Six Ways I Quit Church

In the classic movie A River Runs Through It, Brad Pitt’s character (Paul) is lousy at life but pretty darn good at fly fishing. At one point he says something like, “It won’t be long till I’ll be able to think like a fish!”

The best church leaders see value in learning to “think like a fish,” yet many of us think less like a fish and more like the captain of a charter boat. The longer we serve the church, the more removed from the streams, lakes, and seas we become. The result is that our thinking gets limited, our instincts get dulled, and we forget what life in the water is like.

Who can blame us? After all, even our most dedicated church members get five or six days to swim around in the real world in between their trips aboard the boat. But we can’t get away. Life in the church eventually gets to us and we wake up one day to realize that we know more about the boat than we do the fish. And this makes us lousy fishermen! What we need to do is to quit church.

I admit it: from 1998 through 2002 I did not attend church on Sunday mornings with any consistency. It’s a long story, but suffice it to say that I spent many of those mornings watching CNN, reading the New York Times, eating at the pancake house, and buying groceries. It felt really good, especially the slightly naughty looks exchanged with my unchurched brethren as we passed one another on the produce aisle. I will also admit that it took me about a year to realize that those unchurched fish were not all that bad. They were not especially vicious or rude. In fact, they were quite normal. I learned to like them, even to love them. Becoming one of them has given me a new kind of love in some strange Philippians 2 kind of way. That’s reason enough for me to advocate quitting.

It’s counter-intuitive, but we must find ways to disconnect from the church way of thinking, feeling, and living so that the pre-Christians in our community stand a better chance of being influenced by Christ and the church.

So how do we go about quitting church? From one quitter to another, here are six ways I’ve jumped overboard:

1. Get out of the office. Leaders who spend nine to five in a church office inevitably dry out to the rich rhythms of life on the outside. My main office is a bagel shop where I write sermons, do planning, and have meetings. I can’t quite explain it, but I take on a whole different attitude when I trade ministry books, seminary diplomas, and last Sunday’s bulletin for real-world surroundings and lots of fish-talk.

2. Go to school. Last fall our local community college invited me to teach a religion course. I thought teaching would be a nice way to engage the local culture, but I decided to take courses instead of teaching one. As a student I had a chance to trade in my church persona (I stand and you sit; I talk and you listen; I teach and you learn) and be on the same wavelength as normal people making their way through life. I took courses in math and business, but you could do art, cooking, computers, or whatever. Just stay away from religion courses that will enable you to remain in church mode.

3. Party on. Church parties tend to be covered dish affairs where the chicken is cold and the salad is warm. For a real party, I go to rock concerts. Instead of imagining what fish do for fun, I stand beside them in the mosh pit, smell the pot fumes mix with beer stench, and feel the energy of people trying their best to live. Whether it’s KISS in a coliseum or a local band playing a bar, it’s always a scary, deafening, and intriguing experience.

4. Get out of town. Even in a large city, pastors feel like public people. And public people are always on-on guard, on call, on stage, and on the wagon. I take advantage of travel opportunities to behave like a native. Being on a trip is not license to sin, but it does give me the freedom to drop the pastor-man routine. I find that real conversations and observations can occur when I am out of town because my mind isn’t corrupted by the innate desire to pressure people to come to my church this Sunday.

5. Go to work. Imagine working forty hours a week at a job you don’t like, with people you barely tolerate, for a wage you resent. While that may sound a lot like ministry, it is not. After being an associate and lead pastor for six years I found myself looking for a part-time ministry gig while in grad school. Nothing panned out, so I took a job with the university’s custodial crew and found out what real people do all day. They cuss, they complain, they dream, and they try to make sense out of where life is taking them. When I need a real-work reminder, I go to the factory where my dad has worked for thirty years. He lets me in and the other employees usually think I’m applying for a job (if my preaching doesn’t improve I might be!).

6. Just quit. There is no substitute for just not going to church. Maybe you need to spend your next sabbatical doing something other than living at a monastery or hopping from church to church looking for a new batch of ideas. Or maybe you just need to quit right now and go swim with the fish for a while.

Chad Hall serves as consultant/coach with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (http://www.bscnc.org/) and as the lead pastor of Connection Church in Hickory, North Carolina (http://www.connectionchurch.com/).

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