After Church

Introducing our new series

Friends,

I’m feeling excited, anxious, and anticipatory to share with you our new Liminality Journal series called After Church.

This series will be a deep-dive into my own journey leaving institutional Christian spaces, building off of so much of what I’ve written about in my books, with stories and, I hope, safety for those who are on similar journeys.

Today I’m introducing the series, and then we will go deeper into the 5 phases of leaving church spaces:

1. Recognizing

2. Leaving

3. Grieving

4. Widening (or exploring)

5. Trusting (or settling)

You’ll learn more about each of these as we go, but I want to tell you why I decided to write on this.

First, before I begin, a little note: this is my story. If you read it and you’re feeling threatened or worried for the future of the church, I can’t help you with that, and I ask you to hold an open heart and mind to learn from those who have chosen to leave. By sharing my story, I’m not saying that those who go to church are awful people, but I’m acknowledging the liminality of all of it, the tension we all hold in trying to make these difficult decisions. If you’re reading my stories and it’s triggering your own religious trauma, please don’t feel the need to keep reading. I hope that my words help those of us with religious trauma to keep moving forward toward community and love, and this series is especially for you.

Photo by Cosmic Timetraveler on Unsplash

As a public speaker, I travel all over the country and share my words and books with a lot of different people. Many of these spaces are Christian spaces, specifically progressive churches or church conferences.

And it’s always interesting, being asked where I go to church or what denomination I’m a part of. If I’m honest, I’ve never felt drawn to any denomination, and have, in fact, felt pretty uncomfortable in the face of those questions. So when asked, I am honest with people that I don’t go to church, and I’m not part of a denomination.

And I can often see it on their faces, even if it flashes across their eyes just for an instant. How can you be a faith leader if you don’t teach on the Bible or go to church?

Well, that’s why I’m writing this series, I guess.

I want us to remember that our spiritual journeys are meant to be, and should be, expansive, and that as human beings, we are allowed to shift and change throughout our lives. If anything, this is a series about evolution and the spiritual journey, about how I got here and where I hope to go.

It’s taken me a bit of time, but for the most part, I’m not really that worried about those questions I get anymore, and I know that I’m public enough about my story that when someone brings me to speak in their spaces, they know who they are going to get:

I’m an Indigenous woman, raised in the Southern Baptist tradition followed by various other church communities, who has found herself in an expansive spirituality where she can ask questions and explore The Sacred while trying to decolonize as best she can.

And I think a lot of you are in similar places, too.

So this series is for us to explore together, to ask questions together, and yes, to grieve together.

First, we recognize that something has shifted in us and we have a decision to make.

Next, we choose to leave the spaces that are harming us.

Then, we enter a season of grieving, and this can just be really hard.

After grief we begin widening or exploring, where we ask what might come next for us.

Finally, we trust, mostly ourselves, to enter into new spaces of community, whatever that looks like for us.

Sure, you could call this a deconstruction series. I can just feel the discomfort coming through the screen from some of you who read those words. There has been criticism of deconstruction by a lot of people (some of it very valid when it’s used in mostly white spaces), but I push back against the idea that deconstruction will only lead to, well, destruction.

Many of us have left church spaces because we had to in order to find ourselves, and we have found ourselves. So at this moment, I’m not really interested in framing it as deconstruction, but as a larger process that takes time and is, often, cyclical and not linear.

Like the first time I prayed in Potawatomi and recognized that there was something missing in my life, I had to leave institutional church spaces to recognize the expansive world of The Sacred and how welcomed I am there.

I believe the liminal spaces where many of us live today after church are sacred spaces.

So, I’m inviting you to take some deep breaths here, and join me on this journey.

Thank you for being here.

Stay tuned.

Photo by Daniele Colucci on Unsplash

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A few quick reminders:

I’ll be in Indiana this week, with a book signing at Notre Dame on Wednesday evening and then keynote at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary on Thursday evening for their Rooted & Grounded conference. If you’re in the area, please visit!

And on October 17th at 2pm ET, I’ll be chatting with author Katherine May about Living Resistance for her fabulous book club!

If you’d like to join us, register here, and make sure you use the password linnet.