A Lament for the American Church (or how I’m processing my codependent relationship with the church)

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by Jonathan

I love the church, and I have loved the church for a long time.

I’ve led worship 600+ times in local congregations. I’ve preached dozens of times across several countries. I served as an overseas missionary in Southeast Asia for 8 years. I’ve been in “church work” in one capacity or another for over 20 years.

In fact, I still serve with a church planting mission organization, providing pastoral care and coaching to missionaries around the world. My day job is walking alongside of hurting people who also love (and are serving) the global church.

I still love the church, but I’ve got a problem.

Watching the American evangelical church for the last several years has been devastatingly hard. Initially, I watched as a sort of outsider, living and ministering in a developing country that had a proud and boisterous autocrat as a leader. And now since COVID led to an early repatriation in March of 2020, I’ve watched from a more comfortable spot in the rural Midwest.

Has it been devastating for you too? Have you grieved at how some elements of the American church have responded to racial issues, to politics, to the Capitol siege, to the ongoing global pandemic that’s killed over 660,000 people in our country alone? Have you lost friends and maybe even family?

During all of this, I’ve desperately wanted to change the church. I’ve shared articles and written Facebook posts trying to convince people to behave differently, to care differently, to love differently.

I’ve needed the church to behave differently so that I would be ok, so that I wouldn’t be embarrassed, or ashamed, or angry. As it turns out, that’s not very loving or healthy.

I’m beginning to realize that there’s a difference between loving the church and being enmeshed with it. There’s a difference between being grieved at her sins and being so emotionally devastated by her sins that I want to scream at people. One is healthy and vital, while the other is evidence of codependency.

Definitions & Caveats

Codependency is “excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner, typically one who requires support on account of an illness or addiction.”[1]

In unhealthy systems like this, talking about things openly and honestly can get complicated; silence is of paramount importance, and silence helps to maintain the status quo. One writer described it this way:

“One fairly common denominator seemed to be the unwritten, silent rules that usually develop in the immediate family and set the pace for relationships. These rules prohibit discussion about problems.”[2]

I have felt this. I have felt the urge to sit down, to shut up, to stay silent. But I can’t anymore.

The real-world impact of codependency is complex, but at least in part, a codependent person will seek to control the ill person (or addict) so that the codependent will remain psychologically intact.

This was me. And it’s made me bone-weary.

My identity was so wrapped up in the church that a threat to the church (even if it was from inside the church) felt like a direct threat to my core self. I don’t want to live that way anymore.

Is the American church a functioning alcoholic, drunk on power and patriarchy? Yes, some of it is. But “the church” is a pretty large entity to lump together in an accusation like that. So please hear me when I say this: there are parts of the American evangelical church that really are sick. Those parts need to be honestly assessed and truthfully addressed. But that doesn’t mean it all needs to be burned to the ground.

Eugene Peterson spoke plainly about the tensions of living in (and serving) a community of believers. It was not all rosy. But even while admitting the challenges, he wrote, “I have little time for the anti-church crowd who seem snobbish and who have little sense of the lived way of soul and Christ.”[3]

C.S. Lewis would have agreed, I think. A generation before Peterson, Lewis wrote this in a letter to a friend: “The New Testament does not envisage solitary religion. Some (like you – and me) find it more natural to approach God in solitude; but we must go to Church as well.”[4]

I can’t “do faith” on my own. I’ve gained so much from my involvement in local churches. It has been good for me, spiritually, emotionally, and even psychologically. My family has found a local body of believers in our new town in the Midwest, and we are jumping in to community and fellowship.

I am not anti-church, but I am anti-pretend, and I can’t act like things are OK in the American church.

I resonate deeply with Beattie when she writes, “[C]odependency is called a disease because it is progressive. As the people around us become sicker, we may begin to react more intensely.”[5]

Is that what’s happening to me? To us? Have we been in a codependent relationship with the church? Is this why now, as her behavior appears to become sicker and sicker, so many of us are reacting more and more intensely, getting either angrier or else just running away? I think so.

Churches Love Codependents

Codependents make great church members. They’re sacrificial. They’ll do anything. They’ll go anywhere. And they’ll defend the leaders and the system if they have to. They care a LOT about the church.

Many church-growth strategies look like a playbook for making people codependent. Encourage strong identification with a specific church/leader/group. Call it branding. Teach a lot about the uniqueness of this church and church culture. Create a very strong “us vs. them” motif. Emphasize teachings on authority and respecting spiritual leadership/headship. And if our “family” is ever in crisis, circle the wagons. And God forbid, but if anyone from without or within criticizes the church, take it personally, react vehemently, and DEFEND.

As it does in the world of codependency and addiction, these strategies quickly lead to a persecution complex, and American evangelicals thrive on a persecution complex.

Local Church, Hope of the World?

