I thought it was a joke.
I was new to the faith, so to speak, in that I had never really HAD faith before, but I did finally have it at that time in my life. It was after my fourth baptism. My faith was like the coolness of a new day dawning with a gentle and refreshing breeze.
Thinking back on it, the time was also stressful as my anxiety rippled through my mind and body over whether I was finally doing “faith” right. My wife and I had plugged in to a church community and were loving it.
Our young married couples’ group was vibrant and enjoying weekly get togethers just to talk and hang out. I was involved in several church ministries as I grappled with what real faith should look like in comparison to the counterfeit version I had lived prior.
Then the opportunity arrived to take a road trip and attend a Promise Keepers conference. I was looking forward to the heavily-hyped, real man experience. Promise Keepers was a big deal in the church we attended. Going to PK Conferences was the “in” thing that biblical men did, even if it was a Friday night.
I wasn’t looking forward to being away from my wife. I still considered us “newly” wed, even being just over three years into marriage at this point. I valued spending time with her. I still do. It means a lot to me to just ‘hang’ with her.
Anyway, I decided to go to the conference and arrived at the church early. I was sitting in the church office foyer waiting for the rest of the guys to arrive. I was nervous because I didn’t personally know anyone that was going.
I wasn’t looking forward to a trip with a gaggle of strangers, but did have my Promise Keepers bible clutched on my lap as I waited. I was the first to arrive. Then it happened. I wish that I wasn’t as affected by it as I was but nonetheless there I was and here I am.
A deacon in the church arrived. He was the volunteer to drive if I recall correctly. He greeted me as he arrived. He and I had served together in some community ministry so I knew of him somewhat.
He was informed by the church secretary that he needed to go pick up a certain member. An elderly, walker-bound man. I listened as a deacon loudly complained about the task. This partially-crippled old man was going to slow us down. We were going to have to accommodate for him and it would cut into the enjoyment of the trip.
It felt wrong. I wasn’t sure, being a new believer and so young, if it was my place to challenge this guy. I was immature in both my faith and my journey. I wouldn’t know really how to confront a church leader, or if it was even my place or allowed. Thinking back, rather than sit sheepishly, I should have offered to bear the responsibility.
I just knew that I didn’t like what was said. This was just the excuse I needed to stay home with my wife.
After the deacon left to go pick up the man, I quietly slipped out of the office and avoided the trip. The deacon called me to apologize if his comments were offensive and convince me to go on the trip. I accepted his apology but declined on the trip. I lied and said something came up because I didn’t want him to know that his comments were the reason I decided against the trip.
I didn’t want him to feel responsible because he shouldn’t have. He was just being human. Besides, I was relieved to have an excuse to spend more time with Kristy. I wanted to be the ‘godly’ man that PK focused on, but didn’t want it to cut into the time I spent with my wife.
I struggled in processing how I did feel, or should feel, or even could feel about what happened. I remember this event causing me to wonder how many of the church leaders, whom I had elevated, were doing things just like this one. Were they all really so … normal?
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t judging him. I was realizing that maybe my idealization of church wasn’t right. My own shattered expectations crumbled within my psyche. In that moment, I committed myself to being very careful with my own words so as not to hinder others on their paths to Christ.
My takeaway was the importance bearing on our faith by the little things we say and do. I went through a lengthy stretch of being overly circumspect because I didn’t want to offend anyone I didn’t want to be anyone’s stumbling block in their pursuit of Christ.
In my disproportionate response to that event, I developed a form of spiritual anxiety. Being human and genuine became both a blessing and a curse and I was unsure what the best and proper footing would be for my walk. Unfortunately, my resulting walk was filled with this insincerity.
Shortly thereafter, while still battling this mental item, I became a pastor and my anxiety grew. It’s impossible to be as open and sincere as is necessary for mental wellness while serving as a pastor. Your struggles are definitively YOUR struggles and no one gets in. Your spouse and family witness them, but no one really gets to share them with you.
I held myself to an impossible standard and in doing so reinforced the walls anxiety had crafted around my life. I had to be perfect and every little slip was perceived as a cataclysmic failure. Add to that anxiety the view of many in the church that a pastor is called out because they’re doing better at this faith stuff than everyone else and you have a disastrous recipe for the mind.
