My church deconstruction is ending

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A few weeks ago, I began to realize that the season of deconstruction I have been in for 20 months was coming to an end. I believed, incorrectly, that it had come to an end back in March. Then the church we had been at for 10 years imploded.

Most of my writing this year has been an attempt to process the journey. More recently, I’ve been searching for the words to explain how I knew that I was in this final chapter. I can’t speak for everyone who is deconstructing —that’s a massive group of people— but I know that the process can leave some feeling like they are stuck in a rut. I wish I could say there was a single moment that informed me this season was coming to an end, but there wasn’t one.

It was more like a slow moving toward a light at the end of a tunnel. I discovered useful language to understand the people and problems that I and so many other followers of Christ were intentionally and unintentionally harmed by. I talked with and listened to some experts, and read even more. I found thriving beauty in other traditions within the Church. I sat in all the terrible things that were said to me or falsely said about me, the shocking threats that sometimes accompanied them, and your own stories and asked: why? What really sped things up though was finding a new church home. It’s been like a hospital for me.

Together, all of it was eventually enough. Pain turned into confusion, confusion descended into grief, grief led to writing, and writing brought me to all of you and your stories, many similar to my own. Many of us left broken places for exploration, and exploration gave way to some healing and freedom. Now, for me at least, there is mostly just a peaceful stillness.

Looking back, there wasn’t a single moment that triggered my deconstruction. It was many small problems and abuses that built up into bigger ones over time. I’ve written about some of this before, so I won’t rehash it here.

Within the context of the mass destruction underway in American evangelicalism, parts of my story are unremarkable, shared by many. Other chapters are downright bizarre. Still, I am grateful for these lessons that I learned or came to better understand along the way.

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Jesus and the Church are awesome, even when the local church is not.

Deconstruction was forced upon me by the broken church culture I found myself in, the hollow theology and brittle system of cultural beliefs behind it, and certain people who claimed Jesus while attacking others in his name. It’s not something I sought out. As Karen Swallow Prior recently wrote:

“With this much rot, there’s no choice but to deconstruct…
Abuse. Cover-up of abuse. Racial strife. Lack of integrity. Membership declines. Partisan divisions. And divisions over disagreements about how extensive these divisions are. An abusive leader in this corner. A negligent board over here…And the wounded piled up everywhere like debris on the lawn.”

I couldn’t summarize my own experience so well even if I wanted too. I entered deconstruction rooted in my faith, because of my faith. It was faith that informed me something wasn’t right.

It’s only when I began to examine the broken church culture around me more deeply that I started to see the light of Jesus elsewhere. He appeared with renewed urgency in the conversations I had, the books I read, and the new faces that began to cross my path. I saw Jesus in people who quietly offered a helping hand to the struggling and in the righteous anger at those who have caused great harm in his name. He came alive in Scripture, jumping out of obscure passages I had glossed over for years.

Again, I can’t speak for everyone who is deconstructing, but I know that for many the process is often anxiety-inducing. For me, it was mostly the opposite. I found the relief and rest Jesus promises (Matthew 11:28–30) early on. (I don’t say this to discredit the much more difficult journeys others find themselves on. I am simply explaining my experience.)

Jesus would have been more than enough, but it wasn’t all. Far from it. Over the course of this year, over 900 of you from across the United States — more than a few of you being pastors and lay leaders — shared your own stories of evangelical abuse and deconstruction with me. While I couldn’t respond to all of you, I read each and every one of your messages. Many came with wisdom and insight. Not a single one of you wanted what was forced upon you. Each of your stories pushed me to ask more questions concerning why American evangelicalism is so broken.

Simply put, the Church reminded me of what it is supposed to be through action: Christ-centered, truth-seeking, and neighbor-loving. It was real. It was honest. It was refreshing. It was useful and full of purpose. It was much closer to the way things ought to be than the way they were.

Close proximity to others who don’t think, look, or believe exactly as you do should be a central tenant of the Christian faith.

All of us are in cultural bubbles we are not fully aware of. Many white American evangelicals especially seem to be trapped fully, unknowingly in this reality, as they are part of a system that actively discourages listening, dialogue, and bridge-building. Protecting their bubbles and preventing any change, including good change, is increasingly the core motivation in this subculture

Thankfully, I am blessed to have friends and connections who don’t think, look, or believe exactly as I do. Some of them are Christians, others are not. I have a wider perspective because they are such a big part of my life. Over the years, they have all helped me realize that understanding motivations is as important as what a person does with them. When we do that, the processes of listening, understanding, and moving on becomes much easier, because forgiveness becomes easier.

Over the past several months, I’ve been able to forgive a lot of people that I could easily stay angry at. People who judged us for not desiring to send our kids to private white evangelical schools that we couldn’t afford even if we wanted to. People who suggested I was going to hell because I didn’t commit idolatry to Donald Trump and the Republican Party. People who tried to gaslight me into believing I was a failure in my marriage, work, and life as a tool to avoid examining their own severe shortcomings that were harming others. And so much more.