The now-disgraced pastor and author Bill Hybels used to say regularly, “The local church is the hope of the world.” I used to quote that statement regularly. But you know what? I’ve learned it’s not true. In fact, that message causes a slow but steady trend towards deep dysfunction: Hide flaws. Silence survivors. Conceal abusers (or transfer them somewhere else). Don’t let those on the outside see reality.

Codependents always protect the addict.

But protecting the reputation of the church is a fool’s errand, and it typically ends up meaning, “We need to protect the reputation of our leaders.” If the leader is leading the church that is the hope of the world, or at least the city, then we must protect him, along with the system he leads.

And if a narcissistic politician promises to protect our churches and our “Christian rights,” then we must protect him, too, and hold him above reproach. This is so wrong and harmful for our nation, but we learned it in our churches first.

To put it more bluntly, if the local church is the hope of the world, then the leader of the local church is the hope of the world too. Chuck DeGroat, clinician and pastor, writes about narcissistic church leaders. These leaders are more than happy to be seen as the hope of the world. He writes, “The grandiosity, entitlement, and absence of empathy characteristic of narcissistic personality disorder was translated into the profile of a good leader.” In these systems, “Loyalty to the narcissistic leader and the system’s perpetuation is demanded.”[6]

This is not healthy.

Next Steps

The last few years have revealed some of the addictions and illnesses of the evangelical church: patriarchy, white nationalism, a fervent and enduring embrace of narcissistic, abusive leaders, and a disregard for the truth.

During all of that, we were also taught to love the church. And we did.

I did.

What many of us learned, though, was that we needed to love the church as the prime thing. Nobody said it, but I think we gained more identity from our churches than we did from our Christ.

We desperately need to work on de-centering the church (and politics) and re-centering the Christ, the hope of the world. Karen Swallow Prior recently wrote about this in her article titled, “With this much rot, there’s no choice but to deconstruct.” She says,

“We must make Jesus the head of his bride again. We can no longer put the church — its name, its reputation, its money, its salaries, its staff, its programs, its numbers — before Christ himself.”[7]

Enmeshing ourselves with charismatic Christian (or political) leaders is tempting. It helps us feel like we belong and like we’re on the inside. But if our core identities hinge on our churches or our political parties, we have erred terribly.

The Church Called TOV

This article is not a book review. However, I believe a truthful review of Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer’s book, A Church Called TOV, would be this simple: A Church Called TOV is a textbook for walking out of religious codependency.

It’s that good.

The authors compare unhealthy, dysfunctional dynamics, with gentle, Christ-honoring pathways forward. Here are the main ideas:

Conclusion

I don’t want to love the church in a codependent way anymore. I will still love her, but I don’t want to be enmeshed with her, where her good (or bad) behavior alters my own sense of self.

I want to nurture empathy and grace. I want to put people first and tell the truth. I want to pursue justice and honor humble service. I want to grow into Christlikeness.

I will continue to be a part of my local church, but I don’t want my core identity to come from her. It can’t. I can’t be enmeshed any longer with the American evangelical complex.

The local church (even a great one) is not the hope of the world.

Jesus Christ is the hope of the world.

Amen.

Come, Lord Jesus.

A Lament for the Church: a prayer of letting go

The path to healing from codependency often involves an emotional detaching. That does not mean you care less for the person from whom you’re detaching. It just means you are detaching from “the agony of involvement.”[8]

This lament, patterned after the material in Mark Vroegops’ book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, is my attempt not to care less, but to care healthier.

God of the Church, the one who sees the end from the beginning, hear my cry to you today. You established the heavens above and the Church below, and one day you will invite your Bride, your people, to feast with you in the New City, the golden city of God.

But here and now, O God, your Bride seems sullied. More to the point, your Bride seems to be chasing after the wind, pining away for other lovers who promise power and a seat at the table. Your people are damaging people. They have turned on the least of these, preferring instead to join in with mockers, to stand with sinners.

You will not be mocked, and you will not endure their sins forever. So do something! Stop this madness! Bring light back to our eyes. Make compassion great again! Do not stop your ear to the cry of your people. No! Listen to their fawning over false prophets, see their bowing before every lying hashtag and would-be tyrant. Open their eyes and break their hearts!

You alone know, O God, the depths of the deceit, and the depths of your love. I yield the floor, trusting that this is your case to make, and believing that you will. Your ways are too complex and masterful for me to comprehend, so I yield.

I trust you to figure this out and respond appropriately.

And I rest in your promises to forgive me too.

Amen.

[1] Oxford English Dictionary

[2] Codependent No More, by Melody Beattie

[3] As quoted in the book, A Burning in My Bones, by Winn Collier

[4] The Quotable Lewis, by Martindale and Root

[5] Codependent No More

[6] When Narcissism Comes to Church, by Chuck DeGroat

[7] https://religionnews.com/2021/08/04/with-this-much-rot-theres-no-choice-but-to-deconstruct/

[8] Codependent No More

I deleted Facebook. Sort of.

