The Clergy Project: Losing Faith in
Faith
(Or your faith based community)
The Clergy Project is a confidential online
community for active and former clergy who do not hold supernatural beliefs. The
Clergy Project launched on March 21st, 2011.
Currently, the community's 500 plus
members use it to network and discuss what it's like being an unbelieving leader
in a religious community. The Clergy Project’s goal is to support members as
they move beyond faith. Members freely discuss issues related to their
transition from believer to unbeliever including:
- Wrestling with intellectual, ethical, philosophical
and theological issues
- Coping with cognitive
dissonance
- Addressing feelings of being stuck and fearing the
future
- Looking for new careers
- Telling their families
- Sharing useful resources
- Living as a nonbeliever with religious spouses and
family
- Using humor to soften the
pain
- Finding a way out of the
ministry
- Adjusting to life after the
ministry
I have to say, or maybe I don't have to but I
choose to, this chart cuts to the bone. I hate it. I realize it is a bit of an
exaggeration and not the norm, but the generic "minister" in the middle cuts
like the proverbial knife. I was one. I was one in WCG and it was a choice. I had to be there. There was a time where you would have been of Satan to try and knock me out of it. Then there is now. Perhaps I am violating my own rule found in "The
Four Agreements" of never taking anything personally. It is about them, not
you. I once asked someone close to me if I was "one of them?" They told me,
"you were never one of them," and it helped.
I wish I had never heard of the Worldwide Church of God but that was not in the plan evidently. Someone once told me we write our scripts before we "incarnate" in this life. I told them "then next time I am going to make a no drinking rule while we think this stuff up!"
I suppose...
Nonetheless, ministry and doing it in the right
setting, with the right beliefs in the right way, before I outgrew this concept
of ever being possible, was the goal of my youthful self in my desire to be a
church pastor. After all, what could be more important than knowing the answers
to all of life's most important questions about today and after death, then
what? I don't believe I have to repeat my youthful ideas and such about going
to Ambassador believing it was a seminary in the traditional sense or my
personal church experiences. The first human I ever anointed for healing as per
James 5:14 after being ordained an elder when very young (that's a bit of humor
there) was my blind, deaf and dumb brother. He's still blind, deaf and dumb but
the "what the hell are you doing" look on his face is a great
memory!
To the point. I know the conflict a man or
woman can have as they get older in ministry. It is probably one of the most
unreasonable "callings" there could ever be. My lesson in , among many, was that
the pastor was the sacrificial goat for being and doing what most members never
ever intended to be or do. When they screw up, there were 10,000 forgiveness
scriptures flying around. When the pastor screwed up, they were thrown into
hell. This is true across all denominational lines.
I used to make couples promise, upon pain of
eternal something or other , when getting married to never change from that
moment on. I failed to tell them that once out the door, everything would
change around them. I can play the day of my own wedding in my head very
clearly and as time went on, I could not do it. People change. Circumstances
change. Regrets about ideas believed when younger begin to creep in when
older. Any pastor worth his academic salt could not possibly just believe in
later years what he was taught when young. "They never taught me that" becomes
obvious to those who seek. Organizations, by nature MUST fence you in with your growing in grace in knowledge. It has to be their kind of grace and their knowledge. They all work that way.
I can totally imagine the conflict the average
minister in the average or the wacky Church of God , depending on which they
got stuck in, is going through. One can be conflicted and not show it. One can
go through the motions and quietly doubt and wonder what the hell to do or think
about it all. You can be too far down a road to turn around without chaos and
it's pretty damn scary. Sometimes people crack off in a comment or two what the
minister should do in such cases, but in my experience, they probably would not
be so simplistic or demanding in their solutions for others if it was happening
to them. Transitions are messy and they can take a long time when spiritual
matters seem to be at stake. Ministers balance off the doubts that will always
come along with the perceived good they are doing for and with others in their
position. I have had any number of minister types both in WCG and other
denominations admit to the conflict between what they had been taught and used
to believe and what more or less belief had come as their lives unfolded. It's
a normal process in ministry. No one prepares you for it. It is painful and can
destroy the man and the family. I have personal ministerial friends who have
ended their lives quickly in suicide or slowly in alcohol or just the broken
heartedness that can come from reckless theological change . I asked my nephew what he thought took his WCG minister father's life so young and he said, "a broken heart." The Hodgkins Lymphoma was the outward manifestation of the inner pain, IMHO.
I will always credit the Tkaches with reckless
theological change no matter who was more correct biblically or theologically. I have come to feel, for now, that no one gets it right and all religion is a mixed bag of possibilities and improbabilities.
People don't change like that. The Tkaches brought rapid change pretending they weren't in months that real denominations would bring in decades or more. They were fools to think so unless they had the
intended chaos and outcome in mind to begin with. Joe's collection of Rolex Watches and getting paid for being head of nothing doesn't make me feel so great but that's his story and this is mine I suppose.
The Clergy Project is a very private and
discrete organization founded by Dan Barker , author of Losing Faith in Faith
and others who exist to help men and women in clergy who find themselves, for
whatever reasons, torn in their calling and coming to doubt the truth they so
wanted to be true when younger. While it is about going from faith to losing
faith, the problems and concerns that a torn Church of God minister might have
can also be helped by caring and listening former pastors. It is private and
there is no way those over you can access or see your correspondence with The
Clergy Project.
