And What About Church?......

Is there ever a question you avoid wanting to answer?

You know the one I mean.
You are visiting friends, at a get-together, bump into an old acquaintance, catch up over coffee, reacquaint yourself at a wedding or funeral...that sort of thing.
You chat politely and share brief biographies and current events.
What's happening with you, your spouse, the kids.
You cover work details.
Perhaps your health.
And then, quite casually, the conversation steers to the inevitable enquiry:

"So what church do you go to now?"
Toes slightly scrunch,
your smile remains but stiffens,
the brain searches quickly for your best pat answer....

Have you been there?
I have.
Many times.
It is a typical question you get asked a lot.
It is usually a simple ask.
No ulterior motive but to merely fill in another blank for the listener.
It helps put you into perspective for them.
It gives insight into where you are in your spiritual walk.
It is a plain question requiring a simple answer.

Frankly, it gives me the shits.

Now it is not the person asking that is the problem,
It is the global expectation that,
as a professing follower of Jesus,
we should be marginalised into expressing this devotion
by attending services, leading bible studies and being part of a home group.

When your answer to 'the question' is:

"Well actually, at the moment I don't go to church."

it is usually greeted with quiet taken-abackness and reserved pity.

Church-goers don't really know how to handle this revelation well.
"Oh, that's....ah....nice." would be their reply.
They are usually too polite to ask for the details.
Some will just assume the worst.
Others will mentally note you down on their prayer list.
Your committment, faith and occasionally your salvation is questioned,
but never inquired about.
This has become almost a taboo subject verging on shameful.
Treated as if, when you explain the circumstances,
the non-attendance virus will be passed on to the enquirer.
They don't want to be like that.
Like you.
So often times...
no one really asks.

Fine by me.

My story is simple.
I want people to know.
At the moment, I do not attend traditional church or belong to a denomination.
It was not a conscious choice.
It was never planned.
It just happened.

There are reasons.
Valid ones.
Mostly circumstancial.
Some personal.
I have thought the matter through.
Investigated numerous possibilities.
But for now,
I don't attend a church.

Are you interested in knowing why?
Read on.

For decades, my wife and I, and our subsequent children went to church.
We were as committed and involved as the next person.
Served faithfully.
Contributed well.
I occasionally was asked to preach.
We taught Sunday School.
Led overseas missions.
Tithed and served.
Prayed and worshipped.
It was how we were brought up.
It was what we wanted as a couple and as a family.

As the years went by, two major things happened.
We had our beautiful youngest daughter
born with significant disabilities,
and I went through the Men's Rites of Passage.

They just happened.
Life changing events.
Events that helped define me as a man today.
In their own, but different ways.

With respect to our child,
it was a matter of exhaustion and need for the support we didn't get.
To help sustain our huge medical and care bills,
my wife and I had to both work.
Demanding jobs, but flexible enough to allow us
to be with the children as much as possible.

Juggling a growing family, with the demands of a special needs child,
balancing time at home with carers and specialists,
it was (and is) a complex and whirlwind existence for all involved.
By Saturday, we had enough energy to catch up on the domestic needs set aside during the week, driving to venues for our other remarkable and active children, and if time, a few minutes left over for some alone time.
Our Sundays start at dawn.
The process of getting ourselves, our other children and our daughter ready and in the car for church by nine o'clock is a good two to three hour process.
I won't bore you with the details of our morning routines with Sophie,
or the taxing physicality of cleaning, dressing, medicating and getting her mobile.
Let me say that, for many years, after hours of hard work,
we would sometimes arrive at church
only to find the special needs carers were absent that day,
or the air conditioning in the church was broken
or the weather turned too nasty to get a wheelchair out and set up,
or someone parking inconsiderately in the disabled parking bay, 
or Sophie herself being unusually difficult to manage.
On many, many, many occasions I would end up just sitting in the car
so my wife and other children could attend the services,
and Sophie and I would be left to ourselves, engine running for the aircon,
and we would wait for the others to return.
It was what we had to do.
We found that as Sophie got older and her needs and level of care increased,
we could not attend as a family group any longer and
church to us now was a separate, isolated and usually stressful event.
We began to lose contact.
We began to get forgotten.
We tried, we really did.
But we finally realised.
we can't do it any more.