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by Jonathan

I just couldn’t do it any longer. I couldn’t maintain an awareness of what hundreds of people are up to on the daily, and then meet with clients on the daily too.

I’m hoping it’ll mean I have more energy for correspondence, for conversation.

What a struggle! There is such a conflict between wanting to be “where the people are” and wanting to stay sane. I’ve made the argument. But when being “where the people are” means dying a little on the inside every day, what do you?

For me, I’m afraid that online engagement was making me like people less and less. It was also, over time, making me think less, read less, enjoy life less.

I’m not afraid of a good disagreement or a feisty discussion, but it’s just gotten to be too much for me psychologically, emotionally, and even spiritually.

There have always been people with whom we disagree. Even vehemently. But in times past, you interacted with those folks sparingly, and even if you interacted with them daily, you interacted with them in geographically confined spaces (e.g., the workplace). But now, we carry those people with us in our pockets. All of them.

Hundreds of folks go to the bathroom with us, spouting their opinions. They lay in bed with us, making sure we read their opinions right before we fall asleep. And we all know they’re going to be there, staring us in the eyeball the second we wake up. I don’t think I can take it anymore.

I wrestled with deactivating Facebook. I have a bunch of Facebook videos embedded on this blog and other places around the internet, and I’d like those to stay working. So I just changed my password to a random new one that I won’t remember. If need be, I’m sure I can “recover” my password and log back in. But it wouldn’t be a spur of the moment thing.

We’ll see how this goes…

all for ONE,

Jonathan T.

unamerican?

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by Jonathan

Is it un-American to critique parts of our heritage and certain elements of our country’s founding?

Is it un-Patriotic to peacefully protest against perceived deficits in our application of justice (and mercy)?

Or are those things de facto BAD, evidence that you hate America and everything she stands for?

Was it un-Hebrew for the prophets of old to call out religious rot among their own people?

Was Paul a traitor when he shined a light on the wide open gates that led into the Kingdom?

Was Christ un-Christlike when he forcefully admonished churches for forgetting their first love, for sliding into comfortable, pleasurable idolatry?

I’ve been wrestling for a while now with this dissonance: American Christians, with a rich Scriptural record that’s so full of self-assessment, of national critique, of an obvious willingness to hold national (and ecclesial) leaders up to judgment, seem at times the most allergic to the same. Why is that?

Democracy needs healthy debate, to be sure. But what I see over and over is the inability to hold any critique for any length of time without devolving to name-calling, crap-slinging, contempt, which is not love.

But what if we loved?What if we disagreed vehemently with grace? What would that even look like?

Is it possible for someone to critique the church with love? Or will the church crucify them?

Is it possible for someone to critique the Republicans with love? Or will the Right destroy them?Is it possible for someone to critique the Democrats with love? Or will the Left annihilate them?

The Gospel is counter-cultural in every culture. I learned that during our eight years in Cambodia. I’m learning it still.

If you’re a follower of Jesus, would you join me in inviting Christ to reveal to us the parts of our ethnic, religious, and national culture, that are good and wonderful and Christlike? And would you consider inviting Christ to reveal to us the parts that are not so good, and in fact are maybe evil?

Let us love one another.

I Was Stuck in the Past. Counseling Couldn’t Help Me.

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by Elizabeth

Re-entry is messy. So messy, in fact, that much of what transpired in my life in the last year did not end up here on the blog. I was in emotional and situational chaos, and I had absolutely zero mental margin to publish – or even process – what was happening to me.

I think that’s as it should be. Not every difficult thing that happened in Cambodia was meant for public consumption either. And I’m not sure the value of platforming topics when they’re as raw as they were this last year and a half.

But I can tell you that in the middle of this mess of mine, I was meeting with a counselor. I’ve been raving about the benefits of counseling ever since 2006 when I first met with a Christian counselor. Over the years I’ve met with counselors off and on, whenever issues in my life popped up and kept me from functioning (the most recent being in early 2019 when my life was so rudely interrupted by anxiety and OCD). So, over the past year during our tumultuous repatriation, I thought I was doing the right thing by talking to a counselor.

Except I wasn’t getting anywhere.

On some level, I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere. Processing the past wasn’t helping me to accept my present circumstances the way it had helped me before, and it wasn’t helping me to move forward in life either. It seemed like nothing was helping. But the only construct I had for getting better (or “bettering,” as my friend Amy Young likes to call it) was Christian counseling, so I kept at it.

In February, fueled by a historic midwestern snow and ice storm, my spirits hit an all-time low. I knew I needed more help than I was currently getting, so I reached out to someone for debriefing. She’d been highly recommended to me by others. Meeting with her was helpful, and after a few sessions, I thought I was stable enough to make it to our formal week-long debrief in August.

