The final entry of my sabbatical adventure away from the Church entitled: "Church No More."

Almost three months ago I (an ordained minster who has gone to church my whole life) walked away from church– for three months. It is what I've decided to do with my sabbatical. You can read about my initial thoughts on my blog or on The Huffington Post. As the journey unfolds, I will be blogging about it in this series entitled, “Church No More.” I hope you will not only follow along, but add your voice to the reflection by commenting or joining the discussion on my FB page.

They say you can never go home again. The thinking being, having left and experienced new things, you have changed and the people back home have continued in their lives just as you left them. Your experience of going back home again will necessarily be very different from your experience of home as you remember it, even though it may have changed very little.

In many ways, Church is one of my homes and I left it. I walked away for three months and experienced a bit of life outside of it. The three months are up and I'm going back home. This Sunday (September 2) is my first Sunday back.

The saying “you can't go home again,” probably originated from Thomas Wolfe's novel, “You Can't Go Home Again.” It's the story of an author who leaves his home, writes about it from a distance and then tries to go home again. It doesn't exactly go well. The folks in the town are none-too-happy about him airing their dirty laundry so publicly. So, you can't go home again.

Well, I'm going to try. Yes, I left the Church and wrote about it from a distance and judging from some of the comments and emails I received, some folks are none-too-happy about some of the things I said, but it's time to go back to the Church.

The good news for me is I'm primarily going back to church (little “c,” as in the church where I serve) and then secondarily to Church (big “C,” the institution). I love the folks at Vandalia Presbyterian Church. We're a small church with a big heart. I'm looking forward to seeing them all again and to doing ministry with them again. Here's the thing: I've changed. That worries me a bit.

Part 5 of my sabbatical adventure away from the Church entitled: "Church No More."


A little over two months ago I (an ordained minster who has gone to church my whole life) walked away from church– for three months. It is what I've decided to do with my sabbatical. You can read about my initial thoughts on my blog or on The Huffington Post. As the journey unfolds, I will be blogging about it in this series entitled, “Church No More.” I hope you will not only follow along, but add your voice to the reflection by commenting or joining the discussion on my FB page.


A little over two months ago, I decided I'd spend my three month sabbatical not going to church. Which might seem like a perfectly normal thing to do – except that I'm a minister. I've had some strange and wonderful experiences which I've written about, but possibly more strange and more wonderful than the experiences are the responses I've received.

From the very beginning the most frustrating response I get is not folks telling me I'll lose my faith if I leave church (and they have), or the ones telling me I can't begin to understand what it's like to be Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR) in three short months (lots of those were also disturbingly aggressively worded), but rather the ones that say, “Oh, 'sabbatical!' Thanks. Now I have a word to call what I do! I stopped going to church years ago.”

“No!,” I'd think while unsuccessfully trying to figure out how to reach through my laptop screen and shake some sense into them, “You are not on sabbatical! The sabbatical I'm taking about has to do with taking a rest, not leaving. It's rest and recuperation – communion with God in a way that is restorative. It's not about leaving! Sheesh.”

More than two months into my sabbatical, I now have to say, “Boy was I wrong.” They are on sabbatical, more so than I am.

Sabbatical is about rest and recuperation. It is about communing with God in a restorative way. For a lot of church going people that is not the way they would describe Sunday mornings. I know it wasn't for me. Sure, it was at times. I certainly always looked forward to seeing people and we definitely experienced communion with God in the fellowship and worship we shared. Rest, however? Recuperation? A restorative experience? Uh, no.

“Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” In the Protestant church, Sunday is our Sabbath, but there seems to be far too little sabbath in the Sabbath. While there are exceptions to the rule, for far too many people, going to church is a chore. There's nothing restful or restorative about it. However, there is a pretty good chance that someone will make a remark about how you are dressed or shoot a sideward glance at you because you are singing entirely too loud or do any number of surprisingly judgmental things while they presumably gather to learn how to follow the teachings of the one who taught “judge not” and “love your neighbor.”

And that's just the tip of the tension iceberg that Sunday morning has become. Try breaking the segregation barrier in most churches. Try helping out where you weren't asked to help. Try suggesting a new way to do outreach or invite a homeless person to worship. How about questioning the biblicalness of the Trinity or asking why Jesus seems a little different in the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John? Ah! Feeling rested and restored yet?

Part 4 of my sabbatical adventure away from the church entitled: "Church No More."


A little over two months ago I (an ordained minster who has gone to church my whole life) walked away from church– for three months. It is what I've decided to do with my sabbatical. You can read about my initial thoughts on my blog or on The Huffington Post. As the journey unfolds, I will be blogging about it in this series entitled, “Church No More.” I hope you will not only follow along, but add your voice to the reflection by commenting or joining the discussion on my FB page.



I love the Church. I have literally been going to church my whole life– until two months ago. I stopped cold turkey. You can read about it in my article “Ain't Goin' To Church No More.”

Masses of people responded. It astounded me. Most ministers expressed concern saying things like, “My Brother, I am worried that you may be on a dangerous journey,” or, “I fear you may lose your faith.” Frankly, what I heard them saying was, “Faith is so fragile it needs the Church to enforce it,” which only made me more certain I was making a remarkably healthy spiritual choice.

Formerly church-going folk frequently told me things like, “There is a large disconnect between the 'Church' of today and the teachings of Jesus,”and “I have found God in a dynamic, deep way and I love God so much more and for real now than when I was unwittingly trying to fit in with my church culture.”

I've been away from church for two months now and I have to say, I am more at peace than I ever have been. My faith is stronger than it ever has been. My family life is healthier than it ever has been. My desire to seek out God and follow the teachings of Jesus is stronger than it ever has been. 

I do not want to go back to Church because life outside of Church is better. It just is. There's no dogma complicating the path to God. It is more than refreshing to escape the games church-folk play with the intent of establishing control and “rightness” on their part; it is life-giving to escape it. Being able to preach the Good News without worrying about which clique within the church will quietly use my perspective against me simply because they don't agree with me has allowed me to honor the call God  placed on me more than I could in an installed pastorate. 

Yet, with only a month remaining in my sabbatical journey away from church, I'm already having to consider what going back to church will look like. I still have a month of experiencing, listening and learning to go, but I can already tell you a couple of things. One, the Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR) are right in their critique of the Church. We are fools if we don't listen extremely closely to them. And two, their consistent complaint that the church is hypocritical actually only diagnoses the symptom and not the problem.