One day
I got up with the sun
as I usually did on a Sunday
and I just sat.
I let everyone sleep in -
No wake-ups,
no preparation,
no quick breakfasts,
no nappie changes and baths and
no struggles to get everyone into the car.
No traffic or stress.
Just sleeping and quiet
and peace.
We were all exhausted.
All of us.
And we really didn't realize how much.

I remember clearly seeing
that this was the space we needed.
Our home was of the Lord.
Our lives consecrated.
Our children blessed.
And very quickly I knew:
This was really our church.
Our home.
Our Family.
Our life.

Now I know some of you reading this will already have opinions.
That's OK.
You do not walk in our shoes.
How can you know?
Believe me, the process of not attending formal church was flled with
grief and relief and guilt and peace.
For months I anguished over the rightness of this decision.
It went against what we knew about the christian walk
and became an answer to our slowly depleting lives.
We didn't resign or notify our pastor or revoked our passports.
We simply stayed home.

We rested on our Sabbath.
We did family things.
We sat at our table in our pyjamas and ate and laughed.
We ended our weekend feeling refreshed
and ready to face the ensuing week.
And it was good.

A few things happened after this.
Our weekly routine seemed easier.
We had space to just relax,
and no-one ever phoned or emailed or visited us to see why we had stopped going.
Not one.

It was not like we were hidden in our old fellowship.
We had been there for many years.
We were part of the church family and
it was our spiritual home.

And nobody seemed to notice.
No one did anything.

Imagine that.

In a way, it made things a lot easier.
We were not bitter.
we just saw what it all was.
Sometimes I think the church was probably relieved that we just stopped coming.
Our family circumstances were obviously challenging for all involved.
We didn't fit the 'normal' church-goer profile.
Our daughter was quite a handful and often was disruptive in a service.
The church was filled with really nice people.
Very nice.
But we didn't need nice.
We needed support,
connection,
respite,
care,
acceptance,
integration
and real.

We needed real.

We needed words of life.
We didn't need "You are so strong!"
We needed "I see your pain".
We didn't need "I'll pray for you!"
We needed "How can I help?".

Our church didn't do real very well.
Our needs were basic and raw.
Our daughter was real.
Our presence and differences were real.
It was just too hard.

So we stopped.
We just stopped.
No bitterness. No resentment. No disillusions.
No anger or criticism or spite.
Time led us to just stop going.
And here we are.

Would we go back?
Isn't there another place we could go?
Why didn't you try harder?
Don't you need the fellowship?
Could you give them another chance?
Start your own fellowship?
Seek out better support?
Pray?

Don't worry,
I have been through all of those questions and a hundred more.
For now,
we are good.
My wife, myself and our children have found people and places in the outside world
to fill in the needs the church couldn't give us.
We have accountability;
Christian friends to fellowship with.
Our own faith.
Each other.

The story of my change through the Rites of Passage
and how I began to see doing church differently because of it
is another conversation.
It is intertwined with this story you are reading
but from a wholly different depth and angle.
It will need more time and space than this page can offer.
Grab a coffee and I'll tell you about it.*
But not here, not now.

Don't get me wrong.
I believe in the fellowship of believers.
I will defend the notion of the Body of Christ.
I see the importance of a christian collective presence in the community.
And I am not for one moment blaming our daughter as the reason for our family being churchless.
She is a consideration of course.
Her disabilities are factors.
Our life is full of situations we cannot control.
But this is where the journey has taken us at this moment.
I feel close to God.
Very close to God.
I have found a good place.
Most of all,
I know that God understands all of this.

Will we go back one day?
That would be nice.
Have we given up on church?
No, never.
But for now,
it is what it is.

Thanks for listening.

















* the other story of my journey and church is told here