Compelled by Jesus, Disillusioned by Church.

I've often heard authors say that their publisher's primary advice was "write the book that you need to read". I love this. Approaching a creative process from this mindset encourages a more authentic, genuine and timely message which is exactly the kind of book people want to read.

Well, this is the blog post that I need to read.

Disillusioned by Church

A couple of weeks ago my parents were in town from Chicago. One evening we found ourselves reminiscing about some crazy church experiences that our family has navigated. For starters, when I was a boy, the church my parents attended and were heavily involved with in the norther suburbs of Chicago found itself navigating the painful reality of an egregious moral failure from the senior pastor. He would preach sermons in the suburbs on Sunday and then head into the city to indulge his sexual desire. This double life was kept hidden from family, friends and the church for quite some time. Until it wasn't. It's hard to calculate the impact this moral failure had on the community.

Fast forward to College. My family had been attending a different church for almost 20 years. The senior pastor of the church - the individual I heard preach throughout my childhood and young adulthood - was found stealing money from the benevolence offering to fund an online gambling habit, plagiarizing sermons and engaging in inappropriate email dialogue with a congregant. The church cared for this pastor in the midst of his failure in admirable ways but damage was still done.

More recently, I've already written about my first experience as a pastor in MN and the painful experience of being quickly fired amidst a lot of fear, dogmatism, misrepresentation and partisanship.

You may not be able to relate to some of these personal moments of disillusionment. But many can relate to the indirect traumatic church experiences that have shaped my journey as well: Mars Hill, Harvest Bible Chapel, Hillsong, Willow Creek, Sovereign Grace Ministries, The Meeting House in Canada (revolving around Bruxy Cavey who had been a pastoral hero of mine), etc, etc, etc. I haven't even mentioned the incredibly disturbing report this year regarding the SBC, our nations largest Christian denomination, chronicling chronic sexual abuse and cover up. It makes me sick to my stomach. And these are just a few of the many concrete examples of toxic church culture and egregious leadership failures. Can anyone deny that something is fundamentally broken?

This all leads to a critical question - perhaps THE question - for our cultural moment in the church:

What do we do when we are compelled by Jesus but hurt and disillusioned by the church?

We have much to learn from the spiritual journey's of others who have grappled with this same question. Vincent Van Gogh, the famous painter of the 19th century, found his spiritual journey constantly circling around this tension. Most of his life intense disilussionent with the leaders and institutions that claimed Christ's named caused tremendous doubt, struggle and challenge to his own relationship to faith and church. Perhaps his most famous painting, "A Starry Night", represents his disillusionment with the church and a longing to hold on to the divine. But before we get into this painting in particular, let's take a step back and consider Van Gogh's life story.

Vincent Van Gogh

Born in 1853, Vincent Van Gogh only lived to the age of 37 due to ending his own life. Although most people know of Van Gogh's mental health struggles, less are aware that he had a committed faith in Christ. Van Gogh grew up in a Christian home and was involved in church. He quickly developed a love of art and by the age of 17 (1870) got his first job at an art gallery. Unfortuanely, within the theological framework that Van Gogh was formed in, a strong sacred/secular divide existed. There were a few sacred things God cared about (what pastors and missionaries were up to) but everything else fit into the category of secular and was therefore unimportant to the Kingdom of God. Tragically, Van Gogh always felt great tension between his art and his faith.

in 1876 Van Gogh stepped away from the art Gallery to pursue a life of full-time "ministry". To make a long story short, Van Gogh ended up at the evangelist school in Brussels where he was placed on assignment to be a missionary to a poor coal mining community in Borinage.

It was Christ's love for the poor and marginalized that initially developed a strong love and desire for Jesus in Van Gogh. It's no wonder then that Van Gogh threw himself holistically and completely into caring for the coal miners in Borinage. Sketches like "Bearer's of the Burden" and "Eternity's Gate" reveal Van Gogh's passion to give visibility and dignity to such hard-working and overlooked people. Van Gogh was quick to offer the best of his clothes and large chunks of the money he received from supporting churches. He even decided to live in a haystack behind the town bakery in an effort to live in solidarity with the poor.

