Church in the Rear View

by Nicole Geiger

More than ever, we hear conversations surrounding young people leaving the church. I’ve heard sermons accusing the youth of losing their path, falling into sin, and turning their backs on church family. Abandonment and spite spit from the pulpit, calling people to action, without understanding the cause.

I, like many of my friends, left the church when I became an adult. We speak frequently about how the church let us down individually and collectively. None of us left because we didn’t believe. The one place, promised from childhood as the safest and most loving, left us feeling hurt and abandoned. My friends’ stories are not mine to tell, but I offer some of my own. I do not speak with judgment and condemnation, but with compassion and hope that we might fix what has been broken.

As children in Sunday school, we were told Jesus loves us just as we are. He opens his arms and his home to all, no matter your past. He instructs us to act with kindness and obedience above everything and we will be rewarded. God has a plan; we must trust it. All sin is equal in the Lord’s eyes; all you have to do is ask for forgiveness and your slate will be wiped clean. Because Christ loves us, we must show others his love through our actions. But as I became a young woman, that is not the God that I saw reflected in the congregation.

At ten years old I lost my father to cancer. The following weeks and months, multiple adults in the church told me I didn’t pray enough. If I had just believed more, my dad would have been healed. I felt offended and confused. How could they assume I hadn’t pleaded for my dad’s life? The responsibility of curing brain cancer through prayer somehow got placed on a child, as if he wasn’t in hundreds of other prayers. I, however, looked at these grownups and wondered if they had ever read Job. Having read the book several times myself by this age, I remembered Job’s friends who told him to repent when he had done nothing wrong. I wondered what horrible sin these Christians thought I could have committed as a child that the Lord felt taking my father was a just punishment.

At thirteen, I joined a new church. My mother had remarried. I gained four new siblings and wanted to give their youth group a chance as I was unhappy with the one I currently attended. The head pastor’s sermons frequently judged those suffering with mental illness. He called them vain, accusing them of not loving the Lord as they claimed. “If you truly loved God,” he would say, “how could you possibly hate his creation – yourself? By giving in to anxiety or depression you’re letting the devil into your heart and mind. You’re weak, and not a part of the flock.”

Everyone in my family at that time was experiencing depression, but we rejoiced in the Lord anyway. We took medication and went to therapy to help us work through our pain in healthy ways. We worshiped at home and at church. I sat seething in the congregation wondering how the pastor could teach such things when 1 Peter tells us there is no shame in suffering (2:19, 4:16). But in fact, there will be grace when it is unjust.

I remained at the church because of the kindness and accommodating nature of the youth pastor. He welcomed me with excitement and open arms. When I entered high school, he moved on and, after a few months, we met our replacement. Around this time, I left public school due to bullying. I struggled to feel included and liked by my friends in the church. I noticed the staff offering disproportionate attention, support, and even gifts to other students. This new pastor seemed to have no time or interest in getting to know me or any of my hardships. His wife, however, seemed far too interested in my “behavior.”

It began with disapproving looks and tight smiles when she greeted me on Sunday mornings. It moved quickly into singling me out in groups. When I attended youth swim events, she instructed only me to wear a t-shirt over my dress-code-enforced-one-piece bathing suit. During “big church,” if I sat next to one of the boys in a pew, she pulled me aside and pointedly suggested I would be a distraction to them. I should go sit next to some of the girls, even if they weren’t particularly nice to me. Our conversations always seemed to circle back to modesty and submission, although I dressed conservatively. Comparisons to other girls my age (whose bodies hadn’t yet changed as mine had) took place frequently. It seemed that she had deemed me a Jezebel based on something totally out of my control. I didn’t understand her concern over my effect on the boys. After all, Matthew 5:29 tells them, “If your eyes cause you to stumble, gouge them out and throw them away.” She treated me as a temptation instead of a teenage girl looking desperately for connection.

I began to feel unwelcome in the church I had been attending for several years, but I continued to go. When the opportunity arose for me to work at a Bible camp over a summer, I quickly asked my new youth pastor for a reference. To my confusion, he seemed somewhat hesitant, but provided one.  I returned several weeks later excited to share my experience and my growth in my relationship with the Lord. I thought this would finally be the moment I could make a connection with the leadership team. I walked into youth group Sunday morning full of hope. As the youth pastor passed by me, he smiled and casually remarked, “The prodigal son returns!” My heart dropped into my stomach. Had he forgotten I was away doing ministry work? I looked around the large room and realized in a swift moment that nobody seemed to notice my absence. I received no questions about where I had been or about my time away. Nobody even came to say hi. They didn’t care. I sat through the message feeling nauseous and abandoned. I left directly after, sobbing the entire drive home and into the evening.

I took a few Sundays off after that, grieving the family I had been told existed in the church. I didn’t know if they had decided my relationship with the Lord was a facade, or simply that my body caused too much sin to be saved. I wondered who they thought they were to, at best neglect me or, at worst condemn without knowing me. Eventually, I decided it didn’t matter what they thought. I’m one of God’s children and just because I didn’t fit into two churches didn’t mean I wouldn’t find one where I did.

At seventeen years old I began visiting new churches alone. I sat through fear mongering sermons. I walked out when sermons talked about homosexuality as if it’s something disgusting and more horrifying than other kinds of sin. I resented the performative and bribing nature of others. I cried after listening to men condemn women from the pulpit, saying our place is to be quiet and submissive. They said our only job was to be a good wife and mother; there’s no leadership for us outside of childcare. I ranted to my mother after misleading messages about salvation solving suffering on earth. I attended churches where no one spoke to me at all. I got my fill from strangers telling me how church hopping is shameful. After all, every church provides community. What was I looking for that I couldn’t find?

Exhausted, I felt conflicted about the God I knew and the one I saw reflected in the congregation. Nobody seemed to believe the same thing. The love and kindness I had been taught to expect as a child seemed non-existent. Everything appeared judgmental and shame based. I wanted no part of it.

Many arguments exist against leaving the church. At times it feels like I’ve heard them all. I’ve been told I’m too sensitive, too picky, too progressive. Ironically it was church that taught me to be those things. I’m compassionate to others’ life experiences. I won’t sit through blasphemy or Scripture taken out of context. I want every person from any walk of life to feel welcomed into the congregation and to feel loved. In the end, it was not a lack of faith that caused me to walk away from the church, but an absence of community and an abundance of disillusion.

Picture above originated on apastorsheart.com.