Walking Through The Church Door

Recently, I joined a new church. It’s been hard. I have left the church my dad took me to as a young child, the one my Granny faithfully attended in addition to a random collection of mission halls. My earliest memory is sitting in the gallery looking down at her chatting with her friends in the back corner. I have her Bible. I am one of seven grandchildren listed in it, in order of our births. I am number six. She died when I was just eight. It’s the place where leaning over to see the pulpit, I fell and cut my lip on the pew in front. After my dad brought me home to patch me up and the bleeding had stopped, I insisted on going straight back in case I missed something!

I walked there alone as a teenager when my dad had stopped coming and my friends kept me connected, I sang in the praise group, I was married there, my four children were all baptised there. I managed the Créche for a while, I started a Sunday morning study group because I wanted a space and a time that worked better for women. The church has amazing cherry blossom that appears in late Spring, a fantastic modern extension which offers much potential for outreach, its pastoral care is exceptional and it is full of wonderful people. When those people asked me why I was leaving, I didn’t want to hurt any of them. I didn’t want to rock any boats. I wasn’t sure how much truth to tell. I knew one or two were taking it personally. My message changed about the new church as I gauged reactions “I feel called to grow elsewhere” became “as the crow flies, it’s closer to our house”.

It is hard to leave a church well. I am still getting my head round the savagery of moving on via a ‘disjunction certificate’. A wise person told me, “it would be easier if you’d fallen out with someone in the carpark, everyone would understand that”! I was warned that people would think I was aggrieved because I didn’t get elected as an elder. I guess if I’m honest, I was aggrieved - by the process not the outcome, disappointed that it became the unmentionable, at how I couldn’t shake off that sense of rejection. I am after all, only human. I also became so acutely aware of how, for many, church in Northern Ireland is a generational rite of passage. Grandparents brought parents, their parents bring them, they are shaped and supported. I don’t have that heritage - even my mum and dad didn’t vote for me!

Sometimes, I analyse it a bit more deeply and I think about the two different women I am, the one out in the ‘secular’ world fighting for other women to be heard, highlighting injustices, sharing openly and honestly about the difficulties of motherhood - versus the silent and submissive one I am at church. I think about how the pace of change in the church endlessly frustrates me and how I can’t accept that every idea needs debated and double-stamped by a session. Why can’t we just try it and see how it goes, trust in the Holy Spirit? The Bible is full of risk-takers!

I just knew it was time to go. I’d wrestled with using my gifts and finding my voice. There was a push and a pull. And yes, the pandemic exacerbated everything and it gave me the freedom to drop in online elsewhere.

But physically walking into a different church building is one of the hardest things I have ever done. I have gone from being a familiar face in a familiar place to being a stranger in a strange land.

In a paradoxical way, Covid has helped. Once I took the plunge, I could register in advance. They knew I was coming. I was just a name being ticked off on a list. Wearing a face covering made me anonymous. I didn’t have to engage in any uncomfortable conversations. I could sit in a bubble of one. Without post-service tea and coffee, I could leave quickly and quietly and carry the worship experience with me.

There have been so many things that have made it easier - the continual warm welcome, the relaxed atmosphere, the offer of one-to-one coffee chats, the exchanging of phone numbers, the invite to try out a home group, the abundant kindness in the tissue handed to my daughter when she cried during a Sunday evening discussion. No-one has asked me for my back story. It’s a fresh start. I have felt truly accepted. It already feels like family.

But, if getting to this stage has been hard for me as a seasoned churchgoer with years of expertise in formats, rules (both written and unwritten), regulations, committees and structures, already up to speed on ‘how we do things round here’, what on earth must it be like for those outside our church doors, those who can’t even comprehend stepping inside a church building?

I am not afraid of any other topic but writing about church frightens me. Many will see this as criticism rather than suggestion. I should probably be less vocal, keep my opinions to myself. But God gives us experiences for a reason, He challenges us with individual perspectives. It’s my responsibility to share mine and it’s my responsibility to take action where I can. Because, I know now how it feels.

I’d like churches to look more realistically at people as normal human-beings who are scared, uncertain, confused, embarrassed, wounded, ashamed, who feel like they don’t belong, who feel they aren’t good enough, who just can’t walk through those doors because they find it so unbelievably hard, who are maybe carrying baggage like me. Dare I suggest we need to appreciate those earthly barriers, that we need to go out more rather than expect them to come in?