An Unforesee Opportunity to Reconsider

I ran into Frank's senior pastor, Brian last night at a mutual friend's birthday party. I knew it was inevitable that we would talk because if I was to converse with anyone there it would end up being him. When he made it over to where Frank and I were sitting, I tried to play it cool as the resentment that had boiled up over the past five years after we read Chesterdon's Orthodoxy together only a few months after I graduated from Bible College was simmering just beneath the surface. At the time, I was at the height to my resentment towards Christianity and his arguments and, what I saw as, his blatant compromises made him embody everything I hated about the American Evangelical church. It was after those meetings, as I watched his ministry prosper that that I truly began to despite the man.

With Frank on staff, I got weekly intel reports on their plans to increase attendance and construct a sprawling complex by seemingly any means necessary--mass mailings, cleaver sermon titles, children's crusades, leadership conferences and copious amounts of well orchestrated Top 40 hits literally enhanced with smoke and mirrors. At the center of this storm, or more accurately, the one stirring the winds that drove the behemoth forward was a man who I had believed saw the world in a similar light as me and yet was able to play the game--I saw he was a traitor to our personality's intuitive legacy. Yet his efforts did not go unrewarded, as Frank proclaimed to me one morning, "we are now considered an emerging megachurch," and in keeping with that ecclesiastical tradition, Brian secured a book deal to cement his status as pastorpreneur. I mostly resented the latter. His ever increasing numbers would prove to be the ultimate undoing of the church as Christ's law of small numbers proclaims, 'narrow is the path and few there be who find it.' But as for the book deal, I felt that he was over stepping his bounds. Books were reserved for those who spend their life in quiet contemplation not churning out pop-spirituality intended for an audience with the attention span of a kindergarten class.

Now of course Brian took the time to send me a copy of his book when it first came out. He made sure to attach a little note thanking me for our past intellectual engagements. I only finished the first sentence before I threw it down in disgust. It read, "the year before I graduated seminary, I lost my faith in God." The man who had enjoyed so much success as a pragmatic leader, willing to resort to pop culture and production gimmicks was now trying to play the intellectual angst card. As I recall, his lost of faith lasted less than a year and then he went onto ministry. I too lost my faith in God a year before I graduated Bible College--it has been seven years since I've been back. By comparison, Brian's faith crisis amounted to no more than pre-wedding jitters whereas mine was an absolute divorce complete with the wrangling over what was His and what was truly mine. Yet Brian can boldly write on how 'to hang on when you can't see His plan.' In my mind, if you're holding on, you're holding onto something and that was much more than I had to put my hands around.

Enough of my 2 Corinthians 11 defense. Our conversation started out superficially and I totally intended it to remain that way but when he started asking questions about my life, I could not lie. I wanted to play it cool, but I am just not at the place where I can put up a front; I don't think I have ever been there. I told him straight away that I thought I was at a crossroads regarding Christianity; I just figured I'd put it out there and if he responded with some trite advice that insulted the depth of my struggle then I'd open the flood gates of my indignation--what was he to me that I should be concerned about his opinion. But he didn't and I wished he had. What he proceeded to do was anticipate my thoughts and articulate my struggle in a way that only a fellow sojourner could. I loathe sounding like a school girl after her first kiss but I must confess that his words penetrated me.

I am not sure if he is aware of how many times I have burned his image in my mind as an effigy to the type of superficial Christianity I hate or that after receiving his book that I started my own work as an ode to my hatred of his ministry style, if not, he unknowingly touched on all of these topics forcing me to reevaluate my opinion of him. Not to blame Frank, but I think that what I was getting was an extroverted sensor's account of an introverted intuit's actions and because of it, I incorrectly judged his thoughts and motivations. The one characteristic of our personality that will always be a burden is that people do not understand all the thought and intentionality that goes into our actions. They may look the same from the outside but the path that brought us to those places was long, winding and full of many detours. I recall a person asking if I was an atheist, before I answered I wanted to put my response in context so that she would not classify me as a simply another God-hater, there was a tremendous amount of thought, experience and anguish that went into my conclusions about God and I wanted to her appreciate that. Ironically, by wrongly judging Brian I have subjecting one of my own to the same sort of misconceptions that dogs me everyday.

This is in no way an endorsement of his ministry practice or philosophy but it is an admission that in my arrogance I ignored his authenticity I violated one of my core tenets--to avoid judging others' actions without first investigating the person. Although I believe my seven year hiatus brings with it more complications than Brian's shorter departure, the essence of the experience may be very similar thus providing me a with possible roadmap out of this maze of malaise.