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Exit Interviews: What I Wish My Former Pastor Knew, Part 3

Note from John:

I’m very fortunate that I have a venue for my voice to be heard, and realize that most people do not. As a pastor, I spend a great deal of my days listening to people’s stories and trying to speak and write in such a way that those stories are represented in the world—and particularly in the Church.

I asked my readers a simple question, and the responses have been overwhelming in number, and in the depth of faith and pain they reflect. I believe they deserve to heard be directly, and over the next couple of weeks I will share as many as I can. I hope they will minister to you, that they will bring some comfort and encouragement. I hope you’ll realize how very not-alone you are in your desire to pursue faith in the tension between God and organized religion.

And if you’re a faith leader in any capacity, I hope you’ll sift these words to find the ones that resonate and reveal to you the ways you might better do the important, life-giving work you are called to do. 

As you read, resist the temptation to refute or argue anyone’s response. Simply listen and allow each person’s experience to weigh the same.

The question was: If you’re no longer in a church or struggle with the one you’re a part of—what do you wish your former or current pastor/priest/minister/leader knew?

_______

I wish that you had been constant but you weren’t, and therefore your church wasn’t. I wish it hadn’t become so intolerant as to embitter me toward organized faith once again.

But then again, maybe it was just me.

I wish I hadn’t been so naive.

_______

What I want ministers to know is that as a minister to the transgender community, most of my job is cleaning up after them. It is to give people back the dignity they were stripped of by the people they trusted, to bind the wounds that the church has given them, to lighten the load of an already hurting population.

And in this, the Church sometimes feels like my greatest enemy. I love the Church. I love the people of God. But I am forced to work outside of it because my people are tired of being attacked and shamed for the way that God made them. The Church to trans people not only doesn’t seem welcoming or inviting, it doesn’t seem safe. I remember getting lost on a day trip with a Cisgender friend of mine, and she stopped at a church and asked me to go in and ask for directions as there was nowhere else around. I was terrified. I looked at her like she was crazy. I remember the fear like it was yesterday. And I am not alone.

That this is what trans people see when they see a church: derision as the very best case scenario. We need the Church to do better and we need it proclaimed loudly. Because until we are sure you are on our side, we will stay where it is safe. We have risked enough already just by living our truth. We need you to risk loving us.

_______

I’d like ministers ( and I am one) to see that America is only one part of the church, a Church that began in the Middle East, by a Palestinian brown-skinned Jew. Also that the Church is called not only to teach heal and deliver as Jesus did, but to love as he loved; with no conditions, caring for the least of these, for human rights and social justice.

_______

I really, really wish:

1. The rules had been clearer (e.g. If tithing is so important, and people watch to see if you do, then just make it a membership subscription.)
2. That there was more acceptance than judgment (For example, the ongoing implication that you’re never quite acceptable as you are). This is a perfect recipe for pretense and hypocrisy
3. That church leaders didn’t deny or downplay things they were uncomfortable with.
4. That we hadn’t had a “Our brand is right and be warned about anyone who is different” indoctrination.
5. That they would stop pretending that certain things are facts when they actually can’t be sure, and it probably doesn’t matter that much anyway.
6. That the full extent of spirituality had been taught, rather than this being restricted to a hyper-narrow version based on rules and beliefs.

_______

How many ministers think that their followers need to “find Jesus” and to seek that “personal relationship” that’s supposed to change everything, but insist it’s supposed to resemble the one they or some of their followers claim they possess.

_______

I wish pastors would realize that presenting a watered down version of the gospel encourages Christians to settle into a spiritual immature state of being. In other words, a gospel that revolves around humans gaining access to God’s presence leads to spiritual formation that is “me” oriented. When this individualistic facet of the gospel is taught, as if it is the whole gospel, we end up with a very self-centered gospel. This self-centered state ends up leaving us comfortable in our immature state.

What Christians, and the whole world for that matter, needs is a more robust gospel. When we begin to look at a larger, more complex, multi-faceted gospel, we begin to see that the good news of Jesus Christ is concerned with more than giving us a free ticket to Heaven. The good news is for all of creation, throughout all time, and as recipients of God’s great gift of grace and freedom, we are called to work with him to love and care for the world we live in now. This multi-faceted gospel can spur us on to cooperate with the spirit of God that is at work in us. This meaningful, worthy, mandate that is born of and lives in love, can give Christians the courage and the desire to be transformed and live into the way of Jesus.

_______

I’m sick to death of the pageantry; everyone trying to outdo each other in how well they dress.

I’m tired of the offering plate getting passed around and the pastor getting a new Cadillac every year.

I’m tired of the plastic weatherman smiles and politician’s handshakes with the endless gossiping and backbiting just beneath the surface.

It’s grotesque how they show up to church every week and congratulate themselves on what great Christians they are, but you’ll never find them in a homeless shelter, on the streets, or in the slums.

