Why I Left?
Why did I leave the Church of the Nazarene? I had a lot of folks ask so here we go.
These are my thoughts and my experiences over the last 30 years as a minister. It is okay if we disagree, either on the issues themselves, or on the merit for surrendering my credential. These comments are not meant to attack anyone. I have no ill will. We can go about advancing God’s Kingdom in different ways. The words below are also generalities that may not describe your specific situation.
What I had to deal with is whether or not I could be in “harmony” with the Nazarene Church with these realities. The answer, for me, was that I could not. This is lengthy so I tried to make the highlights bold so one could scroll if they desire.
First, I believe that holiness is best celebrated in a call to love God and neighbor. This has been taught and demonstrated repeatedly in the biblical narrative. It is the privilege of the Body of Christ, of those who seek to follow the ways of Jesus, to ask the Spirit of God to fill us with the very presence of Jesus wherever we go. When we are filled with the fullness of the Spirit of Christ, we can overflow with His presence everywhere we go. We see, hear and love as though Christ was working in and through us.
Let me drive this home. Jesus always loved unconditionally. He ate at sinners homes to love. He healed to express love. With Jesus there was never an agenda. Never a goal. Yes, freedom and forgiveness often followed but loving was not a bait and switch. If people see our love as an agenda to bait them then switch them to something else, it will turn them off toward Jesus.
As I reflected on the teaching and practice of the Church of the Nazarene, I saw a church growing more interested in being separate than identifying with the poor, disenfranchised and lost. While having doctrinal conversations about love, our covenants call us a different direction. We will go overseas on a mission trip to love a stranger, but the kids and homeless in our own town, not so much. We raise tons of money but spend so little on our own communities to make them a better place. This hit home with me at General Assembly in three ways - when in-person worship became prescriptive, cosmetic procedures became prohibited and when I considered the financial impact of the event.
The GS messages talked about love but our policies talk about restrictions and separation. I kept feeling like the victim of a bait and switch. I felt it for the first time because I heard the assembly conversations through the ears of my students and Amazon co-workers instead of through what had previously been relationships largely experienced within the church. Our holiness message of love smells when we quickly switch the message to one’s Botox injections, which you can no longer have if you join the Nazarene Church.
Second, I believe in the demonstration of the value of all peoples, from all nations, recognizing the complexities of their culturally specific expression of following Jesus. Being an international church is hard work that requires radical intentionality that can defy Roberts Rule of Order. If we value Robert, whoever that is, above the passion for a truly global voice then non-English speakers will know it.
Foundational to this is the art of listening. All peoples have the blessed opportunity to listen to each other. Those who begin with organizational power (USA) should do most of the listening in order to structure an organization for a truly global reach and influence, including a reach into the USA’s own organizational power structures.
At General Assembly this came up four times. The first two times were when non-USA delegates simply spoke to their feeling of being dismissed, undervalued or not being given equal opportunity to speak. The chair said that they have a list of who got to the iPads first and that is how they know on whom to call. Those in power did not listen to what was being said. I will come back to this because it is a bigger deal than it seems.
The third time was when debating gender identity. It quickly became clear that various countries have different requirements on what nonprofit bylaws must say in order for ministers to be protected by the law for refusing to perform same sex marriages. In one country, “biological male / female” helped while in another it would hurt. In the US, we have a very different approach. The assembly decided to abandon any descriptor to male or female and left both international delegates without any descriptor that would help them back home. No, there was not time to figure it out because you can only talk about any issue for 20 minutes…according to the rules. Our international delegates went home with our intentionally leaving them subject to the threat of jail. The USA pastors, however, were safe.
The fourth time was when debating the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Our non-USA friends said, while not believing it to be an evidence of being filled with the Spirit, they said they actively speak in tongues with interpretation as a gift of the Spirit. Four other non-USA delegates spoke in favor. The chair repeatedly asked for someone to speak against the motion. When no one did, he declared a recess. After the recess, an alternate motion was offered by a USA delegate and quickly passed.
After all this transpired, our first brother stood up and asked what happened, and that it seemed his original motion was undone to include tongues as a gift of the Spirit. The chair said, “Well received.” and moved on. Their solution to the discovery that at least 2 regions are actively speaking in tongues was to place some documents in everyone’s iPad.
The rules were now used twice in a way that negatively impacted our non-USA friends. This was also amplified by the rules in that the translation always creates a delay. The best translators cannot keep up with the speed of the language and interpretation needed to communicate clearly and accurately. That means all non-English speakers were delayed in getting to an iPad to get in the queue to speak. We could have made rules that gave equal opportunity to all regions but by our design, deferred to English speakers because that is what a translation delay + iPad check-in + the rules will do.
