ICYMI: If you didn't get hopeletter 1, you can read it here.

The quiet was familiar in our caravan of cars full of youth group kids cruising back home from San Francisco after the big weekend youth rally to “save a generation.” Friday energy was high on the way there, but now everyone was Sunday napping and a thought drifted into my head…

For the last 20 years, at least, research and statistics have predicted and proven anywhere from a meandering to a mass exodus out of Church.

Young people.
Old people.
Hurt people.
Weary people.
Bored people.
Incensed people.
Jesus loving people.

Gone.

I just never thought I’d be one of those people.

Churched people always want to talk about how other people are leaving the church.

Maybe the leavers aren’t leaving church.
Maybe they’re trying to find church.

When people walk away from a building, a people, a program, a culture–maybe it’s not the leaver that is the issue. Maybe it’s the building, the people, the program, the culture.

Maybe the leavers aren’t leaving church.
Maybe church stopped being church.
Maybe the leavers are looking to find the real thing.

I didn’t know the air I was breathing. But in the spring of 2018, two events tipped me off to the toxicity in the Church I loved, where I was giving everything I could muster to help us succeed.

The first event was significant, but it wasn’t till the second event that I realized how significant the first was for me. In April I went to the first event–a weekend seminar, retreat, workshop thing. The pitch was that it would help me bring my heart to work.

I remember walking the rows of Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon in February, checked some notification on my phone, and when I saw a social media post about this workshop, I signed up right there on my phone. I had no idea how I was going to pay for it or the travel, but I knew I needed to be there.

It took awhile to hit me, but jumping at this opportunity (learning to bring your heart to work) was the first realization that my heart had been sidelined in my Church.

Jumping forward to the second event, I was attending a conference for pastors and leaders that my church was a part of and saw that there was an opportunity during the conference to see a therapist who specialized in helping pastors. It was included, so I signed up.

The room where they had us meet was way too regal for therapy, but I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, and I wanted to make the most of it, so I didn’t hold back in this vast, mahogany room. I just shared everything about the heaviness in my life.

I sat there across from this guy as his eyes teared up, intent on soaking up my story, he barely spoke. After about 45 minutes of me spilling and clarifying and painting the picture the best I could, I’ll never forget it, he said,

It sounds weird to admit now, but sitting there across from teary-eyed-listener-guy, I didn’t even know what spiritual abuse was. I had been attending or serving Church my whole life, I had gone through seminary, become ordained and I had never learned about spiritual abuse.

Church was incredibly unsafe for me, but because of years of abuse, my mind and my heart didn’t know. I had been coerced into believing that our way was normal, special even.

In the years that followed, as I processed this all with my patient therapists and some truly caring, Jesus loving people who would help me unravel these years of abuse, I kept recalling that weekend workshop about bringing my heart to work.

I felt safe there. So did everyone.

We were vulnerable and humble.
We were careful and cared for.
We were hurting and healing.

No one was threatened.
No one was less than.
No one was bent on success.

Outside of my own home, it was the safest I felt in a decade.

It made me realize, again, that church is possible, and I wasn’t in it.

Maybe the leavers are looking to find the real thing.

The music in the bar was at that level where it makes everyone talk a little bit louder, but the noise from the conversations was out-pacing the music as everyone strained to speak and hear each other’s stories. It was the afterparty, following the rehearsal dinner for the wedding of one of my best friends, and I was catching people up on my life. I remember telling a bit of my story, specifically the Church part to a new friend. He had married one of my oldest friends and I was just getting to know him. My story about Church becoming difficult was not his story though, and he let me in on a sliver of light I had forgotten about. He said:

I’m still low-level shocked by his statement.

I’d forgotten that church could be good.

At that point I hadn’t processed much, if any, of the Church hurt I had gone through. It was just sitting there, heavy. Tenacious. Smoldering. Slowly rewriting my thoughts on hope.

Hopefully there’s another way.

