How do you keep a reader’s interest past the first sentence of your blog post? You promise money. You hint at a scandal. Or you write about Rachel Held Evans.
You either already know her, in which case you’re now excited about this blog, or you don’t and are now wondering what you’ve missed so far. Brilliant, isn’t it?
In keeping this post short (the internet informs me the average attention span of a blog post reader is 52 seconds, which means if you read very slowly I might have already lost you), I’ll reduce my raving about Evans to a minimum. Maybe it’s enough to say that her books keep me on my toes – that is, they keep me running around the house looking for a person I can read the latest brilliant thought of hers to. Because her writing is poetic. Hilarious. Vulnerable. Provocative. Beautiful.
But it’s not just the how. It’s also the what of her writing that goes under my skin. As someone who’s gone through almost a decade of deconstruction from evangelicalism and fundamentalism, and then spent another five or so trying to reconstruct my life, I find a kindred spirit in almost every sentence of her books. She, too, is desiring a less clear-cut and less certain, more honest and kinder faith.
After reading Searching for Sunday, her book on “loving, leaving, and finding the church”, I realized that one of the main factors that connects me to her writing is that she writes from a place of weakness, not of strength. She is unnervingly, unapologetically honest about her failures, her doubts, and her can-no-longer-do’s. She suggests something that smells suspiciously of Jesus: that we turn our ideas of how to live and lead as Christians upside down, and start telling the world about Jesus through where we failed and what we don’t know.
If you’re like me, you’ve come across countless books the likes of ten steps to success, 21 days to break the habit, five rules to change your life and seven ways to be a better person. All these books – of which I’ve probably finished a whopping one (and that one only because I hate not finishing a book even more than being annoyed by it) – left me frustrated and unnerved. It’s the same with Bible reading plans, by the way. Instead of being transformed through the text, a reading plan just leaves me wondering why I cannot for the life of me be consistent with anything for longer than a week, other than brushing my teeth.
For you disciplined people out there who are shaking your head at me right now – I commend you for being able to stick to ten steps, 21 days and five rules all together for, let me guess, nearly 2.3 months. And yet, at some point, we all have an area or two in our lives where we don’t shine anymore. Where we’re glad no one really asks and no one knows, because it ain’t pretty.
Yet for far too long, Christians have thought that in order to be a light to the world, we needed to put our best foot forward. Have our act together. Avoid the ugly questions. Post the Sunday pictures and hold steadfast to the things we believe.
Rachel Held Evans wasn’t able to do any of the above. Her honest, impulsive, messy, wonderful self couldn’t get her act together, had way too many uncomfortable (aka important!) questions and had lost grip of what she was told to believe long ago. Instead, she realized that maybe all of this was never what church, and the Christian life, was meant to be.
In an awesome chapter called Epic Fail, Evans describes a movement that started in 2011 when a burned-out pastor, sick of highly marketed Pastors Conferences that sold success stories of megachurch pastors and made 99% of the participants feel like a failure inside while keeping the smile pasted on the outside, decided to inaugurate the first Epic Fail Pastors Conference – a gathering where every pastor puts his worst foot forward.
The result, according to those attending the conference, was “a time of sharing stories and struggles with refreshing courage…people opening up about their battles with depression, their terror of failure, their broken hearts. There were no impressive videos, no greenrooms and no lanyards, but there was laughter and prayer and tears…. It was ‘like a kiss from God on our bruises.’”
Evans goes on to say, “I wonder if the role of the clergy in this age is not to dispense information or guard the prestige of their authority, but rather to go first, to volunteer the truth about their sins, their dreams, their failures, and their fears in order to free others to do the same?”
What a refreshing thought – to have pastors, leaders, or authors serve their communities through a courageous first of admitting questions nobody thought were o.k. to ask, struggles people can’t imagine you’re going through, and failures others think they’re alone with.
I’m not minimizing the positive aspect of mature role models whose steadfast faith can help us through crises and whose wisdom fills our internal wells. But most of these role models were at different times in their life a hot mess, too, and too many of them were shot down by well-meaning, judgmental brothers and sisters before they could ever reach the maturity those around them would have needed so much.
What Evans suggests – to lead by epic failure – isn’t actually a novel idea. In fact, I suspect she got it directly from Jesus. I mean, look at the people he chose to kickstart his movement. They were a mess from start to finish, doubting him, betraying him, running from him, and misunderstanding his message with unnerving consistency. Today, not a single movement would include in their advertisements as many embarrassing and confusing stories about the movement’s ambassadors, spiced with some failures and betrayal of their leader, as the authors of the New Testament books did. The whole marketing department would quit before any pamphlets could be printed.
Yet these are the stories Jesus chose to set as examples for his way of life. It seems his disciples were chosen to exemplify lives that absolutely do not work without the grace of God, lives quite pathetic in themselves, and yet lives which, through the miracle of God’s grace on them, would go on to change the course of history.
Excerpts from: “Searching for Sunday”, Rachel Held Evans, Nelson Publishers, 2015
This is simply amazing Judith….no one talks about failing….Infact failure ( and acknowledging it) can be a big stepping stone to Succes….I will check out Rachel Evans…and J.R. Briggs (Epic Fail Pastors Conference)
Your Student Dharmesh 🙂
Bombay-India
Hey Dharmesh! So good to hear from you! I’m glad you enjoyed my thoughts. Rachel is definitely worth checking out, she is honest and funny and “the real deal”. Hope all is well with you! We remember our years in India as an unforgettable and precious time!
Loved this! ❤️
Sent from my iPhone
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Thank you, Kim!