Fifteen years. That’s how long I served as a bi-vocational pastor. This means that coupled with the anxiety of being perfect and not screwing up at church, I also had to do the same thing in a full-time job outside of the church in order to just provide for my family.
In my years as a pastor while struggling to make ends meet on the income provided by those churches:
I’ve been asked to resign over a misunderstanding, not actual wrong-doing.
I’ve been cussed out during worship by a music minister.
I’ve been roundly criticized for not requiring my wife to fill the typical “pastor’s wife” roles in the church.
I’ve been called on the carpet and yelled at for daring to host an outreach event on the church grounds because I didn’t seek “permission” in the appropriate channels.
I’ve been told that facial hair is ungodly and that no good pastor would dare wear a mustache and beard.
I’ve also been told the opposite.
I’ve been told that I don’t dress like a pastor. When I wore suits they were too much, when I wore jeans they were too little.
I’ve been told that I didn’t do enough as a pastor when I didn’t attend every church event.
I’ve been told that no “real” pastor takes a vacation and that if I wanted vacations I had to pay for any supply preaching.
I was told, after watching my own grandmother’s last moments in this life, that I was expected to be back at church that evening to preach or I had to fund a supply preacher.
I’ve been told sermons were too long, too short, too worldly, too biblical (yes, too many page-turning verse references).
I’ve been told that if I derelict and a false teacher for refusing to use the pulpit for politics.
I’ve been told that it wasn’t necessary to preach on racism and bigotry because those things no longer exist.
I’ve been told that if I didn’t lead my church to do all the Old Covenant duties that I was leading them to hell in a handbasket.
I’ve had my own Christian relatives family, though living locally, rarely ever attend any services to hear me preach.
I’ve been left with my wife alone, without being able to develop genuine friendships with others, because of the isolating demands of ministry.
Does it surprise any of you that this long string of painful experiences left me feeling as though I wasn’t good enough for anyone? Is it any more surprising that as I’m healing mentally my capacity for concern over other people’s opinions of me or my ministry shrinks?
I realize, as much as anyone, that our churches are full of imperfect people. I’ve been one of them for years. I’ve also been their target for years.
I’ve played the pretty façade game long enough to recognize it when I see it. Most especially the prick in my own conscience when I catch myself playing it again.
However, let’s tell the whole story.
I’ve preached other pastor’s sermons simply because I had so little time to prepare one of my own.
I’ve preached while strangling the porn running through my mind that I was hooked on and couldn’t come clean.
I’ve preached sermons AT people who had dared to hurt me, question my decisions, or question my authority.
I’ve gone through the motions preaching and attending church events more times than I care to remember.
The most memorable, painful, and cringe-worthy moment for me was the time I sat in a member’s home, hoping to reach reconciliation with an older couple. Why was I there? My sermon, the prior Sunday, focused on homosexuality and how all homosexuals were heading for hell if they couldn’t stop being homosexual.
My sermon broke this poor couple’s spirit. Their son, who was homosexual, had died a few years before I arrived as pastor. They were mourning for his lost life and soul and my sermon had left them distraught. They spent that afternoon pointing to the spiritual life their son had as he struggled with his homosexuality until he died.
I remember casting frequent gaze out the window because I felt horrible. Instead of comforting them in their tragedy, I put them on the defensive. I added grief to their already insurmountable sorrow. I shred their hearts. I stomped on their smoldering wicks of faith (Isaiah 42:3; Matthew 12:20).
I was so broken hearted that my words weren’t healing for them. I learned that day the difference between calling someone on their sin and calling them to Christ. I’ve never again preached hellfire and brimstone from the pulpit.
Add that to my list of “failures” if it makes you feel better about your own faith.
One thing I discovered in my ministry is just how aware most of us are of our faults. We come to things like church hoping for community. We yearn for a refreshing cup of cold water or a healing bowl of hot water. Instead we find tepid, lukewarm water that does little for our souls.
My Christian deconstruction/reconstruction isn’t about imperfect people. It is about perfecting my own faith by bringing it intentionally to Jesus’ feet. I call this a renovation process. My book dealing with the Sermon on the Mount, which I’ve linked to below, serves as the foundation of this process for me.
In mid 2017, I was pulled in my spirit. I believe it was the Holy Spirit drawing me. Something new was going to happen in my faith walk. Many of the things I’d grappled with in the faith, some of which I’ve shared on this blog, came to fullness in my spirituality.
