October 16, 2024

The Many Layers of Church Disappointment

Christian apologists typically spend much of their time interacting with non-Christians, hoping to convince them that the Bible is true and faith in Christ is worth professing. That’s essential work, of course. Every bit as essential, though, is the work of understanding why once-committed Christians are leaving the church or coming to doubt core tenets of their faith.

Lisa Fields practices apologetic efforts of both kinds as head of the Jude 3 Project, which emphasizes outreach to African American believers. I like her idea of conducting “exit interviews” with people who are departing the church or strongly considering that route. Fields combines the fruit of those inquiries with personal experience in a new book, When Faith Disappoints: The Gap Between What We Believe and What We Experience.

In a recent interview with CT political reporter Harvest Prude, Fields cautions against the reductive theories or sweeping generalizations we often enlist to explain patterns of deconversion or church disaffiliation.

“Church disappointment can have so many layers,” she says. “Perhaps we’re disappointed with God. Or we’re disappointed with God’s people, or people in general. And then there are certain things we just desire and want to do in our flesh.

“There’s always a multiplicity of factors. When I’ve done exit interviews with people leaving the church, I’ve seen that it’s never just one thing. It’s layers of things that rock them.”

A Theology of Safety

I don’t think I would qualify as any kind of safety zealot. In fact, I’m sure I’ve been heard mocking the kind of overprotective parents who would envelop their kids in bubble wrap rather than risk a scratch or a scrape. But I’m hardly immune to this mindset. When the time came to start letting Ezra loose on the local playground, I remember feeling an instinctive urge to hover. What if he gets a boo-boo?!?

On some level, I suppose all of us imbibe the safety-conscious messaging that pervades our modern social environment. But how often do we subject that messaging to rigorous theological scrutiny, asking where risk mitigation belongs in a properly Christian hierarchy of values and motivations?

Jeremy Lundgren, a theology professor at Wheaton College, aims at filling this gap in his new book The Pursuit of Safety: A Theology of Danger, Risk, and Security.

The book, as CT’s Bonnie Kristian writes in her review, “includes important exhortations to prudence in a procedure-dependent age. Don’t simply follow the rules of safety, Lundgren urges. Develop wise and humane judgment and shoulder the responsibility that comes with it. There’s also an admirable rejection of chronological snobbery here, as well as a sharp critique of how our safety apparatuses continue to grow even after major risks have been ameliorated and all that remains is relatively minor fine-tuning.

“Alongside that broader discussion, Lundgren reliably returns to theological questions: whether, how, and why the church’s pursuit of safety should differ from the world’s. Safety, again, is a good thing—but it is not better than Christ, nor is it a good we can perfectly acquire and maintain before the full redemption of a fallen creation. ‘The resolution of humanity’s battle with danger,’ Lundgren writes, ‘will not take place within the horizons of history.’

“While that battle continues, though, he calls Christians to build a theology of safety before danger strikes. The contemporary Western church was caught flat-footed when COVID-19 and its containment policies appeared, Lundgren says, because we never had to think much about safety in the past. (How little of humanity can say the same!)

“Lundgren never spells out his preferred pandemic policies, but even if you think he’s hinting in the wrong direction, his push for a more deliberate theology of safety is needful. Having one wouldn’t have guaranteed the same pandemic decisions from every local congregation. But I do think it could have encouraged choices grounded more in Christ-centered prudence, care, and courage than in partisanship or instinct.”

Matt Reynolds

Senior Editor, Books

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Our September/October issue explores themes in spiritual formation and uncovers what’s really discipling us. Bonnie Kristian argues that the biblical vision for the institutions that form us is renewal, not replacement—even when they fail us. Mike Cosper examines what fuels political fervor around Donald Trump and assesses the ways people have understood and misunderstood the movement. Harvest Prude reports on how partisan distrust has turned the electoral process into a minefield and how those on the frontlines—election officials and volunteers—are motivated by their faith as they work. Read about Christian renewal in intellectual spaces and the “yearners”—those who find themselves in the borderlands between faith and disbelief. And find out how God is moving among his kingdom in Europe, as well as what our advice columnists say about budget-conscious fellowship meals, a kid in Sunday school who hits, and a dating app dilemma.

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