"Welcome to the Clergy Project. It is hard to think of any other
profession which it is so near to impossible to leave. If a farmer tires of the
outdoor life and wants to become an accountant or a teacher or a shopkeeper, he
faces difficulties, to be sure. He must learn new skills, raise money, move to
another area perhaps. But he doesn't risk losing all his friends, being cast out
by his family, being ostracized by his whole community. Clergy who lose their
faith suffer double jeopardy. It's as though they lose their job and their
marriage and their children on the same day. It is an aspect of the vicious
intolerance of religion that a mere change of mind can redound so cruelly on
those honest enough to acknowledge it.
The Clergy Project exists to provide a safe haven, a forum where
clergy who have lost their faith can meet each other, exchange views, swap
problems, counsel each other – for, whatever they may have lost, clergy know how
to counsel and comfort. Here you will find confidentiality, sympathy, and a
friendly place where you can take your time before deciding how to extricate
yourself and when you will feel yourself ready to stand up and face the cool,
refreshing wind of truth."
- Richard Dawkins
I am not addressing this from the cold transition
from believer to generic unbeliever. I am not suggesting one must be agnostic
or atheist. I am suggesting any Church of God Lurker Minister or Elder who is
struggling with all the ridiculous experience with WCG, GCI, RCG, PCG, LCG and
it taking it's toll can find private help to talk it through. I belong to the
Clergy Project as well but have been more active here on Banned for now. It
helped just to read the stories, concerns and realities of men and women in
theological change with consequences. There is not much consequence for the
average member to simply walk away. They go to work on Monday and not much
changes in reality. I know it can be traumatic but they only have themselves to
be concerned about. There are exceptions of course but I believe you all
understand what I mean. I stayed with my local congregation way longer than my mind stayed with anyone "over" me. I did care about my local congregation. But you can't win. Stuck between the Devil and the deep blue sea, you lose it all. I can count on one hand my ongoing friends in ministry with fingers left over. It takes two hands to cover the members of my own congregations who have stayed friends no matter.
If there is any pastor or elder in the COG experience
who is struggling and needs to chat, I promise you complete confidentiality as
if it never happened. If you need to see the experience is not unique in all of
ministerial experiences in Christianity, please read the stories at the Clergy
Project. If you are the type of person who has all inclusive scorn for every
Church of God minister, who are not all Ministurds in fact and who started out
with the same hopes and desires to be and do and teach the right things, stop by
the Clergy Project and read how pastoring really works in the real world. I
don't excuse any in ministry but I know that side of the fence and pressure and confusion churches and religion cause were and are common in all Churches and Denominations.
Finally, it is no secret that the WCG ministry and
thus all those who went on to make fools of themselves all claiming to represent
the One True Church and culminate in the foolishness of a Dave Pack, were not
well trained in theology or ministry. I was not. To study the Gospels and the
"Harmony" of them was simply to read them and know the stories. Rod Meredith
would not know a controversial questions or contradiction in the Gospels if it
bit him in the bum. Epistles of Paul classes were reading them classes and
generic commenting and know the content. Old Testament Survey was reading it
from Genesis to Malachi and hanging out in the stories that fit whatever one
wanted to make them fit .Knowing that half of Paul's Epistles were not written
by him was not part of the mix. Knowing the language they were written in was
not required . The Psychology of ministry or the care and feeding of a
congregation was never covered. I graduated with a 3.97 in what they had to
offer and what they had to offer was precious little in reality. I was an elder
at 23 and a Preaching Elder at 24. Wow...awesome! Want to know all about the
Bible, the mind of God and where the True Church is on earth? Just ask.
Sigh...
I have attended Episcopal Church the last two weeks for a couple of personal reasons. I find myself still very torn. Stuck between a view of life that is real and accurate and stories and myths that, depending on the education, most clergy recognize as well and keep to themselves. It's a weird profession. The price has been very high in every way. I have followed the antics of Dave Pack with both a fascination and a contempt for a man who claims great things for himself and has no training of any actual worth in theology. He is an excellent speaker and communicator. He speaks lies and communicates fairy tales. He is a weaver of tales and analogies he mistakes for truth at the expense of probably sincere folk who are being conned into what the Bible may say but does not mean. It is common in all churches. Dave practices a particularly repulsive form of it to me.
Just when you think the man has crashed in flames, here he comes again for another run on landing safely. I don't wish him well and I doubt he makes it to the hanger. But to those of you who actually meant well and feel stuck and lost in all the confusion this and other men can cause you, try the Clergy Project if for nothing else than seeing there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to religious awakening no matter the source and no matter where it takes you. It will be rough. Family will suffer, marriages will fail, tensions will rise and the temptation to cover the pain inappropriately will be enormous. Reality is our friend in the long run and the sooner you get started the sooner you can stop wasting your time, resources and life energy on the insane ideas others think you need to follow them over the cliff for.
I will encourage you one more time to and as long as you're having the experience anway to...
Thomas Henry Huxley
“Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing”
