I’ve enjoyed reading the passionate and poetic recent conversation around “Leaving Evangelicalism.” It’s a conversation mostly between progressive sisters and brothers online. I love the expressiveness and mindfulness of the voices I’m reading, including the wonderful Sara Bessey.

Here is a thing I have found true of my progressive friends and family:

• We have many wonderful ideas… perhaps too many.
• We also have many poignant critiques (again, perhaps too many).
• Yet we have built very little. And that might be a key part of this cultural moment.

Sure, there is more than enough to be disgruntled (and disappointed) with in Evangelicalism. But that’s just one part of what it means to leave a relationship. The other part has to do with what is in us. What are we capable of? What do we want? Discontent always points at vision. So, do we have a clear enough sense of our vision? And more importantly… do we have the capacity to make that vision a tangible, practical reality?

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There are questions I think my progressive friends and family face if we are to make “leaving evangelicalism” something real. They are difficult questions to answer because, in part, we can’t write authoritatively about them (not really) until we’ve done something – until we’ve acted.

Blogs are good.
Sometimes very good.
Our online tribes can be welcoming and generous.
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But are our homes as welcoming?  Can we be good neighbors to the folks who can physically knock on our doors, eat our bread, drink our wine (or beer or whiskey).. and disagree with us directly to our faces?  Do we have enough space in our actual spaces to fully embody (as is required by an incarnational religion) the things we think and believe? Because that’s what it takes to make something worth journeying toward. Walking away is never enough.
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So.. those questions… phrased more concisely:

• What will we build? Having an opinion is the easiest thing in the world aside from having a negative opinion. The ease of that task doesn’t make the opinion any less worth having or less true… it just means that it’s not enough.

• What part will you (yes you) play? Knowing something is wrong ought to come with some level of responsibility. If it’s important enough (and it is) to blow up your FB wall about, can you translate that emotional energy into some kind of culture making? You don’t have to be the principle architect of that better culture (I don’t think everyone should plant a church, for instance), but you can at least be a faithful support and wise critic for those women and men who are making something good, true, beautiful and new.

• What will we do when the thing(s) we build share many of the same spaces, traditions and even the same flaws as the constructs we left behind us?

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These are the questions that faced the early protestants, leaving the Mother Church.
These are the questions that faced the early church mothers and fathers, leaving Judaism.
This cultural moment (which I do think this is) is not unique or new.

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But it  feels new because it is incredibly difficult – it asks more of us than we are likely prepared to give. Moments such as these ask us to become people of power.

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Which brings me to this concern:

I wonder if the progressive critique of power (and the abuses thereof) may have worn the idea of having power too thin. I wonder if we are afraid to wield power ourselves. But that will what is required if “leaving evangelicalism” is to mean anything at all. We will have to build and proclaim and make and stand. And doing do puts us on the scales to be measured and found either sufficient or lacking by critics such as ourselves.  It’s not enough to leave.

We’ll have to build, make and create.
We’ll have to be people of power.

Like the ones who build the culture we believe we must now leave.Here is something true: Jesus was not afraid to appear (and be) powerful. He built a culture of discipleship wherein those shared in life with Him couldn’t watch him feed thousands… they had to take up the bread and fish themselves and hand it to the hungry masses.

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The most vital critique Jesus and His disciples leveled at the old-and-dying religious culture they were leaving behind was that they actively created a better culture. They put themselves at risk. I think that’s the way of Jesus. I want that to be my way as well.

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To add a bit more of my thought to the conversation, I’m giving away a chapter from my book CMYK: The Process of Life Together.  This chapter, like all the chapters in the book, is anchored by a letter to a loved one in their process of faith. Each of those letters is coupled with a song (lyrics appear in the chapter) and a personal reflection.