I don’t agree with the place that their judgement, gossip, and abuse comes from, but I was eventually able to understand it by seeing where their motivations lie. And forgiveness came with the added benefit of informing me that I needed to move on. I’m not sure I would have been able to do either without a diverse group of friends, a loving family, and a patient Jesus.

This lesson wasn’t something I recently learned, but one that I found yet another unexpected benefit from. It came through a lot of conversations and listening, none of which should have surprised me. Scripture is clear that followers of Jesus should find themselves in diverse places, both in the Church (Colossians 3:11, James 2:1–26, Revelation 7:9–10) and out in the world (Acts 17, 1 Corinthians 9:19–23). The benefits of doing so —both for ourselves and our neighbors— are abundant. The drawbacks of not doing so are readily apparent, with the increasingly nihilistic state of white American evangelicalism being just one obvious example.

Ultimately, I learned that the church we were at was the one place in my life in which there was too little diversity in just about every way imaginable. What little diversity there was had been shrinking over the years as younger generations, people who weren’t politically conservative, and others who were being prevented from loving their neighbors had slowly left. The church we had joined a decade ago looked a lot different by the time we departed, even though it also lacked some diversity back then, too.

Reconnecting with some of those people who left years before us has been especially instructive. This reality had been staring me in the face over the past few years and I failed to see it. Maybe I didn’t want to see it, but once I finally started connecting the dots, it became impossible to unsee.

Gatekeeping and leadership aren’t the same thing.

I heavily alluded to this in my last piece, but the conflation of gatekeeping with leadership in American evangelicalism has generated some really crappy results. I’ve seen very little actual leadership in American evangelicalism; however, there are many gatekeepers willing to abuse the people beneath them for all kinds of cultural reasons.

It only takes a single bad pastor or a few elders who are committing idolatry to the institution they work in, hierarchy, individualism, and gender roles to rip a church apart. When a person’s entire belief system is built on these things over and above Jesus —even if they insist it is not— it’s only a matter of time before people get hurt and important opportunities to improve fall through the cracks.

In my experience, elders and other white evangelicals who have centered their belief system around these strict cultural practices do so out of fear. Fear of change. Fear of losing power. Fear of rocking the boat. Fear of the outside world. Fear that maybe their bubble isn’t as good as they believed it to be. Fear of so many things that we aren’t supposed to be afraid of (2 Timothy 1:6–7). And fear can easily lead to lashing out.

Many of you who told me your own stories made it clear that, while the more fundamentalist types of evangelicals hurt you, it was the defensive intransigence and angry incompetence of the more “moderate” leaders that drove you to deconstruction. Their refusal to even attempt to create better conditions for their own stated beliefs to thrive —without even changing those beliefs, be they problematic or not— frustrated you deeply. When you kept pushing for a healthier environment for all, an environment they themselves would benefit from, they spiritually abused and silenced you.

I experienced many of these realities from early 2019 up through earlier this year, too. The fundamentalists around me said some really ignorant and hurtful things, but it was the incompetence of self-described “centrists” and “moderates” and spiritual abuse by one of them that ultimately drove us away. They were gatekeeping, some of them haughty in their false belief that they had all the answers (Romans 12:16), rather than being open to trying to fix obvious problems with low-hanging solutions. But I digress, as I’ve written about some of this before.

I bring this up though because, between reading your experiences and reexamining my own, I’ve realized that I was asking the wrong question to try to understand what was happening. I was asking why are people behaving this way? instead of who is benefiting from this?

Asking the latter question led to some eye-popping answers. It is gatekeepers who benefit from environments like these. Real leaders, or just a normal person who wants to participate in their own community, are shut down. Some others may benefit for a time, until they have a problem or start asking questions. Then the gatekeepers will crush them, too.

There are plenty of good leadership models for churches and individuals to choose from, but gatekeeping isn’t one of them. If anyone gets to play the role of a gatekeeper, it is Jesus (John 14:1–7). This belief in action in much of white American evangelicalism that other individuals should usurp the role of Christ is a stunning betrayal of the Gospel itself.

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Making space for others to express doubt, ask questions, and overcome challenges are signs of a healthy faith community.

The inability to allow real space for doubt, questions, and efforts to overcome challenges is a tell-tale sign that a church is built on top of a consumer culture that has usurped Christ-centered discipleship. People are merely told what to do, are expected to do it, and then are made to feel like they are good and faithful Christians for following a strict set of rules.

At best, this leads to lukewarm faith. Terms like cultural Christianity, legalism, and Sunday morning-only Christians and their meanings can be applied here. Saying the “right things” and giving the appearance that you are living a certain lifestyle is more important than actually exhibiting Christ-like values, in public and in private. It’s a form of virtue signaling, something many white American evangelicals point out as a shortcoming in other people they disagree with as a means to discredit them.

