Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

by Rachel Held Evans

  The voices joining our Easter chorus belonged mostly to twentysomethings who came after me in youth group—an odd mix of former back-row boys and Bible nerds, only now with spouses and even a baby or two in tow. Next to me sat a pair of Tea Party conservatives who made their impassioned opposition to immigration reform well-known on social media. On the other side of the room sat a couple that boasted an Obama ’08 bumper sticker on their car. We bragged about our political and theological diversity and how it reflected our commitment to ultimate unity in Christ, but sometimes I wondered what would happen come the next election cycle . . . or a night when we had too much wine and someone brought up predestination or Obamacare.

  Our greatest commonality was a desire to create a different sort of church in Dayton, namely by making it authentic, intentional, and missional—slippery buzzwords we said we hated, but which we still invoked from time to time because they reflected our truest hopes and dreams for the Mission. When we lingered at the deli downtown, dreaming big dreams over turkey sandwiches and fries, we talked about partnering with the local public schools for after-school tutoring programs, arranging our imagined sanctuary so that people sit around circular tables instead of in pews, sending a missions team to Uganda, curating exhibits for local artists, living simply so that others may simply live. We were idealistic and committed. We were hopeful and brave. We were being the change we seek in the world, and we were, to a person, broke.

  The fistful of cash Dan and I contributed to the lawyer’s fee when we filed the corporate nonprofit paperwork for the Mission felt as momentous as a down payment on a house. They say self-employment means living in famine or feast, and we were in the midst of famine fit to rival Pharaoh’s nightmares. Brian and Carrie weren’t much better off. Brian forfeited a comfortable megachurch salary to move to Dayton to start the Mission, working full-time in the Walmart automotive department changing people’s oil and selling them tires.

  The rest of our group was young and new to their jobs, new to their marriages, new to church planting. The majority of our income arrived in our PO box in little white envelopes from out-of-town donors who supported us like missionaries. We hoped that by summer, we would save enough to rent a place of our own downtown.

  But until then, the funeral home apartment created an intimate atmosphere that invited people to settle in and stay. In the conversations following Brian’s sermons, stories emerged of doubt, disillusionment, frustration, and hope. It was as if each week we shed one more layer of Southern pretense, slowly, carefully exposing our true selves. Christine, expressive and freckled with a sharp laugh and poetic mind, opened up about the abusive church she left and her ongoing struggle with shame and guilt. Kelly and Courtney, college students and roommates, talked about their adventures churchhopping in the Bible Belt. Dave and Liz asked for prayer for their finances, Jen for a healthy baby, Lisa that she’d pass the MCATs.

  And on Easter, the light from the paschal candle made a halo on the ceiling that caught the marble blue eyes of little Aurora, our youngest member, who rested her head on her mother’s chest. A joyful, expectant mood carried our prayers, as together we declared that “things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made . . .”34

  After prayers and worship, Brian preached from the book of John. He told us about the seven “I am” statements found in John’s gospel and about how Jesus says he is the bread of life, the light of the world, the gate, the good shepherd, the vine, the way and the truth, the resurrection and the life. Brian said John’s gospel uses the word believe more than any other and that John wrote his gospel “that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” And for a moment, on this day of impossible things come true, I did. I believed more than I had in a long time.

  June 2010

  For our first baptism, we gathered on the banks of Chickamauga Lake, a muddy impoundment on the Tennessee River famous for its largemouth bass. A breeze rippled the water and stirred the cattails as Brian and Chad waded in, wearing T-shirts and swim shorts and squinting in the hot sun. Chad is one of Dayton’s premiere electric guitar players and a staple in the local band scene. He had been following Jesus for a while, but with the Mission gaining momentum and his wedding just weeks away, he decided it was time to take the plunge.

  From the water Brian made a joke the rest of us couldn’t hear but that sent Chad into a fit of laughter, easing the awkward tension of the whole exercise (which, when you think about it, is indeed a little strange). “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” Brian said before easing Chad under the water and back up again.

  They hugged and slapped each other’s backs, sending little showers of water through the air. We whistled and applauded from the shore while a family of ducks glided by unperturbed. Then we roasted hot dogs and grilled hamburgers and told our favorite stories from the old youth group days until the fireflies blinked in the grass. Everything smelled like summer—smoky and earthy and wet.

  Later, there will be a wedding, a food drive, arguments, apologies, a baby shower, and a mission statement—the sort of things that turn an experimental community into a real church. We built the Mission on nights and weekends without much more than nickels and dimes; and at least at first, it seemed to work.

  October 2010

  On Halloween we hosted an open house at our new downtown storefront for the throngs of locals who descended upon the courthouse lawn for the annual Pumpkin Fest. They wandered in with squirmy little princesses and pirates on their hips, Joker masks pulled back over their heads, their eyes squinting and scanning our odd little space—fifteen feet wide and one hundred feet deep. “It looks like a bowling alley,” they said, because it does.

