Write That Letter You've Been Meaning to Write

My beloved brother died on September 23, just a day after his 58th birthday, after a five-year battle with cancer that was initially spotted growing in his neck and eventually took over his lungs and heart. Of course, my family is still experiencing deep grief. I told a dear older friend just days after his death that I think Jeff was everybody’s favorite, and in her typical quick observational wit, she replied, “Well, now’s your chance!”  

It’s been several months since the morning we said goodbye, but I want to introduce you to my brother. He was a ministry leader for Links Players International, an author, a father of three young men, a devoted husband to one of my best friends, and the kindest brother a girl could have. 

One of my earliest memories is that of curling up on my bed as Jeff sat next to me and read that great novel of American childhood,  Homer Price. It is a kind and loving 13-year-old who will do such a thing for his 6-year-old sister, but that is just the type of young man he was, and just the type of man he continued to be: gentle, patient, full of wry humor.

When I was a gangly and awkward 11-year-old, Jeff drove away to Redlands University for college. His leaving left a significant hole in my heart, and one might assume that a bright, ambitious 18-year-old would have not thought again of that little sister back at home, but he did, in the form of letters. The stack that sits on my desk, tied with an opaque ribbon, is a fraction of the letters he wrote to me from college: first from Redlands, then after his transfer to Biola University. This is the last paragraph of one of my favorites, dated 1984:

“I hope even more that you are learning how powerful God can be in our lives. There are so many times when I just want to be home or at camp, but God gives me the strength to hang in there, and he says, “I need you right where you are, Jeff.” So on I go. I hope to see you soon. I love you a whole lot. But even better, so does God.

Your bro,

Jeff”

We never again lived in the same city, our lives taking us in wildly different directions at times. And there was that seven-year age gap. But always, Jeff was a man of words. We read together, recommended books to each other, and both agreed and disagreed over who wrote best or which stories made the greatest impact on the world.

Often, I would post at midnight an article I'd written only to awake the next morning to a text from Jeff in which he corrected my grammar or pointed out a typo. He was my editor, but he was never my critic. His words to me were pleasant like a honeycomb: sweetness to the soul and health to the body. 

In my Bible study lesson this week, the opening question was posed, “If you knew that your time on earth was rapidly coming to an end, what message would you want to impart to those you love?” 

As the recipient of words that were foundational in the formation of my young faith, I humbly ask the same question: Who in your world needs to hear the life-giving words of the simple gospel of Jesus Christ? Who needs to hear, “I love you a whole lot. But even better, so does God”?

Jeff officiating at his son Reese’s wedding, May 2021

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When the Church Can't Meet Your Needs

Let’s not talk about what a difficult year this has been. Instead, let’s recall how difficult life and choices often were before we hit pandemics and political issues. Our trials and challenges serve to amplify our discomfort and can be an impetus for personal change, and in that way, both the pandemic and the politics have been useful.

What if the church no longer meets your needs? For many Christians in America, this is a valid and timely question. You and I both know the variables that lead to believing the church can’t be what it needs to be anymore, so, in order to shed light on a path forward, I’ve identified four points on which to reflect.

Reflections for When the Church Can’t Meet Your Needs

1. Identify your needs.

   Are your perceived needs something that are truly needed for spiritual growth, health, clarity, or rest?

   It is an auspicious practice to identify and clarify what our actual needs may be. Keep in mind that what you may need in this season is potentially not a necessity for your spouse, children, or others with whom you are in a close relationship. If 30 years of marriage have taught me anything, it’s that my needs are rarely in sync with those in my close circle and that sometimes I extend myself for them and at other times, they have extended themselves for me.

2. Ask yourself honest questions.

   Are my perceived needs really just preferences or desires? For example, a basic human need is readily accessible and healthy food, while a preference or desire is grilled chicken and a chocolate shake.

   Can these needs be met by the people in your life? The people in your church? Our deep inner needs aren't met by people. God often uses people as a conduit to providing what we need, but people are not the ultimate provisioner. Are we expecting people to do what only God can?

   The truth is, Jesus Christ is the place to start. The gospel meets the felt need. God himself ultimately satisfies the longing. If we’re just missing what we have always had in our western churches (i.e., cultural church paradigms as opposed to worship however God provides it for us), then we’re really longing for grilled chicken and chocolate shakes, not readily accessible and healthy food.

3. Provide yourself with honest answers.

   So, of course, it follows that if I'm looking to my church to meet my needs, I will not get the answers to my questions. If I'm expecting Jesus to meet my needs instead, I will find a path to deep, lasting change and fulfillment. That line of thinking leads to perhaps a more complex conundrum with which we must wrestle: Do I believe that “my God shall supply all my needs according to his riches in glory?”

   The Philippian church was encouraged to understand that their way of doing church wasn’t the answer, their church people weren’t the answer, their orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and theology weren’t the answer. Only God—God alone—would meet their needs. Certainly, Paul knew this personally as he wrote his letter to that church from a prison cell.