This troubled me. We are not new to having international meetings. How do we celebrate being a global church when our systems minimize, or at least delay, the actual input of non-English speaking delegates? At the very least, we did not listen and I don’t believe it honored God.
Third, I believe in focused core values that are lived out in the lives of those who follow Jesus. Organizations always drift toward complexity. It takes a lot of work to slow this reality down. Focused core values force organizations to wrestle with what is most essential and stay rooted there. It is hard work to live by organizational simplicity.
I love the Nazarene Articles of Faith. Even though I love them, they are complex and keep getting microscopic rewrites that do little to make what we are trying to say make sense. When attempts to rewrite core values, such as holiness, are proposed, we live in fear of drifting toward fundamentalism or liberalism, attacking the credibility of those on the committee for fear of some nefarious influence. This broke my heart. It happened more than once from the floor.
The Nazarenes are deciding to become more and more complex. The Nazarene complexities are impossible to apply legally and practically across multi-cultural contexts. The use of language, culture, customs and morality makes the need for core values so much more critical. Meanwhile, the Nazarenes only seem interested in word-smithing existing documents.
Fourth, I believe in disciple making that makes disciples who make disciples. Foundational to making disciples is looking at the life of Jesus and considering how we can become more like Jesus in all areas of our lives. Discipleship, by nature, is invasive. Discipleship digs into what we believe about Jesus, how we respond to the call of Jesus and how we love like Jesus.
Our current approach of discipleship has been to create a system as follows.
Get your friends to attend church. (I can now count them in my statistics.)
Get them saved, baptized and sanctified. (I can now report on that in my statistics.)
Get them in a small group / Sunday School class. (I can now count them in my statistics.)
Get them in a membership class where we teach them our beliefs and what they cannot do if they want to be a Nazarene member. (I can now count them in my stats as long as I don’t probe too much to see if they do anything we say they cannot do.)
Get them involved in the work on campus so they don’t leave and go somewhere else…then I cannot count them.
We have an information based approach to discipleship. I struggle to find followers of Jesus who have been asked if they did anything the message or Sunday School class mentioned last week. We do not ask if people drink alcohol. We do not ask if people have violent movies. We do not open our browser history. We do not let our our leader see our video streaming history. We do not ask their views on human sexuality. We do not ask questions to see if our members are staying in line.
In our classes we do not generally make disciples. We inform attendees. Our curriculum is deemed successful if our students learn something new. Very rarely is a person asked if they have implemented anything they have heard spoken in worship or small groups. This approach, in my opinion, is why we have so many who disagree with our Covenants, our Articles of Faith and polity. We simply do not disciple well.
Fifth, I believe in a decentralized approach that allows for fast shifts, quick change, minimal overhead and community impact, while remaining rooted and united in its core values. Our communities are changing at the speed of the internet. As such, we need policies, procedures, financial approaches, and organizational systems that allow for change at a pace equal to the shifts around us. Those disciple-making approaches exist in several places around the world.
The decentralized MicroChurch approach allows me to have a missional job that runs parallel to my church. My church salary is $0. My church mortgage is $0. My maintenance and utility bills are $0. We have such a limited overhead cost that nearly 90% of all dollars spent are on the community. We want shoes on kids feet. We want food in kids bellies. We want people who are housing insecure to have laundry detergent to wash their clothes. We want our kids to have $0 owed to the schools so they can get their diploma. We want our businesses to succeed. We want the communities in which we live to thrive. We, like God’s people when in Assyria and Babylon, pray for the welfare of our cities and are used by God to make that happen.
Unfortunately, the Nazarene approach is an entrenched institutionalism that needs the local church to sustain that institution and it takes forever for incremental change to take place. Think for a moment on these things…
How much did our local congregations and districts spend on General Assembly?
How much does your local congregation spend as a % on the community that does not take place on your campus?
What investment are you making in your local schools, local small businesses, local homeless shelters, local food banks, local job placement facilities and local counseling centers?
It is time we come to terms with the realities that we are spending so much of our time and money on organizational sustainability that our community really doesn’t think we care.
In case you have any doubt about what I am saying, did you look at the seminars offered at General Assembly? Consider the following seminars on money…
P&B USA Benefits offered 3x
Life Insurance and open enrollment offered 5x
Untapped non-cash gifts
Market volatility offered 2x
Health Insurance offered 4x
Estate Planning
Social Security offered 2x
Managing $$
Investment management
Stewardship
Saving for the Future offered 2x
Retirement savings
Ministerial Compensation.
Now consider options that would / could go into the category of church planting.
There was one seminar on church multiplication…one…there was one. This broke my heart, causing me to call one of our GMC leaders.
There was a seminar on using video games to reach people.