  We handed them mini chocolate bars and flyers and explained we were a church “committed to living out the Mission of God in community and for the community,” and they were welcome to join us Sunday nights at seven. They smiled politely, but in a way that said, just what this town needs—another church, and I found myself resenting the fact that we spent four bucks a bag on that candy.

  Despite Brian’s connections at Walmart, we’d yet to make significant inroads in the broader community, and after several of our original members, including three couples, moved out of town, we stagnated. Still, work carried on at the new place, which the owner agreed to let us use for free if we helped him with some updates. We ripped out the banged-up pegboard to expose the brick. We purchased and installed toilets, painted walls, brought in used couches and armchairs to replace the folding metal chairs we endured with dramatic vexation for the first three weeks. We addressed the fluorescent light problem by utilizing Christmas lights, and borrowed floor lamps and the Japanese lanterns from Amanda’s wedding. Dan even built a movable partition out of eighth-inch plywood to try and reign in the cavernous space, prompting him to joke that he was “dividing the church” and “building up walls.” Our look was what you might call secondhand chic.

  Chris and Tiffany were there, greeting everyone who walked through the door as if they were old friends . . . which they probably were. Chris teaches art at the local high school and Tiffany is a pharmacist, and between the two of them, they know everyone in town. When Matt and Jen took some time off for the baby, Chris and Tiffany volunteered to take over as treasurers of the Mission and since then we’ve become fast friends. Tiffany listens to NPR during each stretch of her lengthy daily commute, so she’s the most informed person I know, comfortable discussing everything from college football to theology to US foreign policy with a thick East Tennessee accent and enviable vocabulary. Chris collects records and rides mountain bikes and cracks Dan up with his droll sense of humor and inventive use of profanity. They’ve got a bumper sticker on the back of their Volkswagen that says “not on the rug, man.” We get along.

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sp; Chris and Tiffany chatted with a couple who attended one of Dayton’s most prominent and conservative churches, and I wondered, darkly, if the couple was there to gather information. The Mission has been subjected to a surprising amount of gossip, even for Dayton, and I couldn’t help but worry that it was my fault, that people who hated my blog had projected their disgust onto the whole church, which explained why it was rumored we taught evolution, didn’t use our Bibles, drank like fish, and were almost entirely gay.

  The fact that some people in town rooted for our demise made me all the more determined to prove them wrong, to keep working until our church was bigger and better than theirs and we won. But whenever I got all paranoid and tribal like that Brian called me out on it. We knew each other well enough now to see the blemishes and get under each other’s skin. We were learning one another’s quirks, one another’s gifts, one another’s go-to sins. (You’re not a real church, I suppose, until you know one another’s go-to sins.) We were holding one another accountable, but we were doing it as friends.

  Brian reminded me this wasn’t a competition. There was no Flush Valve Award to win this time around, no call to put people in their place. We wanted to define ourselves by what we were, he said, not by what we weren’t.

  I knew he was right. I knew it wasn’t about winning but about serving. But as another couple wandered into the building and eyed our ragamuffin group with suspicion, I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that what we were wouldn’t be enough.

  February 2011

  On our night to volunteer at the health clinic, Tiffany and I were tired. Building a church on nights and weekends was harder than it sounded, and the Mission was running out of money.

  But the health clinic was a good idea. After donating school supplies and assembling Thanksgiving baskets, we wanted to engage in more consistent community service work through the Mission, so Carrie found Volunteers in Medicine, a clinic that provides nonemergency medical care to underprivileged patients free of charge. Doctors and nurses rotate in on Thursday nights, and volunteers work Tuesdays and Thursdays to greet patients, manage files, and sort through tax returns and other paperwork to see if prospective patients qualify for care. The place is run by a group of ladies from the Church of God, so much is said about God bringing the right people through the door and healing both physical and spiritual wounds, but it’s all legit. People see actual doctors and get actual medicine. Tiffany and I tried to work the same nights so we could take turns managing the phones and working with patients.

  I sat in an examining room with a toothless, rheumy-eyed man and his heavyset daughter who said her father had a heart condition that hadn’t been treated by a doctor in years. They came the week before, I remembered, but without any information regarding his finances. At last they had returned with his latest tax return. I felt guilty about scrutinizing their plight with such lapidary care, calculator in hand, but these rules were in place when we arrived.

  As I totaled up the household members and income, two people living on less than $20,000, I caught my breath. I’d just realized something.

  “Good news,” I said to the man sitting like a child on the examining table, his back hunched and his hands in his lap. “You qualify.”

  It wasn’t until I got home that I told Dan: “I realized tonight that you and I would qualify too.”

  April 2011

  Our last Sunday as the Mission fell on Easter. We met in the place downtown, now empty, cavernous and cold. There was no liturgy this time around, no paschal candle—just the ten of us who remained, standing in a circle, our hands on Brian and Carrie’s shoulders, praying. It was a strange day to think about resurrection.

