I once heard the late great African-American pastor Dr. Fred G. Sampson say, “The church is the only organization that shoots her wounded.”

Several of us have jokingly (sort of) termed a local fast-growing Anglican church the “evangelical rehab center.” It’s no coincidence that the rector is also a licensed therapist. It also makes a lot of biblical sense that the centerpiece and climax of the liturgical service is Christ and his table—not a charismatic (and fallible) human being.

Before you jump to the defensive, hear me out.

Most (not all, but most) evangelical churches value:

* Measurement not Mystery

* Monologue not Dialogue

* Cloning not Originality

* Predictability not Spontaneity

* Heirarchy not Heterarchy

* Alpha Males not Gender Equality

* Control not Freedom

* Policies not Creativity

* Science not Art

* Groups not Individuals

* Instant Gratification not A Redemptive Hermeneutic

* Literalism not Symbolism

* Discourse not Communion

No wonder there are problems with burnout, disillusionment and judgment. Artists in particular tend to feel unwelcome in a church that values what is said at the expense of all else. A church that values monologue gives no opportunity for checks and balances. It creates a bully pulpit even for those pastors who are not bullies. There is no opportunity for dialogue.

For example, this quote by a popular young evangelical pastor from Texas, “Give Grace to the Grace Killers.” When I am handed this quote in a monologue, there is no opportunity to address the myriad red flags it raises in this fifty plus-year-old veteran of evangelicalism. I can only feel the scars on my back ache, listen to my heart pound in my ears, shake my head in disappointment and shuffle my feet as I exit anonymously amid the throngs of people.

If offered the opportunity for dialogue, I would like to say, although the quote sounds righteous and holy on the surface, when subjected to collaborative thought and context, it may not stand up as wisdom or even as truth.

Christ is the only one man enough to give grace to the grace killers. It’s called the incarnation.

A human man who gives grace to grace killers could well be called a coward. For example, if I am walking the streets of Nashville, and I see someone about to be murdered, I would be a coward if at that moment I extend grace to the killer. In this example, I’m talking only about a physical death.

Then why would I sit back and extend grace to a grace killer who is killing someone by spiritual death.

Which is more damaging? A physical murder or a spiritual murder.

The Reason For This Post

At the conclusion of my book Sex, Lies & Religion, I wrote this. (I have paraphrased it slightly for this post).

I hope this post will start conversations. We Americans generally stink at controversial discussions and the subject of the evangelical church is more than worthy of honest and open debate. Religion is at the heart of almost everything we do as human beings, and if it truly is the essence of existence, then it bears thoughtful and loving consideration among those of us who call ourselves spiritual.

Some people will undoubtedly find portions of this post shocking. Others will think it is tame. It is in no way intended to be a theological treatise. My wish is that it will cause all of us to examine closely our personal longings, our churches, our relationships and our sufferings. Perhaps it’s time to utilize the Bible as our church manual. And for those aspects where it is silent, we should then depend on an open dialogue with those we trust. My candid conversations with artists I mentor, my own suffering, and the inordinate amount of dysfunction in our churches provide me the incentive to write this post. I watch as throngs leave the evangelical church because of disillusionment, burnout and heartbreak.

Throughout my life, I have seen the church provide judgment instead of grace in almost every situation.

I can’t help but think that if the church really believed our misplaced religious longings were an indication of a desperate search for God and the original experiences of the Bible, many of us would find redemption instead of condemnation.

If you get nothing else from this post, know that it is about redemption. I suppose you could even say it is controversially redemptive. I have realized through the years that it takes shaking up the status quo to get anything accomplished. So be it.

Respectfully, from someone who bears the stripes of grace killers…and thankfully has lived to write about it.

What do you think?



No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

When tribes of people (i.e. churches) neglect to incorporate essential words, they lose a vital part of who they were created to be.  It could be termed as a “censorship of essence.”

Here are seven words that I feel the church has somehow lost.

1. Imagination – “Routine dulls our perceptions. Anxiety makes us listless. Life becomes mundane and time hastens by. But imagination gives us breathtaking wonder.

Renowned physicist Albert Einstein once said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.’ Our imaginations should not be bound by time and space.

In today’s world of quick-fixes, ‘seven steps to this and five steps to that’ thinking, imagination has gone hungry, gone wanting; been stepped out, educated out, spanked out, and churched out—of our vocabulary.

But look deep inside your mind. Emerson comments, ‘If we can touch the imagination, we serve others…’, not if we touch ‘their’ imagination, but if we touch ‘the’ imagination. God didn’t make the imagination some small, human thing. It is larger than any single person, indeed, larger than any church. Without imagination, there is no understanding. But with it, there is every possibility we can imagine and more.

It is power. It is potential. It is transcendent. It is wonder. It is replete with unexpected gifts. Unless we use our imagination, we are not fully alive. Wendell Berrysays it this way: ‘The imagination is our way into the divine Imagination, permitting us to see wholly—as whole and holy—what we perceive to be scattered, as order what we perceive as random.’ Imagine the possibilities if we expanded the power of our imagination as a bridge to a deeper and exciting relationship with God.”

