Easy like Sunday morning: Musings from a campground laundry room.

It’s midmorning on a Sunday, and I’m sitting in the laundry room at our campground in southern California, about six miles from the Mexican border. It’s laundry day, and I’ve stuffed seven washers full of our laundry into four dryers to save a few dollars, and I am waiting for them to dry so that no one steals our sheets and towels and such. You never know what can happen in an RV campground, you know.

And as it’s Sunday morning, I find myself thinking about church. Five years ago on a Sunday morning, I would have been getting hyped up to play bass on the worship team during a morning of multiple high-energy services at a megachurch. I would have been awake since 4 a.m. (3 if I was traveling to a different campus), running on caffeine and free doughnuts or some other spread of food brought in for the volunteers, affectionately referred to as the Dream Team. And I’d be there until about 2 in the afternoon, only to run home and crash into a catnap and be back for the Sunday evening service rehearsal, which started at 4:30. But I was the spunky redheaded bass player who jumped around on stage and people seemed to love that about me, and I loved that feeling of people being excited to see me, so I was happy to play the part.

In 2019, I would have been driving all around Portland to multiple church campuses, trying awkwardly to hold conversations with groups of techy, introverted volunteers running the production of a service and trying not to sound like the ditsy Southerner who didn’t know the first thing about LED screens or HDMI cables. I was a girl bass player, for cryin’ out loud. I didn’t need to know how my bass worked; I just loved that it was pearly white and had gold hardware. I wore it like fancy jewelry. What did I need to know about LED screens? AV was for boys who liked to play video games. (Obviously my perception was off because a lot of our team members were women.) All I knew about AV was that I liked the bass loud and for the lyrics to keep up.

I should probably be in church this morning, but instead I’m doing laundry at a campground out in the middle of nowhere that has no cell service and very little Wi-Fi, sweat dripping down my back and soaking my clothing because it’s 100 degrees outside and the laundry facility doesn’t have A/C, and I’m listening to worship music and reading Blue Like Jazz. I love this book and haven’t read it in years, but I ran across a copy in the campground library and decided to re-read it because, as I said, there is no cell service here. It’s the perfect book for this season of my life, us being fresh off of a church staff and having been processing deep thoughts about church and Jesus and just all the things. And I love how Donald Miller writes in a stream-of-consciousness style; it frees me up in a way to do the same and not worry so much about finding the most creative or eloquent way to say something; I can just come right out with it, for crying out loud.

I’m tired.

And not just because RV life has turned out to be more work than vacation, and I miss having my own indoor laundry room and a bathtub and dishwasher and normal sized fridge. And not because I’m heat intolerant, and the smoldering summer weather has zapped my energy.

I’m really burnt out and exhausted and wrestling with the whole Western church thing, to be honest. I am actually relieved not to be on a church staff anymore, and I feel really guilty that I’m so relieved. It sounds like a terrible thing to say if you believe being on church staff is a calling, which it probably is, but it’s also a paying job just like any other job—except on a church staff, there’s all this mixing of business language and spiritual language and family language, and things can just get messy and confusing.

I didn’t make a good church staffer, really. I didn’t sound very theological or sophisticated, I didn’t wear white Nikes, and I kept running into issues where my love for Jesus and people and desire to keep things simple started to clash with the whole megachurch programming. I felt like everyone would like me better if I just piped down a little and stopped asking so many questions and just agreed with their strategies they worked so hard on. But it was all so foreign and confusing, and I didn’t really understand why everything was so doggone complicated when the Gospel is so simple. So I asked a lot of questions, mostly because it was all over my head, but I think it all just boiled down to the fact that I wasn’t meant to be on a church staff, which is fine because being on a church staff cured me of wanting to be on a church staff. It was all just too much.

I’ve been a Christ-follower since I was five. Probably since before I could actually read the Bible, I don’t really know. I’ve been a Christian as long as I can remember. And I’ve always loved church. I loved going to church. I loved as a kid when my parents would pass me a couple of coins to drop in the offering plate. I loved the little butter cookies shaped like flowers that they offered in Sunday school and the little pictures made out of felt fabric scraps that told Bible stories. I loved dressing up in my frilly turned-down socks and pink patent leather shoes (that I always wore on the wrong feet), and my dresses that twirled, and carrying my pink little leather New Testament in my stubby little hands. I loved the attention I’d get from people at church. It made me feel seen, and loved, and safe. It made me feel like I had a big family, and every Sunday was a reunion.