4. Be pliable.

   What if God means to meet our needs in ways we never could have anticipated?

   If you've been a follower of Jesus Christ for any amount of significant time, you might assume I'm being ironic. Because it's true, isn't it? Just remove the question mark: God means to meet our needs in ways we never could have anticipated. And then go ask anyone who has ever had to “do church” in a way that doesn’t look like America.

   Pliability as it relates to church choices and life may mean you’re being led away from what you’ve always known to be church. And what if that change means you are about to find out what the fullness of following Jesus really looks like?

My story of church life and culture may be different from yours in setting, characters, arc, and plot. I did the math recently and realized that the church I’ve been a part of for the past decade is the 17th church I’ve been involved in over the course of my life. 17th! That exposure to many different church norms might be very different from your experience.

Still, there is some reason you have had to drop your expectations for church, and it can no longer meet your needs at this time. Christian, this is more than okay. It is acceptable and right and may be exactly what God has for you in this moment. Can you identify your real need and allow God to do his work?

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I Grew Up in a Legalistic Church. Now What?

When I wrote Leaving Legalism, I was coming at the whole project from one perspective: mine. As I began to write, it shouldn’t have been surprising to find that other people would offer me stories of their own experiences inside the parameters of legalism, and those stories would vary widely.

One experience keeps appearing, however, and I wanted to take the time to address those of you who spent your childhoods in churches that defined your faith by keeping the rules and good religious behavior. So many of you grew up in legalistic churches, and you’re struggling to find your way through a faith that doesn’t present itself as a list of behaviors.

Here’s a little sampling of what you’re telling me:

“My parents became believers when I was in kindergarten. One of the first things they did in their new life as church members was yank me out of a traditional school environment so they could homeschool me. Even as a kid, I knew they were driven by fear: of what their church leaders would think, of the world, of their own inadequacies as newly-Christian parents. ”

“I was a very enthusiastic Christian as a teenager, and I was involved in youth group and I sang on the worship team. I checked all the right boxes, kept my nose clean, didn’t sleep around, and pledged myself to the purity movement. To me, keeping the rules defined my faith because that’s what I was taught in the church where I grew up.”

I hear a lot from young adults who were raised in the homeschool movement, in very rigid communities, in uber conservative churches. Was there anyone who was homeschooled in the 1990’s/early 2000’s who wasn’t touched by this approach to life and faith? It seems that overwhelmingly, the answer is no. If you weren’t in a legalistic home and church, you knew many kids who were.

But I am also hearing from adults who were raised in subsets of Christianity, in rigid churches, in cults, and in churches that stuck to orthodox Christian theology but behaved like cults. More on that distinction in a later post.

So, now what? You’ve left legalism behind, you haven’t completely run away from faith in Christ, but there is just so much collateral damage.

Three Things to Consider If You Grew Up in a Legalistic Church

The church you grew up in doesn’t have the last word on what it means to follow Christ.

I know they want you to think they do, but unless they are Jesus, they don’t. The Bible, the Holy Spirit—they have the last word on what it means to follow Christ. There’s a lot wider berth in regards to behavior than a lot of religious institutions would lead you to believe.

This is one of the reasons I spent a chapter discussing what it means to learn to abide in Christ. We have to learn to recognize his voice, and we do that by hanging out with him, just as we would with someone we are trying to get to know. Once we can confidently distinguish his voice from that of people who might mean well (or not), we can declare, as Martin Luther did, that we are compelled by our faith in Christ to make the choices we are making.

No One on Earth is Doing Church Perfectly.

But they want you to believe that they’re doing it perfectly. Or right.

Ever heard the old story of the believer who storms out of one church to declare that they’re going to a church that’s doing it “right”? “We’ve found the perfect church!”, they announce. And then some wiser, usually older believer quips, “Until you show up.”

Listen: We’ve all got it wrong. Even you. Even me. Even my brother with the Doctorate of Divinity. Even [insert the theologian you most admire]. And one day, when there is a new heaven and we get to inhabit a new earth, we will see where we were wrong about so many things, and we will ooze grace to each other because our eyes will be on the only One who ever gets it right.  

But we can ooze that same grace right here. Right now. Shall we?

Your Faith in Christ Will Look Very, Very Different Than Your Parents’  

 And that’s as it should be, even if you hadn’t been raised in legalism.

It’s simple. Your faith in Christ is your faith in Christ. It could be a straighter path or a wild winding ride resembling the twisting, narrow curves of Lombard Street. It will most certainly take detours that don’t resemble anyone else’s detours, and it will take you places you never thought you’d ever see or experience. 

Unless, of course, you stay in legalism. Legalism is all about control and predictable outcomes, so if that’s what makes us feel comfortable, that’s generally what we choose. I just can’t seem to find any examples of a lifeless, structured faith like that in scripture. 

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Needing a community to walk through your exodus from legalism with you? Join us in the closed Facebook group called Leaving Legalism.

Read the book, too. It is meant to help you find freedom.

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