Leaving church?

I recently read and was deeply touched by Barbara Brown Taylor's Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith. Taylor is a pastor's pastor who found herself forced to give up what she loved doing (and thought was God's plan for her life). She had become spiritually exhausted and depressed and desperately in need of renewal. Being a priest was cutting her off from God. In letting go, she released herself to rediscover her faith in God and to become more truly missional in her ministry.

I am someone who seriously considered at various times during the past 25 years entering the professional ministry. I have felt God's call on my life since I was sixteen. At first prevented from realizing my passion because of my youth, and also because I was queer, I embarked more than once on the path only to never quite find the strength (or grace) to see it all the way through.

My most recent adventure with this very compelling sense of calling came to an end last year, when my recent intention to embark on an M. Div. collapsed in a crisis of faith accompanied by a prolonged period of depression. Many a day there is when I know not what I am called to do, or whether there is such a thing as an individual calling at all.

But there's more: while I have counted numerous ordained and semi-ordained individuals among my friends (and boyfriends) I have never been able to shake a quite anti-institutional bias. I don't have much faith these days that the visible, organized church or the professional career ministry are (or really can be) agents of profound spiritual transformation in this world. The church envisioned by Jesus and proclaimed by Paul is not its clergy or other leaders and even less its buildings, operations and ministries.

Where is transformation going to come from then? Perhaps part of the answer is provided in Bill Kinnon's recent blog entry, The People Formerly Known As Congregation.

Let me introduce you to The People formerly known as The Congregation. There are millions of us.

We are people - flesh and blood - image bearers of the Creator - eikons, if you will. We are not numbers.

We are the eikons who once sat in the uncomfortable pews or plush theatre seating of your preaching venues. We sat passively while you proof-texted your way through 3, 4, 5 or no point sermons - attempting to tell us how you and your reading of The Bible had a plan for our lives. Perhaps God does have a plan for us - it just doesn't seem to jive with yours.

This position comes not from a sense of bitterness but from a grasp of a calling to the universal priesthood of believers far from realized. Apparently the post created quite a wave in the post-evangelical and emergent blogosphere. It is not long, and worth reading in full.

One blogger noted that the reason Bill's post 'hit the blogosphere with such a splash is because there are so many people who sense the validity of the issues he addresses in his post.'

There is a path of detox and deconstruction that leads to an understanding of the underlying problems in the system of church that Christianity has functioned in for many years. Most who follow this path still have an appreciation for the traditional church although they can no longer wholeheartedly embrace the packaged religious experience.

John Frye adds to the conversation with his own interesting insights on the people, like Barbara Brown Taylor and himself, formerly known as Pastor.