emerge.

In a time when people are reimagining community, renegotiating neighborliness, and taking stock of what essentially matters, will the current world situation lead to reform of, or reinvestment in, established styles of Western Christian community?