This is the post that I wasn’t sure I’d ever write....
The year was 2016, and a false understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity that had permeated Acts 29 and the Southern Baptist convention was exposed. The fallout was not pretty.
Isn’t the trinity the realm of serious theologians with their bushy beards and cigars? It just so happens that this false understanding had been used as the foundation of a pervasive teaching dealing with so-called “Biblical” manhood and womanhood. Suddenly, the floor fell out from under me.
I began to research, even enrolling in a seminary class on the doctrine of the Trinity. I read books and articles and wrote papers. I filled pages and pages with notes. I kept coming back to the early church fathers and their councils. The more I read of their writing, the more I saw the stark difference between them and the modern theologians who dominated the reformed baptist world in which I had been steeped.
These brilliant church fathers were humble. They knew the limits of human language, yet used it the best they could, only to end their attempts with an admission of their inability to capture the deep truths of God.
I would love to continue my explanation because the doctrine of the Trinity was one of the main factors contributing to our move to Anglicanism, but this was not the only thing that happened.
The years between 2016 and 2019 were the darkest, stormiest, most chaotic years, especially in my own heart and mind. A dear friendship began to crack. I had a hysterectomy. The highly controversial candidate Donald Trump was elected president the day I awoke from my surgical stupor. In 2017, David quit his full-time job and steady paycheck to start his own business, and later, both boys were in school for the first time. #Metoo and #Churchtoo erupted into the scene. Black Lives Matter rose up against police brutality. The evangelical and reformed church as a whole responded very badly to all of it.
In all of this I sunk into the deepest depression I had ever experienced. I called David at work one morning, and he rushed home to find me sobbing face down on the floor, crying, “My brain is broken.”
Over the next few years, the friendship I treasured finally broke with an explosion that reverberated through all of our church and social lives. But mine wasn’t the only one. I watched friendships crumble around me between people I loved dearly. Our long-time community was fractured in the worst of ways. We made it through those years bloody and broken, barely limping into better days. Then the pandemic hit.
When the pressures of the outside world push in hard, things begin to crack. The pressures didn't cause the cracks; they revealed places that were already weak. As pressures mounted in the form of multiple stressors within the life of the church community, we realized something was very, very wrong.
We found ourselves at relational impasses on more than one occasion. There were situations we could no longer navigate. These things snowballed and pushed both of us further and further out of the ministries we served in over the years.
No one involved handled it well. Relational wounds grew deeper, infecting all of our interactions. Between 2019 and 2021, we tried our best to seek reconciliation and understanding. We repented, we pleaded, we set up meeting after meeting. Then one day, as David told me, it hit him like a flash of lightning: we can’t stay here.
It wasn’t necessarily the people, it was the system that made reconciliation impossible.
Don't get me wrong. Structure and organization are important. They are a common good given to all men, Christian or not, by God’s grace. But when structures take on a life of their own and become more important than the people upon whom they have been built, it doesn’t go well. When a system distorts the pastoral heart of Jesus, the Shepherd of our souls, it is very, very wrong.
I understand, though. When the world around you and inside of you is crumbling, you attempt to seek safety by holding on to a structure that seems firm. God told His people in Isaiah 36:6, “See, you are relying on Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who rely on him.” Sometimes, you lean on a splintered structure and get pierced.
Systems can’t repent. Institutions can’t apologize. Structures can’t work restoration. We were in a structure that was forming us, and forming us badly.
Then there comes a time when you can’t say anything more. The only thing left to do is leave, but we left in hope (you can read about this here.) Maybe you were led to believe it was an agreeable, friendly parting. It wasn’t. We were told to remain silent and we complied. I do believe all involved loved each other, and still do. Attempts to reconcile after we left continued. David and I still pray for true reconciliation. I’m fairly certain it’s what all involved want. I know it is what Jesus wants. When He returns, He’ll finally finish the work of reconciling all things that He began on the cross.
We weren’t victims. Victimhood implies an evil intention that I do not believe was there. I would say that we were all casualties of “friendly fire.” Someone pulled the pin from a faulty grenade and it blew up on our side. Everyone nearby was hit.
David often says that we were both drawn out and pushed out of our community. All that we had been learning about spiritual formation, about the sacraments, about the Trinity, about early church fathers, and about church structure seemed to be leading us in a different direction. But where?
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