However, this was not enough to be a successful missionary in the eyes of the religious leaders and institutions overseeing his assignment. In 1879 the official end of his time as a missionary came. But not by Van Gogh's choice. Instead, the Union of Protestant Churches in Belgium removed him from the feild. In their annual report, the union of protestant churches articulated why Van Gogh was removed:

the experiment that has been tried by accepting the services of a young Dutchman, Mr. Vincent Van Gogh, who believed his calling was to peach the Gospel in the Borinage, has not given the results we had expected. Mr Van Gogh has certainly shown admirable qualities in his care for the sick and the wounded; many times he has shown devotion and a sense of sacrifice; he has kept night watches with people who need it, and even gave the best part of his clothes and linen away. If he had also had the gift of the word, which is indispensable to a anyone who is placed at the head of a congregation, Mr Van Gogh would surely have become and accomplished evangelist

Unbelievable. David Hempton says it best in his chapter on Van Gogh in the book "Evangelical Disillusionment":

Van Gogh's services were no longer required by the Belgian evangelicals because apparently his actions spoke louder than his words

That says it all right there. Here was a young man literally giving the best of his own clothes and money away, intentionally living on the streets in solidarity with the poor, displaying radical generosity and sacrificial love and this was not enough. What an indictment on these christian institutions.

Van Gogh entered Boring with a strong and passionate faith. He left with his trust in the church completely severed and his faith in Christ hanging on by a thread. It's no wonder he jumped back into the art world. Only a couple of years after being a missionary he is found, in a journal entry to his brother, famously saying "That God of the clergymen, he is for me as dead as a doornail".

Fast foward to 1889. Van Gogh tuned himself into a mental asylum due to crippling depression. The view from his window is seen in his painting "The Starry Night". But the picture represents more than the view from his room. It's also a representation of his deep disillusionment with the church and his fight to hold on to belief in God.

Deep indigo was a color Van Gogh used to express the infinite presence of God. The color is throughout the painting eluding to the fact that Van Gogh had not lost faith entirely. Yellow represents sacred love. You see this color throughout the night sky and in the town. It's critical to note that love is emanating from each ordinary house scattered throughout the town.

There is one location devoid of divine love...the church. It's the only building that is completely dark. Van Gogh experience churches to be "icy cold" institutions devoid of hospitality, warmth and love for the world. The church worked for those in power who were uniquely invested in it's systems and structures. However, it had little to say to the pain and suffering of the world. Skye Jethani, when reflecting on the life of Van Gogh, says it well:

Like many today Vincent believed the world was full of God's presence and love but he struggled to find it in the institutions that claimed Christ's name

It's no secret that many people today, especially young people, are leaving the faith and/or church altogether. A huge reason is disillusionment with institutional expressions of the faith. We now have sociological terms to describe demographics that are migrating away from the church:

• Nones: Those who have left the church and faith altogether. They are now atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular.

• Dones: Those who are not done with Jesus or spirituality - in fact many still remain curious if not committed to Jesus - but are done with the church. They are the de-churched or "church refugees".

• Umms: Those who are not done with faith or church. In fact, there is still a strong resonance with the importance of a church community in their lives. But finding the right church is vulnerable, complicated and really hard.

We should take heart. Even in the pages of our scriptures there are central characters who struggle with the leaders and institutions who represent God. One of the clearest examples is John the Baptist. He was a prophet sent by God to pave the way for the ministry of Jesus. The launching pad was constructed by John from which Jesus' ministry takes off. We read about John the Baptist in Matthew 3:

"In those days John the Baptist came to the Judean wilderness and began preaching. His message was,“Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”The prophet Isaiah was speaking about John when he said,

'He is a voice shouting in the wilderness,

Prepare the way for the Lord’s coming!

Clear the road for him!'

John’s clothes were woven from coarse camel hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food he ate locusts and wild honey. People from Jerusalem and from all of Judea and all over the Jordan Valley went out to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to watch him baptize, he denounced them. 'You brood of snakes!' he exclaimed. 'Who warned you to flee the coming wrath? Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God.'"

A deeper analysis of the texts reveals the amount of deconstruction work John had to do when it come to the leaders and institutions of his day. Here are just a few dynamics worth mentioning:

• John's home (wilderness) and diet (locust and honey) were a prophetic refusal to engage the religious norms of his day. In his estimation the status quo was so corrupt that he needed a totally different space to draw people back to God. John's ministry didn't take place at the temple in Jerusalem in collaboration with the whose who of religious leaders. John was less interested in renewing existing structures and more focused on replacing them with something altogether different.

• John's call to baptism was a subversive witness. Traditionally the only people baptized were gentiles who converted to Judaism. But John calls God's people to baptism as well. This was a critique of institutionalism: you could have, in the wilderness through baptism, what some said you could only receive by going to the temple...forginess of sins and a deeper communion with God. Baptism was a critique of self-righteous religion: in calling the jews themselves to baptism, he was saying you aren't automatically good before God because of an inherited status or social position.

• John's interaction with the pharisees and saduccees was filled with courageous critique. He calls out their hypocrisy and invites them into repentance. It's no wonder these men, concerned about John subversive witness and prophetic critique, felt the need to travel to the wilderness and keep an eye on this guy.

