Under Deconstruction Part 1
By: Wendy Duckworth Vance
Two weeks ago, during book club, one group member asked why church attendance seems to be declining. Various members of the group shared possible answers and experiences related to attendance, myself included. Even after answering, I kept thinking about the question. I felt like my answer was somewhat low-hanging fruit as it related to the fall of numerous “big name” leaders in teaching and musical ministries. While this answer is not untrue, it is somewhat simplistic and frankly a bit shallow - it doesn’t really address much a deeper truth underpinning the phenomenon. As I have continued to let the question marinate, a few thoughts have come to mind about this issue, some of which relate to my own experience within the institutional church.
As a part of analyzing this question, I have been considering my own faith journey. I was “raised” as a Baptist. I placed raised in quotes because I was basically told, “you are a Baptist.” My mom and I rarely attended services except on holidays from time to time. When I did go at other times, it was with my grandmother or my friend across the hall in our apartment complex who was like a second mother. When I attended with them, it was a Baptist church or an occasional gospel music concert. I felt very strongly drawn to church and to worship, to the point that I wanted to be a pastor when I grew up - I used to put my dolls and stuffed animals in chairs and preach to them from my Bible. When I was young, I committed that when I became an adult, I would go to church regularly because I wanted to be where God was, and in my young mind, He lived at the church. In the meantime, I soaked up every message and teaching whenever I had an opportunity to go. To be clear, it wasn’t that my mom was an unbeliever or that she didn’t share with me Biblical truths; she was dealing with her own stuff - insecurities, hang-ups, etc.- which, reflecting, may speak to a feeling of unworthiness on her part that kept her away. The point is that being a Baptist wasn’t really a choice that I made but rather more of a birthright or expectation.
When I grew up, I kept my vow; I became a regular attender. More than that, I became a member of ministry teams like the teen drama team I led with my husband, a Sunday School teacher, someone who sang “specials” during praise and worship, and someone who served on the church board. I don’t say all this to say look at me or whatever; this is just a catalog of history for me - I did these things because I wanted to serve, and this was how I could serve.
During this time, my husband introduced me to the Pentecostal movement. I had never been to a church where the service didn’t have a program, where we “let the Spirit move.” I had never before seen hands raised, people being laid out in the Spirit, the laying on of hands during prayer for a person, speaking in tongues, or someone shouting things like “amen, preach, or hallelujah” during the sermon, where the Sunday School and sermon teachings that weren’t coordinated. And don’t even get me started on folks wearing jeans and shorts to services. To be totally honest, I was shocked at first by what seemed like irreverence and disrespect. I was so accustomed to having a program, silence, decorum, getting dressed up, and God forbid, don’t sit in someone else’s regular pew or face the wrath of the stink eye or the embarrassment of having to move. The whole “movement of spirit” thing made me feel like I had been transplanted to an alien planet where people had no clue how to behave in the presence of Holy God. This was probably my first period of deconstruction as it relates to faith. This process, however, was not as lengthy or as difficult as future periods of deconstruction would be. I soon learned to love the environment in which the Spirit was free to move and having the freedom to respond to His movement. It felt even more inviting and drew me even closer than my childhood experiences - it was like being wrapped in a warm blanket of His love. I had real experiences of healing, being slain in the Spirit, feeling the intense need to raise my hands and fall to my knees. Say what you will, those experiences were 100% real and authentic - I wasn’t following a program or trying to follow the rules or trying to elevate myself to some special status - I was simply there to worship the Creator of the Universe, the One who gave everything so that I would have the privilege to spend eternity in His presence. I was forever changed from that point forward; wherever I moved, I sought out congregations in which the Spirit was allowed to move. Once I saw it/felt it, I couldn’t unsee it and wanted nothing less than being wrapped up in the embrace of the all consuming Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit).
But what does this experience, this deconstruction, have to do with lower church attendance? In a word, everything. For me, this experience taught me that God was so much bigger than the box I had thought Him to be in - I had to deconstruct my thought process, perceptions, and doctrines that caused me to believe that encounters with God only occurred in a specific building, that looked a specific way, with a specific program, way to dress, or way to worship. For me, this deconstruction led to a deeper, richer relationship with God and a greater hunger for the Word and a desire to learn more, to go deeper than the learning of my youth - I wanted to know God more. This desire for more, to go deeper, has led to later deconstructions including the one that I have been going through for the last few years. I will discuss these other deconstructions as we move through the series and how they have shaped my walk with Christ and my views on some topics. I am not talking about a wholesale change in what is or is not sin or the need for Christ's atoning death on the cross; those are defined by God and laid out in his Word, to me, indisputable. What is disputable for me, however, is the traditions, interpretations, and doctrines laid down by man that seem misaligned with Christ as seen in His ministry documented in the New Testament; for me, these are very much up for debate. I would hazard to say they are up for debate among many others who would call themselves by names, such as ex-vangelicals, who are searching for the grace, love, and taking care of our neighbor lessons and attitudes which seem to have been pushed out of the door of the church when it invited in the Christian Nationalism/MAGA movement. It seems like the sheep have become the wolves, seeking to devour and destroy anyone who falls into the definition of "other." For me, I see this movement as a cancer that is brutalizing the body of believers, causing parts to fall away. It is a cancer that seemed to have attached itself when we seemingly stopped understanding that we live, survive, and thrive in community (the whole community regardless of race, gender, housing status, wealth, disability, etc.) in which we care for and about each other, when we stopped understanding that JOY is defined as Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last.
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