A funny thing happened on my birthday. I was, per usual, being reflective and emo and wondering if my life has meaning, when a friend sent me a video from her church. Her pastor stood on stage and quoted several paragraphs from one of my newsletters about what it means to be Christ’s witnesses. I laughed because this church is a megachurch and I had no idea how this pastor found my newsletter from years ago or why he was quoting it, but it was a tender nudge for me to relax and know every seed sown in good soil will grow in surprising directions.
I texted my friend back: “you can take the megachurch out of the girl but apparently you can’t take the girl out of megachurch 🤣🤣🤣”
My relationship with church is in an interesting spot. Todd and I stopped going to church after we moved back to Tennessee, then I started a life group which became my community, then we started going to a small, non-traditional church a couple years ago.
The crazy thing is, part of me actually misses megachurch worship- fog, lasers, lights, and all- even though I’ve seen with my own two eyes how horrible the inside of the worship industry can be. There is something nostalgic about it. I think of my first Hillsong concert in Atlanta— my mom drove me there to meet my friends and we screamed and cried and worshipped together for 3 hours, convinced our generation was the generation to change the world. I was still in high school.
I still get goosebumps when I hear certain choruses. I don’t know if it’s the Holy Spirit or just a good chord progression. But I love how physical that style of worship is. I love how people lift their hands and dance. I crave that expression, even though I know it has a dark side. It has been weaponized to manipulate folks into emoting from an ungenuine place in order to stroke the egos of church leaders and make them feel like God is moving— as if God’s presence is best evidenced by us being in a frenzy.
But there are tender parts, too. Last year, I got invited to sing at a camp with a worship leader friend. He invited me to lead a song called “Gratitude” and I asked, “Can you send me the link because I’ve never heard of it?” He responded with “LOL” because he thought I was kidding. But I was like, “No. For real. I don’t know what that song is.” I heard it and wept and immediately understood why it was one of the most streamed Christian songs that year.
Yeah. Part of me feels tenderhearted towards church and worship music, even in it’s most “mega” form. The other part of me thinks we need to burn down the whole Western church machine and start over.
I’m doing research for a project with Beth Allison Barr on women in the SBC, and more than once I have cried reading the stories of women whose lives have been pummeled by the church in the name of God. How many abuse victims have been gaslit because the church would rather protect their reputation than name reality. How many rules, doctrines, and statements have been made in the name of orthodoxy to exclude from God’s table the very people God calls beloved.
I think about all the years I spent in churches who thought I wasn’t allowed to sing or teach because I was a woman. I remember conversations in back rooms about me being too vulnerable, too opinionated, and too dominant. This is church, too. There is so much beauty and harm in the same breath.
Church is messy. If you’ve been around long enough, it makes sense to have a complicated relationship with it. That doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong.
I’ve seen people shamed for expressing their hurt towards church. They are often responded to with, “The Church might have hurt you, but Jesus didn’t.” This concerns me on two fronts:
It absolves us (the church) of taking serious responsibility for how we treat people.
It presumes our experience of God is removed from people.
Nobody’s experience of God exists in a vacuum. Your experience of God has been shaped by people. Mine has, too. 1 John 4:12 says, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.” Nobody has seen God, but we experience God through vessels: nature, music, the Bible, our imaginations, people, etc…
This is why I am unconvinced by “The Church might have hurt you, but Jesus didn’t.” Church and God are not the same thing, of course, but they are not disconnected. So when people carry wounds from church that affect their view of God, I understand. I’ve been there. I don’t see it as a failure. It’s just honesty.
With time and love, I also know those wounds can heal, turning a broken relationship with church into a complicated one. I expect there is a layer after this, though I haven’t experienced it quite yet.
Years ago, a friend of mine pointed out the irony that we are often healed by the very thing that hurt us, just in a healthier form. If your relationship with food and exercise has been a source of shame, for example, you can often find healing through a different way of engaging with food and exercise. If you have been hurt through community, you may also find healing through a different form of community. Or maybe it’s money or work or performing or parents or riding on roller coasters or *name your wound here.*
I’m of course not suggesting you run back into the arms of a person or community that abused you, but I’m affirming the trend my friend observed, which is that in the right time, we can find healing through a better form of the thing that wounded us.
I’m in that process with church. I don’t hold resentment like I used to, but I don’t want to go back to where I was. I’m in a borderland, and I don’t think I’m the only one, open to whatever expression of church the Spirit might be prompting us to next.
Sending my love!
-Savannah
Writing Prompt: What is your relationship with Church like? Do you see Church as a place or people?
Recommended Listening: I’m probably the last person to hear about Gratitude, but if you haven’t listened to it yet and like some megachurch worship music, check it out here. If not, here is a non-megachurch-worship song I’ve been loving lately.
I resonated with so much of this, which is funny because I probably had the polar opposite church experience. I grew up in a Puritanical niche Calvinistic denomination.
Church is more a people than anything else. I've always believed in the concept of the "invisible church" the church that transcends any singular institution. I think the institutions have a place and purpose insofar as they serve the people-church. Unfortunately, many denominations and churches turn into organizations where the people exist to serve the institution and not the other way around.
This is beautiful Savannah. When I read “we are often healed by the very thing that hurt us, just in a healthier form” I looked up from my phone as a way to let that notion really sink in. The wind was moving through the trees in sort of a slow motion way and the light was perfect. Maybe it was the Spirit, idk, but in that moment something gently said “she’s right.” And multiple things flashed across my mind from my story that prove what you said to be true.
That isn’t answering your prompt but I wanted to share it because it resonated deeply with me.