When I was in middle school, I wanted to learn how to play guitar so I could be in the worship band. But I had a crush on my older brother’s friend who was the cute youth group drummer, and he said I should play bass instead, that girl bass players were cool, and that too many people already played guitar. I should be different. So I decided to play bass. All because a cute drummer asked me to. I love drummers and will do pretty much anything for them anyway.

In high school, I used to hang out at the church office after school with my friends because it was just my very favorite place to be. And my youth pastor was funny. I’d sometimes go hang out in the little prayer room because it had an altar and soft carpet and was really cozy and made me feel ultra spiritual like I was at a monastery or something.

I have always been a people pleaser, and as such, I made a good youth leader because I was a stickler at following the rules and church leaders love students who follow the rules. So they dubbed me a leader, and I wore that title like a badge of honor, walking around like I was a priest among my peers. I was a weird teen. Probably a weird adult, too, if I’m being honest.

Anyway, I’m sitting in the laundry room watching my workout clothes (you know, the kind of workout clothes with the technology to make sure you don’t smell like a man or get sunburned or show the lingering effects of childbirth but that can’t go into a dryer or they lose all their magic) air-dry next to a window in the 100-degree desert heat and the dryers on the wall spin, listening to the sounds of the old machines groaning and screeching as if the burden of our linens and delicates were too much for them to bear. And I can’t help but thinking back to my decades of church volunteerism, and about the machine of Western megachurch, groaning and screeching under the weight it carries just like those dryers on the wall.

It’s all a lot, you know. The programs and the content and the production and setup and tear-down and coming and going and greeting and serving and the coffee and the childcare and the chord charts and the coloring sheets and slides on the screen with the lyrics to all the songs, and the process of getting legal permission to play those songs, and the lighting and the haze to diffuse the lighting and the mics and the sound system and the in-ear monitors that the band and musicians wear that have to be calibrated just so or the poor AV guys will get an earful, and the AV team is too nonconfrontational and nice to make an issue of it. Or the message notes that some college student upstairs will try desperately to display on the screen at the right time, because if they don’t, the pastor will have a conversation with them after the service about how they really should work harder to do better because Jesus is a King who deserves our very best, when in reality skipping a slide made the pastor lose his train of thought, and he got embarrassed on the live broadcast.

And then there are the announcements and the men’s conferences and the women’s conferences and children’s summer camps and youth camps and Sunday night services and third Sunday night prayer and first Saturday morning prayer and prayer on Facebook and small group semesters (that’s where the magic happens) and service projects and staff meetings and staff prayer meetings and staff retreats and social media—oh, the reels and the carousels and stories and trendy photos of church leaders on stage passionately speaking or singing with the lighting and the screens just so, that those leaders will then repost to social media, along with all the 53 stories they were tagged in that morning, and some humblebrag about being honored just to get to be a part of the show—I mean, service…

The machines drone on, as do my thoughts. I was happily right smack dab in the middle of it for so long, believing that every bit of it was for Jesus until it really began to feel burdensome and not at all like what I experience when I sit with Jesus in my own personal time, and now I find myself wondering why we do all the pomp and circumstance when Jesus says his burden is light and the Gospel is simple and why all the emphasis on and stress of fundraising campaigns and seasonal generosity campaigns? Salvation is a free gift, but those LED lights will cost you. A LOT.

If I’m being honest, the Church looks a lot like the world these days. Maybe not all churches everywhere, but certainly the Western megachurch. And I know from my experience that the Western megachurch tries to look a lot like the world. We call it relevance.