I’ll deal with each of those things in future posts, but for now, I just want to focus on how severely limited my journey was by my strident fear of being open. I didn’t want others to see who I really am and what I was growing to believe because I knew most in my faith community wouldn’t stomach it.
As I’ve been more honest, I’ve been shunned, ignored, condemned, judged and ostracized by the very community to which I committed all those years of pastoral service. I’m the one they use as an example of what not to do with your sincere questions.
Back to 2017.
I was climbing out of an immensely deep depression. I hadn’t prayed in months. My preaching was going through the motions. I was heart-less. My conscience warred with my mind every Sunday. I was called to preach, or so I thought, where was the surging fire that had filled so much of my previous time as pastor?
I began praying again and felt the nudge of the Holy Spirit.
It was time to get back to the Foundation. It was time to read the Sermon on the Mount with an open mind and with the belief that everything Jesus calls us to in it is for us to actually do as we live out an active faith. For a year it was my primary morning reading. I would read some passages to put a sermon together, by my main emphasis was the Sermon on the Mount.
Matthew’s version.
In reading it I became aware of what was wrong in my heart. I was still despairing of the Christian life He describes versus the one I was living and witnessing lived among my Southern Baptist and right-wing Evangelical family.
Do you know how crippling it is to one’s conscience to see Christ and realize that the main stream ideas of faith really had very little to do with what He said? I would share these dilemmas with my friends only to be informed on how I was missing my purpose.
The refrain of Third Day’s How Do You Know? echoes continually in my mind. If you’ve never heard it, just listen below:
This song resonates so much with my renovation. So many people are convinced because they’ve been told and told. They’re so convinced that they’ve stopped even trying to be my friend because of my questions.
The shunning is painful.
The cold shoulder I’ve received from people whose faith has meant the world to me in my walk is probably the most painful thing. I really thought these people loved me. If they love me, why don’t they help me get where God is leading me without it having to fit their box or agenda?
As I said earlier, if any of them have read my book, then they understand that the foundation and underpinnings of my journey are the words and actions of our King, Jesus Christ. What I’m feeling is that they don’t “get” me and that they really don’t care to “get” me.
I’m too much trouble for them.
I guess you see now how my mental health struggles figure in to this equation. My anxiety leads me down the rocky, craggy trail of insecurity. “You don’t matter!” is the echoing refrain that blazes through my mind. I’m so thankful for how my wife and kids make me feel. Their love for me is a salve.
That is how these journeys intertwine.
My brain is incapable of pushing forward with contradictory inputs. I’m left in a wrestling match with my Creator. I want His will to be done in my life. I pray for His kingdom to come and His will to be done through me every day. However, I’m aware that this round of grappling is going to leave me transformed like every character throughout Scripture who faced similar.
I’m seeing Scripture from a variety of new perspectives that both convict and comfort. God is showing me who He is …. who He REALLY is … and shredding the veneer, the veil, that had been pulled over my eyes through years of American Evangelical Christianity.
In answering the question: “what is an Xvangelical?” I would posit the following.
Xvangelicals are people who believe in Jesus Christ and center their entire spiritual life around Him, His life, His love, and His teaching.
Xvangelicals depend completely on the Holy Spirit and place a high value on spirituality.
Xvangelicals were born-again into an Evangelical fellowship, or were raised in one.
Xvangelicals are defined by our experiences with Christ through Scripture, our circumstances, and Evangelical Churches.
Xvangelicals are ashamed of our own hypocrisies and those of the various Evangelical Churches.
Xvangelicals believe that true faith is displayed not in blind acceptance of Evangelical doctrines and traditions but in wrestling with God in the example of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all of the heroes of our faith.
Xvangelicals believe that we must be better ambassadors of Christ’s love in our daily lives.
This feels like a good stopping point for part one. I’ll flesh those statements that define Xvangelical out more in the next few posts.
If you’re not frightened off, I look forward to sharing my journey with you and I sincerely hope to hear some of your journeys as well.
Grace and peace!
If you liked this post, you just might enjoy my book, What He Said: Living the Sermon on the Mount, Transforming American Culture.
If you want to follow my journey, you can read each of the collections below:
Mark West, Xvangelical 
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