There was a seminar on blessing your community.
Now tell me where the focus in the Church of the Nazarene rests? Our focus rests on organizational sustainability. Yes, there are other gatherings for evangelism but when a denomination is clearly in decline, is there a moment to lose to motivate your leaders toward reaching the world with the good news of Jesus? The other gatherings focus on ministers. Here was a chance to rally everyone. We gave people more ideas on how to get the church in our last will and testament than we gave on how to love our neighbor.
Sixth, I believe in creating a church culture that is free to disciple without fear. Every local congregation should be able to ask questions of its leaders without it being interpreted as a negative thing. This is the heart of discipleship! What neighbors / co-workers are on your prayer list? Are you faithfully using all God has entrusted to you according to His will for your life? Do you have any habits or addictions that are rising up in your life? Is your tongue disciplined? These question should be normative, open and transparent in the life of the church.
Our current situation leaves pastors to have to make difficult decisions about deadly sins in the church. If they hold leaders and associates accountable then they leave, along with their supporters, and those that remain are left to figure out how to pay the bills. Let me be clear, our pastors weigh critical decisions on the spiritual health of their congregations against loss. How much will this accountability conversation cost me and my congregation? Will I get voted out? What will happen to my family?
Even in the best of situations, the Bible suggests that we can expect to experience hardships and adversity. We are, after all, crucified with Christ. While it is true that Jesus was crucified by the religious institutions of his day, I would expect a holiness church to do a little better with each other.
Seventh, I believe morality should be rooted in a Holy God who loves, transforms and equips people to grow in grace, allowing us to live in the light as He is in the light. In Luke’s Book of Acts we find God’s people living in the light as Christ is in the light. This open and transparent life resulted in some losing their jobs for their open faith in Christ. This lifestyle resulted in those who were being deceptive about finances to be challenged, and in one case they dropped dead. The point is that there is an openness to life and sharing the realities of ones life with each other.
Our current situation is that our international beliefs are rooted in a largely 20th Century American secretive and subjective morality. Nowhere is this more evident than in our Covenants. Our position on alcohol is rooted in the cultural realities of the late 19th and early 20th Century. While abstinence is our position, a number of our pastors and laypeople are drinking in secret, hopeful not to get caught…and I suppose some don’t care if they are caught. Additionally, while wisdom is to be found in abstaining from alcohol, we exclude people from our deepest connections if they participate in an activity that Jesus himself participated in.
Our fixation on, and fear of, the current LGBTQI+ debate has generational implications. What I mean is that, on average, our older population has a very different view on sexuality and gender identity than our 12-30 year olds. This is because denominationally, we seem more interested in word-smithing a position than making disciples, talking openly in our gatherings about the issue, creating space for hard but transparent questions, loving people very different than ourselves, etc.
I talked about loving the LGBTQI+ community in a sermon and people left the church. I had a sermon series on sex and sexuality and people left the church. If we don’t talk about these issues, wrestle with them and explore them with a biblical bent then we will not be shaped by Christ at all.
If you add tongues, online worship and cosmetic procedures to this section and our seemingly resistant approach to openly wrestle with the fact that our people are drinking, are not taking care of their bodies, are having sex outside the biblical framework, are speaking in tongues, are addicted to stimulants, are using prescribed drugs outside their prescribed use, are watching church online because they are simply tired, etc. then it seems we have a problem that goes beyond the problem. When we don’t talk about these things because we fear disunity, dividing the church, or losing or membership / credential, we end up with a church that lives in darkness and not the light.
So, I met with my DS to surrender my credential. I told him I must live in the light.
All I can say is that my DS, Dale Schaeffer, was so kind and gracious and loving toward me that it was overwhelming. I shared all of these things with him and that there were some things I simply could not support any longer. I had no interest in questioning people about cosmetic surgery as I have had 4 of them to remove cancers on my face. I had no interest in seeing if people had a medical reason for watching online. I had no interest in following our Manual directives on alcohol any longer as it excludes people from the community of membership based on something Jesus did. For all of this, the DS rightfully felt it best to hang on to the credential I handed to him before we ate together. The reality is that I was no longer in harmony with the Church of the Nazarene. He expressed his appreciation for my transparency and that he loved me. I believe that he does love me and I believe he did what was right in my case.
I love my former DS. I love the Church that shaped me to become the man that I am. I just wish I was in harmony with her. I never saw this day coming. However, I continue to be filled with hope for my future and the future of the church we are planting in Nassau County. I want to thank Dale Schaeffer for allowing us to keep our name, First Coast Network, so we can continue on in our efforts.
Those who have joined me here are committed to establishing a network of churches that live and operate according to our core values. To that end I give my life to Christ and His Kingdom.