The Vibe at 10th Church

It’s hard to know what to tell you about our time at 10th church. I want you to know that it gifted us with some wonderful friendships, one family in particular became a lifeline for us. I want you to know that a group of women from the church threw a lovely baby shower for me. I want you to know that one elder came over to my home regularly to entertain my older two kids so I could have a break. I want you to know that there are a lot of good-hearted people at 10th church. I want you to know that this is not everyone’s story, but it is mine.

People turned their heads when I walked by at church. They smiled and oohed and aahed over my children. They told me weekly how exhausted I must be and “God bless you” while shaking their heads with empathy that sometimes felt more like pity. Pastor’s wives are frequently compared to First Ladies and it’s an apt metaphor: I was often noticed but rarely seen. I made my recurring Sunday spot on the first row of the right-hand bank of pews. There my kids spread the contents of my purse across the bench, and scribbled in hymnals and offering envelopes, and constantly asked me when we were going to go to Daddy’s office and take candy from the secretary’s desk. My toddler made eyes at the regulars behind us, and I nursed her when she fussed. I was discreet with my breastfeeding. I didn’t want to deal with criticism, but I certainly wasn’t going to cover up or leave either.

I instinctively resisted 10th church’s rules about how we show up in God’s wild and unruly presence. There was a time to sit and another time to stand. There was an unspoken dress code. If I was late to church (which I almost always was), the ushers would make me wait for the end of a prayer or song before opening the sanctuary doors and allowing me to enter. I wasn’t used to such formality and honestly it baffled me. How could a God who chose to become a newborn, slicked with vernix and amniotic fluid, be so easily offended? How could a bloodied and crucified God who was humiliated by the authorities be bothered by a mother and small children walking down the aisle during a song?

In the first row I was close to my husband. He was behind the pulpit. I wanted to be close to Simon; the kids wanted to be close to Daddy. We were his cheerleaders (literally: “Hi Daddy! Look! That’s Daddy!”) and we were so proud of him. There he was, donning the robe he hated but proclaiming the faith he loved. Simon was tender and warm and relatable and passionate about God the Father who welcomes the Prodigal Son with arms wide and a wet kiss. He also knew how to push back, enough to intrigue but not inflame, on the white supremacy and American exceptionalism in the congregation.

We moved to Arizona two weeks before the 2016 presidential election. We were living in chaos, in a brand new world, but the normal disruption of relocation was nothing compared to the disorientation that rocked me when Donald Trump became President. But most of our church was not disoriented, but rather elated. Folks were bursting with joy that our new leader opposed abortion and gay marriage, because that’s what it means to be a good Christian, they said. What? How’s that? Every Sunday during the Prayers of the People (unless Simon was leading it) I would hear “Thank you God for President Trump.” What universe is this? Where is Jesus? My heart felt so heavy, like it might just fall through my body from the sheer weight and shatter on the floor.

There seemed to be an epidemic of missing the point at 10th church. I have a crystal-clear memory of arriving at church on Pentecost Sunday and being asked at the door why I wasn’t wearing red. Pastors’ wives really need to be actresses to avoid getting themselves into trouble, and I’m no actress, so I imagine my irritation was visible on my face. Internally I raged.

What does it matter if I’m wearing red or not?! Sure, yes, the 200 people at this service are wearing red, bravo. I don’t know what this is about and I don’t care. Congratulations on the collective effort to wear the same stupid color. When are we going to organize around something that actually matters like caring for the poor or feeding the hungry or dismantling our prejudices? You know, THE STUFF THAT JESUS DID?!

But just as I was about to give a reflexive, sugary-sweet answer, the inquisitor noticed my belt (which was coincidentally red), and pointed and crooned, “Oh, there it is!” I fake-smiled at her and ushered my children to our seats.

There it is? Wow. Because that’s what the gospel has been reduced to: checking the boxes. Believing the right things, showing up every seven days, and fucking color-coordination. What happened to Jesus? What happened to the subversive rabbi who challenged the empire? Instead we’ve neutered Jesus and become the empire…

I didn’t have a clue it was Pentecost Sunday that day, nor that there is a tradition to wear red to symbolize the fire of the Holy Spirit. The church calendar was not emphasized in my “low church” background. I don’t scorn church traditions (actually it’s been interesting to learn about them. 10th church was definitely the “churchiest” church I’d been a part of at the time). What hacked me off was the focus on external easy buttons and the complete lack of focus on embodying Christ in our lives.

Tony Campolo once said, “I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.”

Grievously, that rings true of 10th church. It wasn’t — isn’t — true of everyone there, but it was my primary and loudest impression. It was clearly reflected in the budget. I remember when we celebrated 50 years as a church and learning that the party cost $20,000. I remember the night Simon came home from session meeting and told me he was the only vote to oppose spending HALF A MILLION DOLLARS on a new organ (when the current organ worked fine but wasn’t “the best”). We stopped tithing after that. The congregation raised the $500,000 quickly — all I could do was imagine how we could have alleviated some of the enormous suffering at the Arizona-Mexico border instead. If we valued compassion over capital. Or Jesus over the Church. Love over power. Humans over Americans.

10th church wasn’t like the softer evangelical churches I knew. This was all more…overt. Everything was more traditional here, from the worship style to the congregants wearing Sunday Best, to Republican politics and concern for supposed family values. 10th church had once been a PCUSA church (liberal arm of Presbyterianism) and this was reflected in their church leadership — half of the elders were women. This was revolutionary for me! Never, never ever, had I been part of a church that allowed women to have a share of the real power. I remember fondly when our senior pastor used the phrasing “fisher of people” instead of “fisher of men” in a sermon — that meant so much to me. Yes! Thank you! You see me! Jesus saw women, Jesus sees me, and it shouldn’t be my burden to mentally edit every text to make the gospel include me! <tears>

I smile when I think of it. But I sigh when I think about why 10th church chose to leave the PCUSA for the more conservative EPC. There were several reasons, but two big ones were the PCUSA’s full affirmation of LGBTQ people, and their rejection of biblical inerrancy — 10th church believed in “traditional marriage” and Sola Scriptura. These conservative positions weren’t new to me, but both had come to make me uncomfortable. Particularly when I learned about the very messy, years-long laborious process that 10th church underwent to leave the denomination, so fierce was their determination to distance themselves from people who differed from them, either in sexuality or belief.

I wondered how long I could hide that I didn’t fit so well either. Would they be fierce to distance themselves from me?

Photo credits in order:

• Photo by Nick van den Berg on Unsplash
• Photo by History in HD on Unsplash
• Photo by freestocks on Unsplash
• Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
• Photo by Ben Mater on Unsplash