I was much more forward-facing by that time, and even my debriefer noticed it. I still had questions about how in the world I was going to thrive in America, but she assured me that the week-long debriefing would help me move forward – and that if I still needed help figuring out the future after the big debrief, I should come and see her again. (I’ve been told that one of the purposes of “debriefing” is to move the past into the past so that you can walk forward into the future.)

Soon after I debriefed with her, my agency suggested Christian coaching as a way to get “unstuck” and move forward in life. It sounded intriguing. I’d never done coaching before, and in fact, I’d never been drawn to the idea. I’d always figured that when my emotions were a mess, I needed a treatment that addressed the emotions. But since counseling wasn’t currently working, I thought I could at least try the coaching.

I’m glad I did. Coaching is the reason I started writing again (I have several more blog posts in the works). It’s the reason I finally created a webpage for my freelance editing. It’s the reason I started working on a few other background projects. It’s the reason I started dreaming about the future again and the reason I’m living in the present instead of the past. I just didn’t have enough motivation for any of these things before coaching.

During the sessions my coach asks a lot of targeted questions, and I really have to think through my problems and the possible solutions to those problems. It’s hard work, and it’s practical (though come to think of it, the last time I sought counseling in Cambodia, my sessions were highly practical, immediately applicable, and pulled me out of my head, where I’d been stuck for the previous six months).

It’s also comforting not to have to figure out the past, at least for now. Perhaps I was trying too hard to process my past. Perhaps I needed to stop looking in the rearview mirror. Perhaps I needed to, along with Paul, forget what is behind and strain towards what is ahead. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a huge proponent of counseling. It’s helped me so much in the past. It’s just that in my particular circumstances this year, I’m beginning to think I needed something else.

I’m not done with the coaching process, so I’m sure I have a lot more learning and growing to do. For instance, I’m still figuring out how to live in the tension of unsolved problems. I can, however, attest to its efficacy in moving me out of a very stuck place. I’m curious if any of you have ever been helped by either coaching or counseling — or some other avenue — and which life circumstances were particularly suited for the varying helping professions.

We Went to Church

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by Elizabeth

Jonathan knew the first time he walked through those doors. When he saw flags from all around the world hanging up in the foyer – including the Cambodian flag — he knew he’d come home.

I wasn’t so sure. In theory, I knew this church could be a good fit for us. But I didn’t really want to be here. I didn’t want to be at an American church. My heart was still back home in Cambodia, worshipping with people from 40 nations.

At that point we’d been out of church for over a year, waiting out this interminably long covid season. We’d had our vaccines, but our children hadn’t yet had theirs. We brought them to church once and then decided to leave them at home until they could achieve full vaccination status right along with us.

But it feels strange not to attend church as a family, so over the next few months we were in and out of services. It was just as well, though, because I had a lot of unfinished emotional and spiritual business to take care of.

Just last night I was telling the kids about Jeremiah 29. Not the overused verses 11 through 13 promising only good things to the Lord’s people, but the less familiar ones from just a bit earlier, in verses 5 through 7. The ones about building houses and settling down, the ones about planting gardens and eating what they produce, the ones about seeking the peace and prosperity of the city into which we have been carried.

I told my family I was ready to follow the instructions in Jeremiah 29, that I felt like I finally was following them. We’d settled into a house and made it a home. We’d planted gardens and even eaten a bit of what they’d produced. It was time to seek the peace and prosperity of the city.

This morning we walked all over the church campus, dropping children off at their various Sunday school classes. We found one for ourselves, too — one recommended by a friend. And as I sat there listening to the teacher talk about his heart for God and his heart for the world and about some of his church background and about some of the authors he’s read, I closed my eyes to blink back the tears.

I knew I had come Home.

It was the same feeling I’d had the first Sunday I walked into our international church in Cambodia and cried through the whole service. I knew I’d come home that day, and today I experienced the feeling again.

Mysteriously, both today’s Bible class and today’s sermon touched on Jeremiah 29, the earlier verses. They were written to a people in exile, a people separated from the land they’d been given. Missionaries often feel like exiles. We leave our passport countries to sail into the unknown. We don’t quite fit in our host countries, but we no longer fit in our first homes either. In time we settle into our secondary homes, but we must one day leave those too. In some way or another, we always feel like exiles.

You don’t have to be a missionary to feel like an exile, of course. We are all exiles in Babylon. None of us really belongs here, no matter which city each of us lives in. We belong to a different country, a better country. But sometimes when we’re with other citizens of that country, we can get a taste of home. This morning reminded me that I don’t have to be with citizens of a couple dozen earthly countries to feel like I’ve come home – although it was wonderful to live that reality for eight years.

All I have to do is find citizens of the Other country to which we all belong.