“I am old, Gandalf. I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed! Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

---

Today, I met with a well-known blogger, but they will remain anonymous. We had a great discussion that lasted several hours. After taking care of all sorts of things, I came home to a call from my daughter and her husband, who showed me an ultrasound of a beautiful boy who will be my first grandchild. I am ecstatic. I will put off the post I was going to write since it will take a few hours, and I have plans for this evening. So, I will present this article that I think might be good fodder for discussion over the weekend.

Are you a member of a perfect church?

The early days of excitement at finding the “perfect” church.

Katelyn Beaty wrote the following post on Substack: The Myth of the Extra-Special Church, which is subtitled.

“My time inside a congregation that seemed like the epicenter of God’s work.”

She was a member of the Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois. I visited this church in the early days of its existence, and I can speak to the enthusiasm she describes here. I enjoyed it so much that I returned to Raleigh to find a similar church. Sadly, it was the Anglican church that would play a negative role when we spoke out about our concerns regarding the molestation of many teen boys in our SBC church.

However, I felt a similar excitement during the years I spent at Park Street Church in Boston. Sadly, that excitement dwindled when I recently wrote a series on the accusations of spiritual abuse at the church.

This is how she described the early days.

In 2008, a thousand worshipers gathered in Wheaton to inaugurate what would become the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). Someone at that meeting sounded a shofar — a trumpet that, for the Israelites, meant either a call to war or a proclamation of freedom. For Robert Duncan, the ACNA’s first archbishop, the shofar signaled both: a war against TEC unorthodoxy, and freedom from its leaders and bylaws. Duncan declared, “The Lord is displacing the Episcopal Church.”

The early days at Park Street Church were filled with teaching that helped me better understand how to read Scripture and learn about missions. When I got married, we moved away from the area, but I always held the church in high regard as “the standard by which I judged new churches.” As a Lutheran, I can relate to Beaty’s comment.

It especially attracted educated evangelicals who had grown up in low-church settings and were enthralled by the liturgy, by smells and bells (in theory), by following the church calendar that told and retold the story of God’s salvation in Christ.

Outward success appeared to lead to “spiritual hubris.” (TEC = The Episcopal Church)

It didn’t take long for me to perceive a kind of spiritual hubris, born of numerical growth, stories of transformation, and self-identity as the good, faithful Christians standing athwart the bad TEC Christians

She likens this to Willow Creek and Bill Hybels.

The myth of the extra-special church animates the most successful, now tarnished, churches on the American landscape. It’s the story that Bill Hybels, founding pastor of Willow Creek, told when he claimed repeatedly that the “local church is the hope of the world.”

How often have we discussed the arrogance of a church that proudly claims its mission is to “change the world?” I cringe as I look at churches that experience phenomenal growth, only to plummet back to earth when the pastor is caught with his pants down. Or even worse, the church continues without missing a beat, still quite certain that it has a unique calling from God, so it might be better to cover up the “pants down” episode.

She points out that the “perfect church” rarely looks outside itself, often ignoring the other churches fulfilling God’s commission to “go therefore…”

But was the Holy Spirit more present here than in other churches? Was the Holy Spirit blowing in and through the dozens of other churches within just a 10-mile radius of Rez’s building?

What happens when the apparently perfect church has to deal with abuse in its midst?

It is my experience that churches that are convinced they are seemingly perfect and quickly “changing the world” are unable to accept that there is evil in its midst. How could it be? They are the “perfect” church. Except they are not, not even close. There is no perfect church. My Lutheran pastors remind us regularly that they are sinners, and so are we. We need confession and forgiveness. We are a curious blend of saints and sinners, and we must remember that we have a dual nature.

When a seeming “perfect church” is confronted with evil, it should recognize the hymn’s line, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.”

As one might expect, evil was present in the church, and the apparent first response of the pastors was to blame the victims or the ones who spoke about it.