One year while I was on church staff, we were getting ready for Easter services, and the communications department played a rough copy of a promo video they wanted to use to market our services. The comms staffer was satisfied with himself that he’d found a local talented creative professional who didn’t know Jesus or attend church to write the script because it made us seem more relevant in Portlandia. I understood his heart to try anything to reach lost people but was confused about why the video for Easter services didn’t once mention Jesus but instead droned on about people being on a journey or something like that. To be honest, I couldn’t really follow the voiceover’s train of thought, but it was early in the morning, and I was still working on the coffee I’d brought from home. I can’t think about much before I’ve had my coffee. The comms staffer impatiently explained to me that this wasn’t the Bible Belt; people here didn’t like Jesus and wouldn’t normally come to a church on Easter, but that they were lonely and if we made our church out to be less like a church and more like a group of people who live in community, that might attract them to come. We even took the word church out of our logo a lot.

So really, it was a kind of bait-and-switch message to market our church as not-a-church to get people in the doors where surprise! At some point we might talk about Jesus. Got it. I was taking notes because man, this whole church ministry thing was trickier than I thought. I was clearly naive in thinking that Jesus was just as relevant in Portland as He was in the Bible Belt because He loved people everywhere and was a friend to the lonely, whether they were lonely in Birmingham or in Portland. I was as green as the Douglas fir branches waving at me outside the window and clearly had a lot to learn.

All the systems and processes and marketing strategies and events and even the organizational structure and worship team dress code resemble worldly business principles. We turn everything we can into a system because if it’s good enough to make businesses succeed out in the world, then maybe it will help the church succeed, too. And then, when we plant a new church somewhere, we can just plug and play. Choose from the extensive sermon bank and pre-made set lists with the accompanying chord charts and music tracks and just run the play. It’s efficiency, but for both Starbucks chains and multi-site churches.

But I don’t think the Church was designed to be about efficiency. In fact, I’m pretty sure it isn’t. Making disciples who are becoming more and more like Jesus is a long-term plan—a marathon, not a sprint. I know it’s taking decades for me to move the needle in my own life to look even a little more holy. Like when Paul went and lived among the people he discipled, until they imitated him and Jesus and then became models for following Jesus for other people to imitate. And because people come in all shapes and sizes, and the Church is made up of people, I don’t think a one-size-fits-all church planting model really works in the long run. You have to play the long game.

Actually, we shouldn’t be playing a game at all. Because of Jesus, church isn’t something we attend, or market, or plan out in sermon series and small group seasons; it’s who we are. Discipleship is life-on-life, ongoing, messy, sanctifying work. It’s a crockpot, not a microwave, so to speak. And so much real ministry happens outside the church walls, anyway.

In several of our prayer meetings back in 2020, so many people in the church were praying for the riots in Portland to just stop already so we could get back to church as usual, and I found that funny because I felt like it would be more urgent to pray for God to heal the hearts that were broken and angry and to change the injustices in our country that caused that anger and hurt to begin with. I think relevance should look a lot more like courage to work out our salvation together, to see the people behind the issues and have hard conversations about things like systemic racism and homelessness and other social injustices that have grieved so many of the people we claim to love because I 100 percent believe it’s what Jesus would do. And He was very relevant, even without skinny jeans and white Nikes.

It may take longer to see change, to feel like our prayers are working, but I think the Church could stand to think a little more about walking people through processes of healing rather than just praying for the resulting outcries to stop because they’re uncomfortable to face, and we don’t like to be uncomfortable for too long. It’s why an actual well-thought out remodel is better than a DIY house-flip. Sure, you can do the work fast, and maybe it will look good to the naked eye, but what about those rusted pipes and mold in the ceiling?

And so when we try to fit crockpot discipleship into a microwave worldly business system, it’s not only ineffective in making disciples, but it makes the Church look like we’re scrambling to keep up with the world and its ever-changing culture, and the world thinks we look ridiculous and people are the collateral damage. They get burnt out and frustrated and overworked majoring on the minors and minoring in the majors in church ministry, and a lot of them end up leaving the church because it’s exhausting to keep the machine going, or because they feel so unseen and overlooked as congregants. And I think all of that really matters to Jesus.