The worst part is that they don’t understand. At its core, Christianity is establishing a personal relationship with God. A connection between you and Him, and letting the effects of that relationship flow out from you.

That’s it. That’s all there is. If you’re not doing this, you’re doing it wrong.

_______

I wish he’d realized there were gay kids in his small church (one of whom was my son) so to be so careful what you say, and what you joke about.

_______

I wish they knew that I needed as much help as anyone else. I wanted a community—a family. I wanted to love God and serve people. But neither pastor seemed satisfied even when I gave until I was empty. I wish they knew I was a human. And I wish they had taught me I was a good human, not just a broken one.

_______

 

I had a gay son. I was divorced and remarried. Therefore, according to the church, there was no hope for me or for my son. I lived with a man who molested my child, yet was told it was not God’s will for me to leave him, because God hates divorce. I desperately miss not having a place to worship, but I’ve never been happier in my life as I’ve been since I left the church, now more than 20 years ago.

_______

I wish church leaders understood that social justice is not simply a project; that setting the world right through fighting for equality for everyone, is the gospel.

That sins are not simply individual, but corporate (scapegoating, blame, tribalism, nationalism, etc).

That Christianity is not American.

That I love Jesus more than ever now that I am done with your church.

_______

I wish that you had not proven your words completely false by way of your actions, when you decided to pull the church put of a 10-year mission in an impoverished African nation because the mission partner wanted to extend benefits to its employees’ same-sex spouses, showing you cared not one whit about loving the gays or loving the poor or loving non believers.

I wish that every sermon thereafter hadn’t felt like so much canned dog meat to my family and me, because we had seen the truth of your heart and had seen that you were false with us.But most of all, I wish that it hadn’t broken my spirits so. I wish that I could have decided to stay there and be the light in the rapidly growing darkness of your church, as the loving members slowly shuffled away in alienation. I wish I could have convinced myself that continuing to teach ministry to new believers within the church might show them that loving side of Christians that your church chose, more and more frequently, to ignore.

_______

I wish they knew that the negative LGBT reference once mentioned in a sermon before my son came out has completely frozen my 13-year old gay son from ever wanting to go to church again. A child once completely enthralled with our church and church family now identifies as agnostic. His most fervent prayer, prayed daily for two years was for God to allow him to wake up straight. It’s not a choice. And he was born this way. Words matter.

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That silence from the church leaders when I had been one and was in incredible pain, was worse than any stumbling words or dorky verbal hugs would have been. When you’re terrified and life is spinning out of control, the silence from those who were supposed to care is deafening.

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There is a difference between political party affiliation and being a Christian. Somebody who votes differently than you is not an apostate/ It should be about the heart, not the ballot box. And other religions are not dangerous. Just because somebody believes differently than you, whether it be politically or religiously, there is no need to denigrate and deny civil rights. Not only are we closed-minded when we verbally attack others, we are also putting a limit on God. He is more infinite than any human can possibly understand. To think that you have an absolute, exclusive right to legitimate faith is to say that you completely and exclusively know the complete mind of God and have an exclusive relationship with God – which are completely unchristian concepts. God is bigger than all of us. We are mere mortals. To limit God is to deny Him.

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That the words he directly said to me (in front of my daughter) had a profound (negative) impact on us both. He told me that although my husband had drugged, beaten, and raped me and I was filing for divorce, that it was still my ” job as his wife” to stay. As I look on it now I don’t know that he understands the depth of his hurtful words. It was at that time that I completely turned my back on any church. I also denounced myself from being a Christian, although I very much still believe in God.

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I would definitely like them to know how their words have effected me emotionally, and how their words held the blade to my inner thigh and held the syringe full of air in my vein. (Failed suicide attempts) I would all like them to know who their words made a number of my friends, including two people I loved, take their own lives.

Most definitely they need to know that their words are the reason why I will never step foot within a church again and I have to struggle, yet again with forgiveness and questioning whether God is important within my life. Because of their words, and the nasty pokes from people within the church, I feel more displaced than ever.

And I want them to know that I still have faith in God, because it was not God who pushed me away from the Church. It was the Church that kicked me, when I needed them the most, and they slammed the door and turned their back on me.

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How do you describe being exiled from your church. It’s like a big wall, where everyone on one side is told they can no longer talk to you. There is a long wall that extends as far as you could see. You feel as though you have run the entire length of that wall, looking for another way back in, because this is where you thought you had to be (Inside that wall) but, I met Jesus more often outside that wall, which makes me realize that Jesus is not present within any church I have been in. Jesus meets the exiles, and he brings them home, yet home is not within the church. It is a place within the heart and not within the confines of a special club that decides who is “in” and who is “out”.

Maybe the Church did me a favor?

Read Part 1 HERE.
Read Part 2 HERE.

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