The spiritual abuse of, ‘Haven’t seen you in a while’

This one’s a fairly common one, even though through the COVID-19 crisis it changed shape.  I almost don’t even need to explain it.  I’m sure you’ll already know what this is about.  It’s that phone call you get on a Monday morning or a Saturday evening.  It’s those excuses you think of to justify not being somewhere.  It’s feeling like you have no right not to be somewhere.

It all pivots on church.  It seems that if you are present in the pews, or you like or comment on the live stream, your church leader is happy.  If you decide, however, that you take a few weeks off, and worse for them, you scout out other churches, and watch other live streams, something untoward starts to happen.  There is a change in the dynamic between you and the church leader, almost as if they feel rejected so they begin to reject you, or the opposite begins to take place, and they pursue you, and seem to be intent on owning you.

The best news is most churches are not even like this.  But there are some that are, and they may be likened more to cults than real churches where Christ is the head.

Church fellowships where there are strict follow-up processes in place are usually quite easy to see.  If you skip church for a couple of Sundays, you can expect a call or a text message at the least.  If you miss for longer than that, you can expect to be invited out for a coffee.  And if you go AWOL for an extended period, it might be a dinner date, where there is plenty of opportunity to discuss, “So, how is life for you?”

If any of these inquiries seems disjointed, in that you feel pursued and you are told that you aren’t, keep watching for dissonance between what they are saying and how they are acting. If it’s worse, and you feel dropped, like you weren’t good enough to pursue to begin with, you could be forgiven for feeling that this is not the way the church is supposed to be.  There should be some pastoral care and follow-up. Some.  It should be about genuine care and concern without strings, and without pressure to attend or to justify a lack of attendance.

Signs of a healthy church include their allowing you to come and go, and whilst they don’t pressure you for attendance, they may ask you to be involved, again presuming that there is no pressure placed on you to serve.

Churches that are genuinely committed to the mission of Christ are more worried about that mission they are about attendance.  They want you involved but they will never force you to be involved, and they certainly won’t put any pressure on you, suggested or otherwise.  They want you to turn up and miss you when you don’t, but they never put any pressure on you to attend.  And because there isn’t any pressure on you to attend, you usually don’t want to miss out.

Photo by David Schultz on Unsplash