-paraphrased from p. 59 & 60 of  Sex, Lies & Religion

2. Pleasure – We are hot-wired for pleasure. In essence, we all crave sensual activities that cause enjoyment. The following description of pleasure comes from C.S. Lewis’s book The Screwtape Letters which contains musings of a fictional elder demon teaching a younger, less experienced demon:

‘Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An everincreasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula….To get the man’s soul and give nothing in return—that is what really gladdens our Father’s heart.’

I love Eric Liddel’s quote in the film Chariots of Fire, “I must run, because when I run, I feel God’s pleasure.” When do you feel God’s pleasure?

3. Creativity – One of the greatest descriptions of creativity comes from author Madeline L’Engle, “your intuition and your intellect working together . . . making love.”

Creatives are fleeing the church (and the United States) by the millions. Read Richard Florida’s eye-opening book, The Flight of the Creative Class. Creatives feel caught in a nether world, lost somewhere between the church and the world. A church leader once told me, “Don’t use the words experience or intuition, Randy, those words don’t belong in the church. Give me something solid. Something black and white, something scientific.”

Our seminary trained leaders have been taught systematic theology which methodically strips away the layers of art until the black and white, scientific truth is revealed. And, voilà!, the church has rendered scripture into a set of orderly, step-by-step principles and propositions organized by topic.

The creativity of the Bible is lost.

We have lost the knowledge that the Bible is a book of art. Eugene Peterson says, “More than half our scripture was written by poets”. Tim Downs writes, “Is it an accident that Psalm 23 is a poem and not a set of propositions? Is it an accident that almost 80 percent of the words on the Sermon on the Mount have only one syllable? Is it an accident that the average adult knows almost nothing about Jesus but can remember at least one of his parables?”

Whenever we have something to say, creativity asks how do we say it. The church has the greatest story ever told, but she has lost the creativity to tell it.

4. Sensuality – God placed one of the most sensual books ever written and made it the centerfold of the Bible. It is called The Song of Songs. If you think sensuality does not have a place in the church, you should take time to honestly read this book.

I will never forget a very obese pastor bragging about strongly confronting a trembling tiny female volunteer who led the dance ministry at his church. She had made the unthinkable mistake of designing ivory costumes that were opaque – but looked transparent. He proudly recounted forbidding them to perform the dance they had created and rehearsed for the service until they awkwardly donned baptismal robes to wear over their sensual costumes.

Who created us as sensual beings? A sensual God sent his Son to earth to redeem not only our soul, but also our bodies – our senses. Why? As St. Athanasius wrote in the 4th century, ““God chose to humbly ‘meet us where we look for Him most, and that is in our sensuality.’”

————————————–

Since this essay has grown so large, I have decided to write about the remaining three words in my next post.

What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree?

When was the last time you heard a sermon title with any of these words?

What other words have we lost as a church?

Join the conversation.

By the way, here are the other three words.

5. Freedom
6. Beauty
7. Relationship

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Dear Church,

You have not loved me well. In fact, throughout our time together, I’ve felt used and abused. You use my talents to get people in the seats, but then you twist and “spin” the art I create for propaganda. You abuse by using me without any conscience whatever – for you tell me, “the end justifies the means.”

You have built a great wall between the sacred and the secular. Delineating worlds that were never meant to be separated. You have created a gray vacuum, a netherworld in between, and so I am homeless. I feel hopelessly rejected by both the church and the world. In fact, my entire life has been misjudged by parents, friends, teachers – and now you. Of all the places I thought I would surely find grace and acceptance, it was with you. But, you have not loved me well.

You value cloning, not originality. You value imitation, not creativity. You value programs, not people. You value the destination, not the journey. You value the story, not the telling.

Do you think I’m stupid? I’ll admit to being quirky, absent-minded, undisciplined, moody, depressed, to name only a few. But I’m not stupid. When I question, with an artists mind, the literal truth of the Bible, and you tell me I am not allowed to do so. Suddenly, I feel as if I’m in some sort of evangelical cult. So, if we are supposed to believe the Bible literally, then why aren’t we baptizing for the dead? Maybe that’s why the artist Madeline L’Engle said, “I believe the Bible is true, but I don’t believe it’s literal.” This coming from a Christian artist who was condemned by the fundamentalist church in the 60′s for writing science fiction.

And why do I meet so many disillusioned artists who have left you? They haven’t left their “first love”, they have just quietly left an illegitimate lover who uses and abuses them. The ominous number of artists without a church home is an ever-growing indictment against the church. As Cyril of Jerusalem was once said to have exclaimed, “The church is a whore, but she’s still my Mother”.

Thankfully, I’m finally beginning to understand that when I try to group the church and God together as one and the same – I get in trouble. God is perfect and the church is not. The church is composed of imperfect people. They are two totally different things. Apples and oranges.

And maybe I’m an idealist – I am an artist, you see. For over forty years, I have been continually disappointed by the church. But she’s still my mother. She has taught me scripture, bible stories, and songs. She has formed in me a foundation and belief system for truth. And despite the control she continually tries to exert over me, ironically, it is the very truth she has taught that has set me free. And for that, I’m thankful.

Randy

P.S. If you like my writing here at RandyElrod.com, you will love THIS.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.