Why I didnt attend the Wellspring United Methodist Church today (or my church)

Sunday services of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are divided into two parts. The first hour of church is called Sacrament Meeting, where members of all ages meet in a room to partake of “the sacrament”--communion–sing and pray, and hear sermons given by members of the congregation. The second hour is divided by age (and twice a week by sex) with adults going to classes for adults and children going to a children’s church program called “primary.”


I don’t know why I explained all that in a blog post for whom my exclusive audience is probably members of my church. But it’s the context within which to say this: Hour one is hard for me.


All the things I mentioned do happen during the first hour of church, but for me, the first hour is mostly a wrestling match with my two kids. I used to love pondering the sacrifice of Jesus during the sacrament. Now my thoughts are mostly on how to get my kids to sit still so as to not disturb other members from their holy thoughts and how to get my kids not to touch more than one piece of bread and more than one cup of water. I love the singing part, but that’s a challenge too, and the talking part goes way beyond my kids’ abilities to stay focused. There are some Sundays where I have to take the wrestling match to the hallway where the other congregation (ward) that shares our building is usually loudly getting done with second hour and drowning out the speaker system designed to relay the messages of the service to those who can’t hear them from in the room.


Second hour basically redeems the experience. My kids love primary. They usually start asking if it’s time for it halfway through hour one. And I love having an hour to discuss scripture, community, and spirituality with other adults each week. Sometimes I experience heightened anxiety during second hour because I feel like the way I view scripture and spirituality is a kind of jagged outlier, but I have ways of appreciating even sentiment I don’t 100% agree with, and I feel challenged and edified in productive ways.


But on some Sundays, the second hour is canceled.


At the end of last year, Christmas fell on a Sunday, and my boys burst into tears when I explained that after an hour listening to boring talks and reminders to be reverent, they would not, in fact, be going to the whole reason they want to come to church. And then we had to do it all over again for New Years.


And then there’s Stake Conference, where the second hour is not actually canceled, but repurposed to make space for additional talking from local leaders. These Sundays are, in my opinion, the worst Sundays of the year. And Stake Conference happens to be today.


Not only is the structure of Stake Conference hard for my family, but I’ve noticed that it has a typical pattern that I’ve become disillusioned with. It’s the same topics for the talks, the same leaders, the same exhortations.


All this is to say that I don’t feel a strong pull of motivation to take my family to my church’s services today.


Start a new mind thread with me. I promise to connect this one to what’s above.


For the past few years, I’ve been experiencing what I’ve come to call a “faith thingy.” It’s a crisis, it’s deconstruction, it’s reconstruction, it’s a transition, a mind shift, an apostasy, a wheel grabbing out of auto-pilot spirituality, though none of these words, I think, capture it exactly. A couple things I do know is that I want to let go of my assumptions, hold new ideas strongly enough to learn them fully but loosely enough to allow alternatives, be open, honest, and transparent, and take things slowly. Things take the time they take, and I feel like I’ll find myself in undesirable headspace if I rush to leave the church or just doubt my doubts into non-existence and embrace my old faith with greater commitment as quickly as possible.


One thing that I’ve realized in all of this is that I don’t know anything about Christianity with a capital C, and that’s opened up all sorts of routes to explore. I’ve attended a Catholic service in Switzerland, an Anglican service in London, and I read/listen to/watch a lot of content created by christians of all different varieties.


But I’ve also started to develop the opinion that churches are often not a great source for information about the Bible. Google anything about the bible, and you’ll have to sort through a lot of apologetic material to find anything unbiased. But there are christians I admire, who have real insights that don’t seem to be driven by over-commitment to dogma, and I’ve sometimes thought if I could only find a church full of people like Pete Enns, Jared Byas, Aaron Higashi, etc. then I would be strongly tempted to join that church. I kind of yearn for a community that takes the bible seriously for what it is: a complex, multivocal hodgepodge of ancient wisdom that can be applied in all kinds of useful ways, without structuring power in harmful ways.


And then one of these Christians, Kevin Carnahan, made a video explaining the denomination that he belongs to: United Methodism. Finally, I thought maybe I was onto something! And I was lucky enough to see his video before there were tons of comments. I asked, “If I walked into a United Methodist church near me, what are the odds that I would find leaders and congregants who think like you?”


And he responded! “It depends on where you live,” he said, “But your best bet is to find a church that is part of the Reconciling Ministry Network.”


So I looked up United Methodists churches in Madison Wisconsin, and the second hit was a church called Wellspring United Methodist that was in that network of churches! What’s more, it is located right next to the elementary school my kids go to, and it is an important community partner for the school, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the school to better the academic experience of kids like mine.