My thoughts about church began to change during COVID, when I felt more edified sitting around my backyard fire pit with a group of overwhelmed college production interns, encouraging them in their faith, than I did in service planning meetings trying to figure out how to add 30 seconds of a short prayer to the agenda to keep the transition after the worship set from feeling awkward. (Maybe that 30 seconds is where the Holy Spirit could be invited to do His thing? Oh, you already had a staff pastor in mind? Cool cool.) Or how sitting on our couch memorizing Psalm 91 with our children felt more like church than sending them to a room to color worksheets and play games and sing hype-y songs while I enjoyed my free, hot coffee in a dark room with good music and a charismatic speaker.

I’m oversimplifying, of course. Maybe being a little dramatic. But these are all the things I’ve been thinking about, not only in the laundry room but long before, and to be honest I have way more questions than answers. Quite a bit more thoughts to sift through, but this is a blog post and I’ve been told I can be long-winded, so maybe I should do what Donald Miller did and put my thoughts into a 240-page book instead. Though I’m not as funny as he is and I’m not sure anyone would read it.

I know that I can’t possibly speak as if I know what goes on in every church in America, and I do know there are a lot of beautiful people in church ministry who love Jesus and people and are doing beautiful things for the Kingdom, even if they aren’t broadcasting it all on social media. (But if we don’t post it on social media, is it even real? If a pastor does something spiritual and no one is around to see, did it even happen?) But I have been asking myself if God is really pleased with the fanfare of it all, and I have to say, when I see church leaders, myself included, focus more on optics than holiness, I’m not really sure. When I see church members fighting over masks and politics instead of sacrificially loving their neighbors, I start to doubt it. I definitely don’t think He was pleased with me when I told our teams that His ability to reach the lost in our services depended on their ability to get the slide timing or the audio levels or the lighting positions right and eliminate every distraction possible, as if the God of the universe couldn’t break through any opposing force on Earth to reach the heart of a human He loved and sent His Son to die for.

A few months ago, I had a conversation with one of the head leaders at our previous church, in which he expressed concern for our family over iced coffees because we were not going to church services on Sundays. I explained that we had been meeting with a few other families, where we read the Bible together, pray, worship, have communion and encourage one another, with our children sitting beside us. We’re still tithing to the church, I added, in case that was a concern.

He balked at that. So the gathering of the saints isn’t a part of it, then?

I responded that we were doing exactly that. We were gathering as saints; there were just less of us. But when all the fuss of a Sunday service is stripped away, and we just do life together, dig into God’s Word together, pray together, take communion together, worship together, encourage each other to share our faith with our community…it feels like church the way it was originally intended to be. It feels a lot like being the Church. It feels light and easy, words Jesus used to describe His burden. I don’t know, I said, looking down at the melting ice cubes in my cold brew. It’s been pretty life-giving.

I don’t remember much of the conversation after that, but I think we agreed to disagree.

I still love the Church. I love God’s people because we are part of the same Body and are eternally connected, and I want this Body we’re all a part of to thrive, to become the spotless Bride of Christ as God intended, to be known and recognized by our supernatural, world-transcending love for one another and our logic-defying unity, not our flawless music set or engaging speakers or high-definition online broadcast. By thriving, I mean that I have a burning desire and sense of urgency for the Church to become holy, and you can’t be holy and dysfunctional at the same time. Most often, all our programming and events and such serve as a distraction from God’s people becoming holy because they give the illusion that participation in those things means we are being discipled. When in actually, we are being busy. And busyness is a tool of the enemy. If he can’t make us evil, he’ll settle for busy because, either way, we aren’t accomplishing what God calls us to.

I don’t really have it all figured out at this point; I just want to know that God is pleased with how I conduct myself in regards to carrying out the Great Commission and being the Church and teaching my children to be the Church. And I want people to fall in love with Jesus like I have, but I’m not sure they’ll be able to do that if the Church keeps trying to look like the world and build an organization that measures success in numbers and size as the world measures success, rather than measuring it in lives transformed and in people who don’t look or act or think or dress like us feeling right at home within our walls. Or if the Church continues to ostracize people who vote or dress differently instead of loving them unconditionally, if we continue to make ourselves known for what we’re against rather than whom we’re for. Maybe we should measure success by asking ourselves if God is really pleased with our gatherings.