My mom was a preacher’s daughter, sister, and wife. Had she lived to watch her children grow, she would’ve been the mother of ministers, as well. My brother and I spent a lot of time inside church buildings. We raised our children there. My youngest child took her first steps inside a local church building. We love church but let’s get real for a moment.
Mom never felt comfortable at church. She stepped into the role of minister’s wife at nineteen. She brought addictions and mental illness into a fishbowl and never felt at home.
Dad died when he was thirty and mom was twenty-eight. She was left to raise two young children.
I was thinking of her recently and how Sundays were particularly difficult for her before and after dad’s death.
This became apparent to her young daughter on Sunday nights. The Church of Christ takes Communion (the Eucharist) weekly. If you are unable to attend the Sunday morning service, it has been designed so that you can take the Lord’s Supper at the Sunday night service.
I remember sitting on a pew beside my mother on several Sunday nights. As the Lord’s Supper would begin, Mom sat still. Her Saturday night had encroached into her Sunday morning. As a child, I had no idea the guilt she was struggling with or how bruised her life was. As a woman, now much older than my mother when she died, I can look back and imagine the pain she was facing. I’ll never forget all the nights she refused to take the Lord’s Supper. On the way home she would give the same answer, she didn’t deserve it. The guilt for not measuring up would lead mom to more drinking and eventually would lead to the end of her life at thirty-eight.
As someone who loves church, I have watched over and over as church hurts those I love. Church is good but if church is all you have, you’re missing out on what following Jesus looks like.
Church culture, across all faith groups, has a tendency to create guilt. Dressing in our nice, designer clothes on Sunday morning and pretending life is perfect has done more harm than we’d ever like to admit. Mom rarely spoke about church making her feel involved, loved, and accepted. But I remember many conversations about how Alcoholics Anonymous was uplifting and encouraging. She never worried about what she wore to AA. She never worried about being accepted. Maybe the Church should be more like an AA meeting.
What if we were to gather together, sit in a circle, and talk about our struggles?
What if each person had something to share (which is Biblical, by the way).
What if, when we were feeling weak, we had a number of someone who had struggled in the same way we could call for support and encouragement?
What if we were unafraid to be completely transparent with one another?
What if church taught and encouraged making amends (asking for forgiveness) like AA? Not a perfect system, of course, but a structured plan of accountability to healing broken relationships that Christians aren’t getting in most places.
What if people were reluctant to miss a meeting?
There were many good church people at mom’s funeral. But I’ll always remember her friends from AA who came. I have a feeling they knew and loved her more than a lot of people in her congregation. That’s not a bad thing. That’s just getting real. And what we all need.
I’m not advocating for you to leave your home church and rush to your local AA meeting. I am encouraging you to be courageous enough to restructure your gatherings in a way that is more personal and beneficial for every person to come together, speak freely, and become more spiritually and emotionally healthy. That’s what discipleship should look like. It’s spending more than a couple of hours a week together. It’s learning who we really are and loving each other anyway. It’s encouraging each other not to gossip, not to steal, not to lie, and not to cheat. It’s speaking hope into each other’s lives even in the middle of the battle. It’s showing up for one other when we’re ridiculously busy with all of life’s demands.
This will take men and women courageous enough to venture in to change and, as you may know, change is not a word the church is comfortable with. But what would happen if church was more like AA and less like church?