At worst, such a consumer culture leads to all manner of abuse stemming from evangelical authoritarianism and fundamentalism. People who express doubts, concern, or empathy are punished. Problems are downplayed and swept under the rug, a vain attempt to keep up the appearance that all is well. New ideas are brushed off, and the people pushing for change are shunned and gossiped about by those who cling to the brittle structures of cultural Christianity. Abuse spreads as the guardrails of accountability collapse. And when one situation or person finally explodes, it sets off a chain reaction of other explosions.

A lot of churches may operate this way, but it doesn’t make it right, much less the only option. In reality, you don’t have to be certain about everything to follow Jesus and love your neighbors well. The best and most effective church leaders I know are those who listen and act on what they hear, walk alongside people, and share struggles they are having in their own journey (Titus 1:7, 1 Timothy 3). The ones who were abusive and incompetent weren’t capable of doing those things. Their arrogance led to an inability to self-reflect, which prevented them from making safe spaces for others to figure things out.

To be clear, I know some Christians, including evangelicals, who are genuinely confident in their faith, but that confidence stems from their knowing their own weaknesses and limitations. There’s a big difference between chest-thumping bravado and quiet confidence.

My two big takeaways from these realities are:

If someone tries to gaslight you into believing that you are not a Christian, that you’re a failure in some way that you are not, or that you’re less than them, you shouldn’t accept it (2 John 1:8–11). Gaslighting is a terrible tool used by scared people for their own benefit. Giving grace may be appropriate for a time (Galatians 6:1–5, Jude 1:3); however, the presence of grace does not cancel out the need for accountability and change (1 Corinthians 12:26). If real accountability structures don’t exist in your church, there will come a time when it may be best to leave.
If someone says their church has hurt them, believe them. Spiritual abuse is rampant today and often begins over non-important issues. Disturbingly, we’ve also seen an extended wave of physical and sexual abuse in churches. Just because someone says they’ve had a different experience than you doesn’t mean their experiences aren’t true (James 1:19). Listen to them. Support them. Help them.

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Closing Thoughts

This has not been an easy season, but it’s been a healthy trajectory. There’s a freedom that comes with a deeper understanding of the subculture you left behind, learning actual history, and being in a diverse faith community.

Still, I’d be lying if I claimed to be fully healed. I’ve only recently begun to understand that reconciliation with some people isn’t possible, at least any time soon. They believe inflicting damage on others is righteous, a logical extension of cultural white American evangelicalism. Among post-evangelical Christians, this experience of trying to find a path forward without closure is as common as it is difficult. But things are getting better. When I think back on those experiences now, it is with far less emotion or because I’ve read something helpful that brings clarity to the past.

Deconstruction means different things to different people. Those waters have been muddied further by the downplaying of abuse, misrepresentation of basic realities, and a severe lack of situational awareness inside of elite institutions such as The Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, and other evangelical gatekeeping outfits and individuals.

For me, deconstruction has been learning about what I was actually a part of and how to do better moving forward. I experienced an apocalypse in the biblical sense of the word: an unveiling of truth and reality concerning the brokenness of white American evangelical culture. It led me to the process of repentance in the biblical sense of the word: a changing of the mind and action (Acts 3:19–21, 26:20). And, ultimately, it did not lead me to losing my faith. Jesus was there —walking beside me— every step of the way. And when I least expected it, so was his diverse Church.

My faith grew stronger, richer, and deeper during this season, just like it has for many of you reading this. It’s a remarkable thing, isn’t it? We keep hearing evangelical gatekeepers decry deconstruction, claiming it is the road to the death of faith. Yet here we are, living proof that they are pushing a false binary in front of reality. Stories like our own, of which there are many, are routinely ignored by the gatekeepers. We don’t fit into the narrative they use to keep the jig going, so they pretend we do not exist. And it just isn’t possible to negotiate with people who behave this way.

This is why moving forward into next year, my writing will be focused a little less on critiquing American evangelicalism and geared more toward where we go from here. The need for faith in community is real. Many post-evangelical Christians sit beyond the boundaries of a local church, not because they want to, but because it is the only choice offered to them. Rejected by the local church for loving Jesus, desiring to love neighbors, and taking Scripture seriously, their anger and frustration is understandable.

But anger and frustration, even when righteous, can end up being cause for little more than inertia. Anger needs direction, and grief demands an explanation. This is the question I want to spend a little more time thinking and writing about next year: what comes next?

I don’t have all the answers and don’t pretend that I do. There are also a lot of people far smarter than me asking this same question. But I have some ideas based around the truth that American evangelicalism’s idolatry to its own culture should be replaced with the New Testament’s call to love God, serve others, and live in community. Thankfully, there are other traditions in the Christian faith that do those things well that we can learn from or join.

Perhaps, decades from now, many of us will look back on this time as not one of deconstruction, but the beginnings of a reformation.

What a time to be alive if that turns out to be true.

I explore faith and American church culture from Memphis, TN. Never miss an article by signing up for my free newsletter or becoming a member. You can also subscribe to my podcast.