Perhaps I should begin by saying, 'I'm not!' - leaving church that is! But an awful lot of people are, for a whole lot of different reasons. It's sometimes said that church has a narrow front door (it's hard to get into) and a wide back door (easy to leave). In my experience, not many people, having belonged to a church, decide to leave. They just miss for a few weeks - perhaps through illness or personal circumstances - and find they didn't miss it. Even worse, no one seems to have missed them either. At least, no one bothered to say so by getting in touch to enquire.
This presents quite a challenge for those of us in leadership. For one thing, we need to have a church culture where people are missed and are contacted if they go missing for any length of time. This is not as easy as it might sound, because these days not many people go to church every week: such are the complexities of modern living and the other choices available, from caring for elderly parents to owning a weekend cottage or caravan. It is also sad, but true, that too many people only come to church if they have some particular reason to do so: assisting in children's ministry (which might mean they don't appear in church anyway!), reading the lesson, singing in the choir or music group, administering at Holy Communion, being on welcome team etc. It betrays an attitude which is more about doing than being church. Whether or not we have a particular function on a particular Sunday, our presence is required. Who knows whether or not God might call on us to offer a word of comfort to someone who is struggling, or to rejoice in someone's good news? And don't we all need to make ourselves available to God by offering ourselves in worship, open to the promptings of the Spirit and the teaching of the Word week by week? Ok - so not all sermons are brilliant, but you never know when that light-bulb moment may happen!
Recently, after a rather difficult church meeting, someone said 'Where was Jesus in that meeting?' I wish I had thought quickly enough to say, 'he was sitting next to you, or across the room'. In other words, he was present in your brother or sister. I think it was Martin Luther who used to say that every Christian should be a 'little Christ', representing their Lord to each other and the world.
I am reading 'Leaving Alexandria', by Bishop Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh. Here is a man who has definitely and intentionally left the church, eventually finding the conflict unbearable between private doubt and public ministry. He is a scholar whose life journey has taken him from Glasgow slums to national prominence. It is a sad book, I think, and I find myself wondering whether his deep disappointment is more with the Church than with God. He seems to have fallen in love with Church - its rituals and its monasticism - in his teenage years and somehow this got in the way of his relationship with God. As disillusionment set in, so it became impossible to continue as a member of the Christian church. I am reminded of another bishop, John Robinson, years ago who wrote that it was important to love Jesus more than the Church.
To which I would add: we love the Church for Jesus' sake.
Coincidentally, I was reading at the weekend an interview with Barbara Brown Taylor - an American Episcopalian priest. She has also left the Church, in the sense that she has moved out of parish ministry, after many years as a particularly gifted preacher and pastor, into academia as a professor of religion. She says, religion gets in the way of God when the well becomes more interesting than the water...She has actually written a book called 'Leaving Church', which I suspect is more positive than Holloway's. What holds us together [as 'church'] is a certain way of seeing the world; a certain set of sacred stories that keep that view in place; and a certain way of responding to them that gives life meaning. That's not a bad way of describing what it means to belong to a 'community of blessing'.
September 29 is 'Back to Church Sunday' (www.backtochurch.co.uk). A good opportunity to re-engage with those who may not have left, just taken leave.
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