Wayfaring Stranger
A Personal Journey of Visiting 52 Churches in 52 Weeks
This is going to be difficult to say, but here it goes: I stopped going to church.
That’s hard to put down in words, considering I’ve been a member of the same Evangelical Lutheran church since birth all of 30 years ago, but I've had some major reservations about religion and it’s been gnawing at the self-identity of my Christian values for far too long now. Considering that I and everyone I know have never met Jesus, or for that matter seen His divine image in a three-cheese pizza, it’s something that I need to come to terms with and take action. Every Christian is faced with a spiritual identity crisis at some point and life experiences ultimately dictate which direction to take after faith has been tested. This is my story.
At a young age, I went to church, attended a Lutheran K-8 grade school, said some prayers, sang some hymns, and put $5 in the collection plate every week. Throughout high school and into college, I was the GQ Christian. If I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t have sex until marriage, didn’t do all these sinful things, then lo and behold, God would answer my knock and open the door by blessing me with the perfect girl, give me the perfect job, and would reserve me a spot in heaven because HEY! I’m a Christian and I believe that God exists. After all, I got baptized when I was three weeks old. But despite prayers that were centered on Me Me Me, divine intervention never handed me nada.
More than anything I wanted a girlfriend, yet it didn’t happen until I was 23 (that only happened after I worked hard on myself that it came true). I thanked God for the family I hoped to make my own one day with the “perfect girl” and her daughter. I still remember the day when I looked into the heavens while they went on a potty break and I privately thanked God for what he had blessed me with. Well, it only took two months for a combination of her rebounding from a failed marriage along my significant lack of emotional intelligence, and it led to a miserable break-up in which I would blame God because “He took them away”. It was better things didn’t work out and it allowed me to meet someone even more amazing a year later, but it took some time until I could understand that I had been missing the point about God.
When shit the fan, I would look to God for comfort (which is sad to admit as I never thanked him enough when things were good). One Sunday morning, I witnessed a moment in my church that was rather insignificant. An older gentleman and his wife wanted to partake in Holy Communion and were discussing it with my pastor. The pastor explained that because they weren’t WELS members and hadn’t convened with him earlier in the week, they were not welcome to have a wafer and sip of wine that represented Jesus’ body and blood. It was small. Forgetable. Yet the image of the gentleman’s reaction to my pastor’s final verdict would latch onto my memory. He was persistent that it was wrong. To make a long story short, the two got into a quiet argument which resulted in the couple storming out before the service started. It was difficult to justify my church and what it taught if the church was so vehement in denying Communion to non-members.
This summer, it crystallized further on the diamond for the church’s softball team I played for. As a 30-year-old single male, my church attendance had been declining due to my conflict of what I had witnessed. But rather than throw my church away, I hoped to combine my love of baseball/softball with an attempt to gain a semblance of fellowship with some guys who shared my faith. Well, I admittedly was a lousy outfielder, and I misplayed a ball that cost us a run in a must-win game. It wasn’t the first time I messed up and I sensed my confidence among the team was tanking. When the inning ended, I found the Lou Pinella inside myself and made a scene by spiking my glove and hat as my teammates looked on with loud silence. Release. It felt good. I made up for the run the next inning by stealing two bases (first time I even attempted a stolen base) and got batted in. But the damage was done. After the game, my associate pastor made a direct route to me and laid it out: “No church, no ball.” Considering our team was composed of three non-church members playing for us, I knew that was my last game as a member of the team and my church as a whole.
The next day, I took a walk in my neighborhood for some summer air and collect my thoughts about all things religion. While questioning my personal dissatisfaction within my WELS Lutheran church, I walked by a Catholic school and ELCA Lutheran church when a light blue Methodist bus drove by. How?
How did it come to this?
Christianity has slowly deteriorated and been watered down by a menu of sugar-coated religions. When going out for a big night, do you go for Mexican, Italian, or maybe Chinese? Religion is like the same; do you want to go for Lutheran, Catholic, or Presbyterian? Every one has a little something different for your taste. Whereas Christianity is God-made, religion is man-made and steered off a cliff of confusion. I never read anywhere in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John that says mankind should appoint a pope to be some kind of pseudo Jesus-substitute watchdog to police the world from sin. Likewise, how can the church deny a believer from communion? Religion has gotten so big that its hard to get back to the basic premise of following Jesus, and for nearly all people (myself included), its plain too hard. Based on relatively insignificant experiences, I find myself questioning the entire premise of a church.
Let me state, I still identify myself as a follower of Jesus. To put a label on it, a Christian, believer, what-have-you. I hope to frame my life and my will modeled by Jesus and not by the evangelical strain I worry is being practiced throughout Wisconsin and other parts of the country. For me personally as an introvert, I want to preach the Word through my actions, using words only when necessary. As they always say, “actions speak louder than words”, and if I can preach love and give support to the few who accept my company, I’ll prove to be there when needed as a friend, brother, son, and hopefully sometime in my lifetime, a partner and later father. I don’t need to push my beliefs or faith on others when convictions are already there for others (i.e., atheism). But my concern, or rather fear if I want to be completely vulnerable about it all, is if I follow only Christ and dismiss the church entirely, what am I losing?
So what am I getting at?
I’ve gone to one church for 30 years. I’m done with it. Left with no ministry, I want to know what is being preached and practiced elsewhere. To support my Christianity, I’m exploring a new journey within myself. A Wayfaring Stranger. 52 churches in 52 weeks. How will this journey improve my faith? Who is inspiring others in their convictions? On the flip side, who could be hurting other’s faith by what they teach? How will this experience change my views in regards to theology? It brings up a multitude of questions that will increase over time. I have no idea what’s to come… but at least I’m doing something about it.