The resistance John experiences is a forshodowing to Jesus' own ministry. Jesus, like John, would have the same primary antagonists to his kingdom of God message. The religious leaders were constantly concerned about Jesus and Jesus was not afraid to deconstruct the toxic and self-righteous form of religion they propagated. Matthew chapter 23 is a great example. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.

Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra long tassels And they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues. They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi'.

What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things. Blind guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel! What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and self-indulgence! You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too.

Wow. Jesus doesn't hold back! It's clear that corrupt expressions of faith troubled Jesus deeply and needed to be dismantled. Interestingly, Jesus doesn't critique their commitment to scripture. He encourages others to listen to their teaching and obey it. But they should never emulate their actions.

Additionally, the religious elite miss the forest for the trees. While waist deep in minutiae they lost contact with what was primary. They were eager to strain the gnat out of their drink to remain clean. All the while justice, mercy and faith were ignored.

Both John the Baptist and Jesus were disillusioned by hypocrisy, corruption, selfishness and ritualism. They were united in their deconstruction of these toxic expressions of faith. But they weren't simply deconstructing. They were building something and in the process opened up space for people to meet God again. Let's notice what they both held tightly to:

• Scripture. Both John the Baptist and Jesus were saturated in the Hebrew Scriptures making it a point to study, memorize and be formed by God's word.

• Community. With our western eyes it's easy to conceptualize John's ministry as baptizing individuals so that their personal souls would be right with God. After baptism they could move forward with a personal relationship with Jesus. But that is not what John was doing. He was about a communal renewal movement in which individuals were baptized into a spiritual family.

• Repentance. John the Baptist hits repentance hard. You can almost hear "repent" echoing across the wilderness wherever he roamed. But sometimes we forget that Jesus talked about sin and repentance all the time too. Jesus was not some easy going parent who didn't really care what his followers got up. The reality of sin, God's judgement of sin and our need to repent were central themes of his teaching.

• Allegiance. Both John the Baptist and Jesus were clear that loyalty to God really matters. How do we exhibit loyalty? What does God ask of us? Uncompartmentalized obedience. We don't earn the love and grace of God. But discipleship requires effort. Grace and works are two sides of he same discipleship coin.

Bottom line, as we look at the life of John the Baptist, and of Jesus himself, the disillusioned ought to take heart. They needed to deconstruct unhealthy, toxic and corrupt expressions of faith to usher in God's kingdom.

So what's the invitation for those who love Jesus but struggle deeply with church?

A quick caveat is in order. When I say "church" here (and throughout the post) I'm talking about the institutional expressions that come with buildings, staffs, budgets and programs. I don't mean a community of people living in communion with God and unity with each other in order to reflect God into the world.

Don't give up! There is something precious and valuable we have found in Jesus. I have an image of an archeologist at an excavation site in mind. She has just found something of tremendous value but it's covered in dirt and grime. All sorts of stuff has gotten caked on to what is precious. It takes great patience and the help of others to carefully remove all the debris. Similarly, all sorts of crap has been added on to Jesus of Nazareth by church traditions, leaders and institutions. Overtop of Jesus of Nazareth nationalism, consumerism, self-preservation, self-righteousness, fear and greed is caked on. What's underneath is beautiful and previous. We shouldn't show that out. We need to do the careful work - in community with great humility - to remove what has blurred the beautiful image of Christ.

Do your small part to renew the local church. If you are disillusioned but not yet ready to cynically walk away now is the time to rebuild something healthier with a sturdy foundation. Just this week I listened to a new episode that dropped from The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast. Mike Kosper and Russel Moore were conversing about lessons learned from epic church failures. Mike Kosper's reflection is worth noting here:

“One of the ways we are screwing this up is that we are trying to fix the problems with the same types of impulses that created them….to learn form the lesson is to be just as skeptical of the grandiose solutions about how we are going to fix it. And I think hat’s hard….we want to weep for all of the damage done but the solutions are probably going to be really small and personal and local and generational even.”

Instead of trying to heroically reform systemic issues we would do well to focus on our little community of Jesus followers in our little neck of the woods. How can I care for the widow in our cul-de-sac? How can I offer the gifts I have to encourage 1-2 people at my local church? What questions should my little church be asking to more faithfully love the neighbors around us? Who should I humbly learn from?

As our focus moves from the macro to the micro we must look at our own hearts and our own communities. Where are the blindspots? We are vulnerable the moment we think moral failure, a toxic celebrity culture, cover ups or preserving reputation over doing the right thing could never happen in our church. Church leaders should never self-righteously assume we are exempt from moral failure or that our churches could never put self-service over service to Christ.

As we excavate Jesus our from under self-serving and corrupt expressions of faith may God's spirit heal our disillusionment. May we courageously look at our own blindspots. And may our hope be restored.