Unchurching: The Book That Undid Me
From Institution to Family: My Journey Toward a Truer Church (Part 2)
At the end of the last article, I mentioned finding a video that was like a healing balm to the rash of cognitive dissonance I was experiencing in the institutional church. That video eventually led to me purchasing and buying a book that enabled me to walk away from the institutional church. It is important to say right from the outset that I wasn’t looking for some kind of revolution. I didn’t want to stop “going to church.” I wanted sincere answers to questions I had about why we do things the way we do, and I believed this book would provide the answers. Honestly, while I was hopeful I would get some answers, I was also very nervous; “could there really be another way?” That book was Unchurching: Christianity Without Churchianity by Richard Jacobson.
I believe the most important and distinctive teaching of the Christian faith is that our God (YHWH Elohim) is triune. This is a truth I’ve known (and I believe everyone must know to become a Christian) since the beginning of my faith, but I was taken more deeply into it, not just by a trinitarian theology class I took in Bible college, but also through Jacobson’s writing. He reminded me that the Godhead is not a spiritual hierarchy but a spiritual community of co-equal Persons. If we are truly to be His image-bearers and partakers of the divine nature together, then the church should function as a community rather than a hierarchy.
Another of his key ideas that sent jolts through me was the contention that by incorporating, the church rejected being the body of Yeshua to receive its own abundant life from the State. He writes,
Legally, a corporation is a separate person; it has its own distinct legal identity. This allows a corporation to continue to exist long after its founding members have moved on. That means, at least in theory, a corporation can exist in perpetuity, having an endless duration. Whenever a church becomes a corporation, it ensures the fictitious person can “live” forever. Basically, it is the legal form of eternal life…it is the corporation, not the congregation, that legally becomes the church when the church community incorporates itself…when our identity as the church is unthinkingly handed over to a corporation in order to gain limited liability, are we despising our birthright? After all, the church was never called to pursue a legal form of eternal life for itself; it was called to extend the invitation of genuine eternal life to others. Nor is the church called to incorporate itself into a fictitious person; it is called to incarnate a real person, Jesus Christ.
A final point that Jacobson made that rocked me was the idea of community. This reminded me more of what I saw described in Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 and less of what I had been experiencing in church. Jacobson called for a reordering of life that prioritized one’s brothers and sisters in their local church community. The creating of overlap with the lives of others so that the kind of authentic community that sees us routinely in each other’s homes and bearing one another’s burdens could be nurtured and cultivated.
Jacobson’s writing excited me; this is what my soul had been hungering and thirsting for! This is the kind of community I had been reading about in the scriptures! If I’m completely honest, though, his writing also grieved and scared me. How had we moved from the community and church that the scriptures described to what we were doing now? How much had been lost in an effort to create an “efficient” structure? I was afraid that the scriptures and Jacobson’s writing were the closest I would ever get to this sort of church community. Had I read this book simply to dangle a prize in front of myself I could never have? I was afraid I could not leave the institutional church and remain a Christian, and that I could not find others who were interested in pursuing this sort of community.
After I finished Unchurching, I didn’t immediately take any action. I spent a lot of time processing what I had read and wrestling with the implications and with God. If Jacobson’s claims were true, and I believed they were, what did it say about Rock Hill Missionary Baptist Church and Uptown Baptist Church? If I left those structures and systems, was I being disloyal to my family and friends? What would I lose if I left, and would my wife be willing to journey with me? The ultimate struggle was knowing I loved my church community; I loved the people of Uptown Baptist Church and I loved the members of our Young Adult Growth Group, but I also realized that it would not, and perhaps could not, change.
Unchurching had planted seeds for honest questioning and discernment. And as I engaged in the interrogation and discerning process, I was moved from simple discontent to conviction. It was no longer a matter of preference for me, it became a matter of obedience. I needed to journey into the wilderness and follow God to something more; something better. But leaving the city to enter the wilderness doesn’t come easily or without cost.
In my experience, spiritual journeys often come with a holy undoing; God helps you unlearn things and He undoes you in order to rebuild you. We experience disillusionment: the loss of what we believed something to be, in order for us to finally find reality. This is the experience that my wife and I had to go through. It’s one thing to see the cracks in your walls, it’s another matter altogether to walk away from the only home you’ve ever known, but that’s what we did.
Have you ever read a book or heard an idea that upended your spiritual assumptions? How did you wrestle with it?