In 2021, a lay minister at an ACNA church plant in Ruch’s diocese was accused of raping a woman and sexually abusing a child. His victims allege that, upon hearing these allegations, Rez leaders failed to report to the authorities, and didn’t tell church members about it. The child victim’s family says Rez withheld proper financial, legal, and spiritual support; Rez members maligned the adult victim’s character. In addition, Ruch attended the accused lay minister’s first court hearing after his arrest; the former lay minister claimed the diocesan chancellor (legal counsel) helped him find a defense lawyer.

The former lay minister is serving a 15-year prison sentence for felony child sexual abuse and assault.

In my former church, some members who attended the abuser’s trial sat on his side, away from the victims, whom they pointedly ignored. They begged for leniency for the offender, saying they would “watch over him.” The senior pastor refused to pay for counseling for the teens. Sadly, the Anglican church across the highway had no problem with this response. But I have told that story once too often.

The Church of the Resurrection appeared to believe the victims were to blame. ACNAtoo is a website that speaks to abuse issues within that church group. Beaty quotes the church’s bishop’s response to their report.

You should fast and pray before you read ACNAToo because it is definitely Satan’s work in our diocese . . . You know, of course, that everyone who signed the ACNAToo Statement is ultra-liberal and is out to promote female ordinations and/or out to destroy the traditional Biblical views on marriage?  You know that the Evil One is out to destroy Bp. Stewart

Let me point out that blogs are born out of conflict regarding abuse. You are reading one at this moment.

What happens when church members confront the reality that their church is not perfect?

The Roys Report posted Anglican Church Informs Parishioners of Sex Offender Attendee After Three Years.

On Thursday, ACNAtoo, an anti-abuse advocacy group, published a post on its website alerting readers of Hays’ crimes and presence at Church of the Resurrection. A day later, Williamson’s email informed congregants that it “is not our policy to publicly inform the congregation of a parishioner’s past criminal actions” but that church leaders wished to address concerns that had been raised about Hays, whom Williamson referred to by first name only in the email.

As an aside, this was Julie Roys’s church until this happened. She, like many of us, left her church, or, as I sometimes say, “The church left us.”

In my former church, we became the enemy. After all, the church was about to reach the 3,000-member mark. Instead, it would begin to lose members. We were under such stress that we had to get the counsel of high-powered attorneys. We thought they were going to sue us. Then, I quickly started this blog.

Further comments and veiled threats came in my direction. I knew I was telling the truth, but being seen as a villain was difficult. Until then, I was considered a new asset to any church we joined, throwing myself into helping the church where I could. I was the enemy when I told the story. Beaty said:

When you operate from the sacred/secular divide, you’ll see civic authorities and journalists as out to tarnish the church’s reputation instead of doing their jobs. If your church is the epicenter of God’s work in the world, then critiques or allegations will easily bounce off as “spiritual attack,” as they apparently did at Rez. To be clear, it’s safe to say Satan wants to destroy God’s gathered people. And also, I think the way Satan does that is by letting the horrors of sexual violence and abuse go covered up and obscured for the bad PR it could bring an extra-special church.

Looking for a “mere” church

Beaty said:

And, the more interested I am in belonging to an ordinary church. A church whose leaders aren’t charismatic or impressive but faithful and shepherd-like, intimately familiar with the needs of their people. A church where worship is enriching and Spirit-filled and sometimes can stand to be quiet or even boring. A church where the preaching is centered on God’s story of redemption, not the preacher’s stories of amazing spiritual breakthrough. And most centrally, a church that is eager and proactively equipped to stand with the vulnerable and wounded when the worst is done to them. I’d trade all the extra-special churches in the world for one who, by God’s grace, can stand to be a mere church.

I never thought I would find such a church. After all, we scoured the post-evangelical wilderness to find a church we could trust. As TWW readers know, we picked a few doozies. We persisted and finally found the mere church. It is not perfect, but it is perfect in its imperfections. We have been there for many years, and I am “throwing myself in” to volunteer where I can. As I told one of the leaders, “I really want to be a ‘net positive’ for the church,” and I am working out what that looks like.

I know many have not been able to find such a church, and my heart goes out to you as you look at the seemingly vast wilderness filled with churches. God was with Hagar in the wilderness and cared for her in a place where no churches were pretending to be “changing the world.” May it be so for you.

The Hobbit

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.