I’ve thought a lot about how the Church has arrived here, again–a cyclical shift from something holy and wholly good, devolving into narcissistic havens where clear-eyed, Jesus loving people stand up and point to another way, calling us back to the heart of God. Count on this all coming in future letters, but for now, suffice it to say that this isn’t new.

There will always be the temptation to center ourselves instead of the Lamb, and sometimes we take the bait. And it always causes more pain and creates more difficulties than we could calculate.

As I was working on the words to articulate how you would know if subscribing to another way was for you, I came up with this phrase:

for people who love Jesus but Church has become difficult

The first half was easy. The work I’m doing in these letters isn’t to help people find Jesus. There are people out there doing that work, but these are not those letters.

The second half went through the most revisions.

For a long time I was working with the phrase

for people who love Jesus but hate the church

I knew that the word hate was a bit strong, but listen, there are days when that’s all I’ve got.

I started to brainstorm words that could fill that hate blank and I went through the gamut:

for people who love Jesus but…

hate the church
loathe the church
have issues with the church
are hurt by the church
are sad about church
just can’t with church
shudder at the thought of church
were abused in church
lost faith in church
walked away from church

These are all people who I know, personally.

Some of them are you. Some of them are me.

The deep down part of me has trouble saying hate the church because I can’t separate the church from Jesus. And I love Jesus.

And what I realized as I worked through this wording search is that even hating the church is a meaningful place to be and being honest about it reveals in how much we care. It might not sound like it, but it does.

When I see what happens in the dark corners of Church–the cover ups, the hubris, the power grabs, the silencing, the gaslighting, the justification, the subtle and overt work to make it on earth as it is in hell–I have no other word but hate.

It’s not so concerning that someone might hate Church, that hearing a new gut-wrenching story makes them want to throw things and break things.

What is concerning is indifference. I don’t see how anyone can love Jesus and become indifferent toward Church because if Jesus’ heart is breaking, we break too.

It breaks me.

And it may seem untrue at first, but even hating Church is a hopeful place.

Here’s why. Hate is a secondary emotion. When we are honest with and engage the hatred that wells up, typically there is a deep sadness underneath that we don’t know how to express or don’t have the energy or will to engage it because the heaviness is so hard. Anger and hatred are easier, but they are on the surface, and the bruised heart can’t take the hits, so we leave it be, safely beneath our hatred.

But underneath that vitriol, there is a heart that cares and cares enough to lovingly criticize Church. It’s just been through some stuff. And without some healing, it’s not going to brave the surface and show the world that it’s sad. Unbelievably wrecked. Sad on sad on sad.

Friends.

I’m sad. On sad. On sad.

Maybe deep down, you are too.

The fact that we hurt reveals that in a deep place, we care.

And there is hope down there.

I’m not going to ask you to do anything with it. The HS will, when the time is right and the healing is happening or finally possible, and the people are careful and the space is safe.

But I do want to encourage you, even where you are, scrolling to the end of this letter, there’s hope in the hurt down there.

And that’s it. Just know that hope isn’t gone.

Even if it doesn’t feel hopeful, I’m telling you, even buried hope is taking the time it needs to recover.

My therapist asked me

My honest answer?

Long story short, I was wrong.

Healing isn’t something I know how to do.

But Jesus does.

And finally being honest about how I was hurt and how much it hurt (with a lot of help from those therapists and Jesus-loving-friends) was the only way that I have found to start to heal.

Now, until my next letter, I want to leave you with something practical. As someone who has experienced some healing, I’ve found this statement to be holy and helpful, and I am giving it to you to use as much as you need in exploring another way:

Instead of trying to make sense of it all, I continually realize and remind myself, “Oh, that’s not church.”

People don’t get to tell us what church is. Jesus does.

Lots of stuff happens by people in organizations and in buildings with the word Church emblazoned on the side in 128pt Helvetica Bold, but that doesn’t mean it’s church.

So next time you see that documentary recommended to you or your friend texts you or you remember that time when you were so blindsided by the unraveling of your entire world, feel free to remind yourself that not everything that calls itself Church is church.

Hold on, friends.

There is another way.

​

Much love.

–Kurt