And this Sunday is Stake Conference! I don’t even want to go to my church anyway! It’s a perfect opportunity. I read every word of their website multiple times. I researched United Methodism in greater detail, and I got really excited about the prospect of maybe trying out this new church.


But why would I want to do that? I had a lot of deep conversations about this with my wife this week. What do I want to get out of attending another church? I don’t know if I fully understand my motivations, but here’s a shortlist of some:


Learning - I don’t know much about Christianity, much less “main line protestantism” much less “Methodism,” and I want to know more.


Friends - I want more christian friends who aren’t afraid to engage with me on the difficult questions of christianity that have fascinated and challenged me for so long now. And i want perspectives from outside my echo chamber. And also, I just want friends. Friends are so hard to make.


Church experience - I’ve always assumed that my church did it best for just about everything. I want to test that hypothesis fairly. Wellspring Methodist has treats before and after services, a music ministry, a “1-thing” program for simple charitable donations, a lectionary-based Sunday school. I don’t know what any of these things are, but I want to!


Insight - Something I’ve learned through this faith thingy is that you can get so much meaningful insight from multiple perspectives, even if they conflict. That’s what the Bible is all about for me, churches with different perspectives on a single topic (Jesus Christ) are the living version of diverse Biblical perspectives.


Inter-faith dialogue - I actually don’t have any plans to leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints any time soon. But while we play a lot of lip-service to inter-faith connection, I feel like I haven’t been primed to do much of it, and I kind of want to change that.


But I didn’t go to Wellspring today. I also didn’t go to the Stake Conference. And I want to process why. Like my motivations, I don’t think I totally understand these barriers, but I think I’ll understand them better by typing them out.


Guilt - I feel guilt and sense that I’d fill an increase in guilt for not going to my church on Sunday. Logically, I know that this is nothing to feel guilty about, but I do. I also feel guilt about


Fear - I fear my wife thinks I’m going to leave the church. That’s not outside of the realm of possibility for me, but I don’t have plans to do so right now. And finding a path out of the church is not my motivation for wanting to go to another church. But then again, maybe that is a motivation, or maybe that’s the path I might be going down with this. Maybe this is where that all leads. And that’s scary!


My kids - I finally ended my thought of going to visit the Methodists this morning 20 minutes before services because I realized I would have to either bring the kids with me–and risk having them like it and ask us to take them again and again when that might not be a possibility–or leave them at home and explain where I went alone. I didn’t know how to explain that I wanted to visit a different church but I didn’t want to take them because it might not be a permanent thing, and then I would also have to leave them at home with my wife which I would feel guilty about.


No invitation - The Wellspring website is very inviting, but I feel like the only time I’ve heard of people going to another church is because they were invited. It’s silly, I think, to think you can only visit another church if a friend says “I’ll visit yours if you visit mine.” But I feel a kind of social pressure to only do such a thing in the face of such a deal. This reason sounds the dumbest to me as I type it.


Explaining myself - When I told my wife this was one of my barriers, she told me, truthfully, that I don’t owe people an explanation. But I kind of want to give people an explanation. I want more people to talk about this stuff with. And I want to be open and honest and transparent in those kind of discussions. I think that’s how you get meaningful authenticity. But then I thought about what I would say when approached about what brought me into the service today, and I couldn’t think of a good way to explain it succinctly in a way that invites people to be my friend who is willing to discuss religion with me but not think that I’m trying to poach them into my church. I couldn’t care less about getting people into my church. I love my church, but sometimes I think of it like smoking: I don’t think I can quit, but I don’t think you should start! I’m kind of kidding in that analogy. I do want people to investigate the church because I want to build communities inside it that are impactful. And I want to see smart fresh eyes on my faith tradition because I want to see how newcomers process it. But I’ve lost my desire to “sell it” so to speak.


Newness nervousness - There’s so much unknown it makes me nervous. That’s probably all I need to say about that one.


My church responsibilities - This isn’t so much about today, but in general, something keeping me active in my church is my sense of duty to it. I’m a leader in Elder’s quorum (a men’s group). I contribute in Sunday School. I sometimes sub in primary.


Stigma - I think that Latter-day Saint doctrine allows for and even encourages investigating other faiths. But I feel like there is a stigma against participating in other faiths. The Book of Mormon teaches that there are only two churches: the church of God and the Church of the Devil. I think people who interpret this more internally (You can be a mormon on paper and be in the church of he devil in heart and you can be a non-mormon and be a member of God’s church by being a good person) are right, but the stigma is still there. And for me, it’s hard to get over as much as I hate it.


There’s more I want to process, and sometimes I think I might get over it and just do what I want. But I’ve done enough long-winded processing today.