  The Mission collapsed slowly, one week at a time, first as participation stagnated, then as it waned, then as it buckled under the financial strain. I saw the stress in Carrie’s eyes and in Brian’s shoulders, and I carried it into my own sleepless nights. There were no big fights, no dramatic exits. No one, that we know of, left disgruntled or hurt. A few of our members moved away, others burned out, and the rest of us stayed, even after the torpor set in, the inertia that comes with watching your time, money, and energy melt away. The building never seemed to get warm. When Brian said he needed to start looking for another job in ministry, one that would actually pay the bills, no one objected. He found one in Florida, at a United Methodist Church that needed a youth pastor, and he and Carrie and the girls would leave in just a few weeks.

  Without much left to say, we decided to go around the room and share what we were grateful for. Chris and Tiffany were grateful that they made new friends, that their curiosity about Scripture had been piqued and engaged. Christine, wiping away tears, said the Mission became her sanctuary, a safe place to speak freely and recover from the last church experiences, and perhaps, to fortify her for the next. Kelly and Courtney were grateful for like-minded companionship, a chance to get off campus and really talk. The others mentioned the service projects, that time we pulled some money together to help a couple with rent, the baptism, the wedding, the communion services, the prayers, the inside jokes.

  Carrie was grateful for how we loved on her girls, Brian for how we took a risk with him. Dan said he would do it all over again for the friendships we’d forged. I said the Mission was the first time I felt like an asset to the church instead of a liability, and I was glad that at least we tried, at least we took a risk.

  Maybe you can’t build a church on nights and weekends. But at least you can be one. At least you can love one another as well as you can in the midst of it.

  Brian urged us to plug into other area churches after the Mission closed its doors, but the prospect of searching for another faith community left me feeling so exhausted, cynical, and lonely I couldn’t imagine climbing out of bed on Sunday mornings ever again. It would be a few years before we would really even try.

  As pink light filled the windows, we clasped one another’s hands, concluding with our favorite prayer, adapted from Alcuin of York:

  God, go with us. Help us to be an honor to the church.

  Give us the grace to follow Christ’s word,

  to be clear in our task and careful in our speech.

  Give us open hands and joyful hearts.

  Let Christ be on our lips.

  May our lives reflect a love of truth and compassion.

  Let no one come to us and go away sad.

  May we offer hope to the poor,

  and solace to the disheartened.

  Let us so walk before God’s people,

  that those who follow us might come into his kingdom.

  Let us sow living seeds, words that are quick with life,

  that faith may be the harvest in people’s hearts.

  In word and in example let your light shine

  in the dark like the morning star.

  Do not allow the wealth of the world or its enchantment

  flatter us into silence as to your truth.

  Do not permit the powerful, or judges,

  or our dearest friends

  to keep us from professing what is right.

  Amen.

  FIFTEEN

  Epic Fail

  All ministry begins at the ragged edges of our own pain.

  —Ian Morgan Cron

  THIRD AND WALNUT BAR IN LANSDALE, PENNSYLVANIA, used to be a church. When the church failed, the historic, two-story stone building was sold to an Elks Lodge, and then to a local businessman who hung lighted beer signs in the lancet windows and turned the church into a smoke-filled, hole-in-the-wall bar with karaoke on Wednesdays and live rockabilly music on Sundays. The bar changed hands a few times, closing and reopening. But in 2011, it caught the eye of a burned-out pastor named J. R. Briggs, who decided to use Third and Walnut as the venue for his first ever Epic Fail Pastors Conference.

  “Considering the nature of the event,” he said, “the location seemed perfect.”

  Like most crazy ideas, the Epic Fail Pastors Conference emerged spontan
eously after Briggs confessed on his blog that the highly produced, expertly marketed pastors conferences featuring success stories from famous megachurch pastors left him feeling inadequate and depressed. Most ministers can’t relate to overcrowded buildings and enormous marketing budgets, he said. Most ministers are just trying to make it through the day. In fact, a whopping 80 percent report being discouraged in their roles, and half say they would quit if they could.35 But none of the conferences Briggs attended provided a safe place to talk about and process the ubiquitous reality of nearly every minister’s life—failure.

  “What if there was an EPIC FAIL Pastors Conference with the tag line ‘where leaders put their worst foot forward?’ ” Briggs asked. “What if we led out of our weakness, not our strengths?”

  To Briggs’s surprise, within hours of posting the article, he received hundreds of comments, e-mails, and phone calls essentially saying, “I’d go.”

  And they did. Nearly one hundred pastors (and former pastors) from seventeen states descended upon Third and Walnut Bar to eat, drink, pray, and talk about what ministry is actually like. Writes Briggs:

  People shared their stories and struggles with refreshing courage. They opened up about their battles with depression and suicidal thoughts, their terror of failure and their broken hearts over a failed church nine years prior. They shared how dry, lost, and alone they felt. I looked at my watch. We were seventeen minutes in and people were standing up telling complete strangers stories of pain, loss, fear and deep wounds . . . There were no superstars, no impressive videos, no greenrooms and no lanyards . . . There was laughter and prayer and tears and refills. It was, as one retired pastor put it, “a kiss from God on our bruises.”36