Tyler Johnson, MDiv
Tyler is a pastor and a former NASA engineer. He loves to explore truth through God’s word and God’s works. He lives in Iowa with his wife and four children and spends what little free-time he has pondering the mysteries of light.
Up until last fall I had been a pastor for a little over six years. That tenure ended abruptly last September and since then my family and I have been members of the Dones, that is the group of people who are simply just done with church. For me, and mine, this is a temporary state. We fully anticipate reengaging with the Church in the future. But that is a complicated hope. As a pastor I had plenty of frustrations with the Church, but I was a part of it and committed to it. As a Done, I have had an extended opportunity to see the Church from the point of view of an outsider. At least as someone who isn’t actively a part of any church community. I have had the opportunity to reflect on my experiences in the Church, as a child of the Church and as a leader of a church. And I have had copious conversations with church leaders and Dones along the way. I think I am beginning to get a feel for what the Dones are all about, what they are really done with. To be clear, it isn’t Jesus, it isn’t spirituality, it isn’t God, or even tradition. In my experience what the Dones are really done with is an institution that is more concerned with itself than with attending to the needs of the world around it. I can at least say that this is a main reason why I am currently a Done.
The Dones come from different age groups. Typically, they grew up in church, but have walked away for a variety of reasons. For me as a member of a younger generation, the following three quotations resonate well with my frustrations with the Church.
“[The Dones] wanted to affect the life of the church … and got bureaucracy.”
“[Young evangelicals seem] uneasy and alienated in the environment of mall-like church buildings, high-energy and entertainment-oriented worship, and boomer ministry strategies and structures modeled on the business world. Increasingly they ask just how these culturally camouflaged churches can help them rise above the values of the consumerist world around them, enabling them to make a difference for Christ.”
“We don’t want to feel comfortable at church. We want to feel uncomfortable in a way that tells us we’re onto something.”
In a chapter on the future prospects of the evangelical church, author James K.A. Smith notes that, “American evangelicalism is the quintessential adaptation to a society dominated by the marketplace and consumerism.” That is to say that the institutional goals, directives and purpose of the Church have become enmeshed in those of our materialistic, consumeristic, competition-driven American culture. It is this subtle but unholy marriage that I, at least, am done with. Who’s with me?
And now for the real meat. Over the past couple of years I have had a growing intuition that has been clarified during the last several months. More and more I am becoming convinced that the Church’s hyper-focus on leadership is exacerbating the challenges it is facing in reaching the Dones. I expect this could be controversial, so let me explain.
Leadership Books
The Pastor’s Panacea
My wife and I have close to fifty books on leadership (I counted). A sampling are displayed above. We have read almost all of them. Her undergraduate degree is in Organizational Leadership and the emphasis of her Master’s of Divinity degree is in leadership. We have been to seminars, and workshops on leadership. I’ve attended Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit and had intensive training on leading through change. We are well-trained and conversant in leadership studies. So how do these books exacerbate the disconnect between the Church and the Dones? Here are some of my observations. Since I am a pastor by training I offer them in triplicate. Three is the holy number for sermon points, right? (Note: I haven’t really listened to leadership podcasts, but I suspect that the following observations would generally hold in that medium too.)
1) The vast majority of (church) leadership books are written by boomer-aged white men. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this, but if you factor in the differences between generations that I talked about a few weeks ago, then it becomes clearer how these books have become trapped in an echo chamber. Essentially, most of today’s church leadership books are written by boomers, for boomers, to help boomers feel more confident in leading an institution that non-boomers aren’t very interested in. I have found that many church leadership books give me insight into the questions and the concerns of church leaders, but rarely have they given me any insight into the questions and concerns of the people outside the walls of the Church.
2) A large number of church leadership gurus were first trained in the American marketplace. Which means that, like it or not, they carry with them the goals and ideals of the American marketplace. These include things like the myth of infinite progress, the justification of gaining power and wealth (because then you can help others more!), and the incessant push to grow, grow, grow! The philosophy seems to be that pastors can sanctify the idols of our culture by putting them into the service of God through the church (not a rare philosophy in American evangelicalism). I would argue that when we try to do this, the culture always wins. And if you need a scriptural reference to believe that, read the Joseph story from the book of Genesis and pay close attention to verse 21 of chapter 47, where “Joseph reduced the people to servitude from one end of Egypt to the other.” In other words, Joseph is the one who originally enslaved the Israelites. He lost himself to the culture of Egypt. The church is losing itself to the American marketplace.
3) Finally, (church) leadership books simply don’t address the felt needs of the culture. The people outside the church don’t need a better funded non-profit. They don’t need pyramid-scheme discipleship programs. They aren’t interested in being a statistic for your Sunday numbers. They don’t want easy answers. They don’t want cheap platitudes. They certainly aren’t interested in trying to navigate an opaque, cumbersome, dysfunctional, exclusive leadership structure as a means of doing something good in their neighborhood. Anyone searching for such things has probably already found their way into a church. They may even be on a leadership team!
Don’t worry! All is not lost. I am not writing off leadership books (or podcasts) altogether. I have learned much from them. But they are only a piece of the puzzle. The thing is, I’m convinced that we can gain much more wisdom from other sources. Again, I will offer three alternative sources for wisdom in confronting the challenges facing today’s Church.
1) History: The Church has existed for almost 2,000 years. Throughout all those centuries we have evidence of people struggling to live out their faith in a meaningful way. The challenges the Church faces today are not unique to this time and place. If Christians found ways to stay faithful through the persecutions of Nero, through the ravages of the Black Plague, through the horrors of World War II, then we might be able to learn something from them. Read about the saints who have gone before us. Learn more about the great cloud of witnesses that surround us. And let them teach you what they know. No Church is an island.
2) Bible: This one seems obvious, but alas, I fear I must say it. Read the Bible. Read theologians. Read biblical scholars. Find books that explore areas of the faith that you are less familiar with, or less comfortable with. If you have an allergy to sacramentalism, for example, then grab a book on sacramentalism and see what you can learn. If you think you’ve mastered the Bible then grab a book by Peter Enns and allow your understanding of the Bible to be challenged by the Bible itself. This is basically a call to read devotionally, for yourself, not just pragmatically, for your job. If you are not growing in your faith, in your understanding of the biblical story, in your appreciation for the mystery of God, then you likely won’t be leading others to be growing in these areas.
3) People: Finally, find the ways that the world around you is searching for meaning. Which crassly means, Shut up and LISTEN. The Dones are not done with spirituality, God, Jesus, or tradition. But they aren’t finding what they are looking for in the Church. Which begs the question: What are they looking for? What is the existential angst that is driving them? What are the big questions that they are wrestling with? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them…. No seriously, ask them. Have a conversation with them. Don’t get defensive. Don’t try to correct them. Just listen. And if you find yourself out of depth with their questions, don’t worry. They don’t want answers. They want a community of faith who values their questions and is willing to join them as they explore the messiness of trying to live well in this world. That’s it.
I guess what it comes down to is a growing conviction that it shouldn’t be this complicated to be a community of people mediating God’s presence on this earth. It should be uncomfortable at times. It should be humbling. It should be sacrificial. But I think we’ve made it more complicated than it needs to be. If Jesus really meant it when he said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” then I can’t help but wonder, whose yoke is the Church trying to carry?
Quotation Sources (in order):
Reframation by Hirsch and Nelson, pg. 225
Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians by Armstrong, pg. 46
A friend, via text.
“Prospects for the Future” by James K. A. Smith, in The State of the Evangelical Mind, pg. 147