Post-Traumatic I Got Myself Kicked Out of Church Syndrome, part 1

I am a sufferer from “post-traumatic I got myself kicked out of church syndrome.” I didn’t mean for it to happen. I tried a number of church experiences and eventually was worshiping at the “Church of the Open Fairway.” On weekends I enjoyed golf! I sometimes even played two or three times a week. It was definitely a religious experience.

It was about 10 p.m. on a Friday night when I pulled the rented RV into the campground and parked it on a slope. I was too tired and exhausted to care that we were sleeping at an angle. Our kids were happily sleeping in pup tents with their various camper friends. Many activities were planned for the next day and all I wanted to do was sleep.

In the early fall of 1988 I earned my right to be exhausted. I was working long hours and commuting to an office in Orange County, CA frequently. Raising four children (my son and daughter and my two stepsons) provided frequent entertainment. Church services and church activities hadn’t been in my weekly calendar for a number of years at that point, and I wasn’t too unhappy about that.

I was raised in a denominational church. This particular group had a legalistic bent. The elders had already heard from God and they knew what the rules are and what we had to do to follow them. The consequences of failure could be harsh. They might involve church discipline. The ultimate punishment was to be “disfellowshiped.” Since only members of our church were going to heaven, being disfellowshiped could really mess you up!

Groucho Marx said, “I’d never join a club that would have me as a member.”

These days I might say I’d never join a church that would have me as a member. It’s probably because I suffer from generational post-traumatic legalistic church syndrome. You know the symptoms: heightened suspicion of religious authority figures, anxiety when visiting churches that have kicked you out, unwillingness to sign covenant or commitment pledges.

I come by my diagnosis honestly. My dad was just a young man when an officious Sunday School Superintendent chastised him for sitting down on the job while he was manning the sanctuary door during a worship service.

My dad spent most church service mornings after that eating bacon and eggs at his favorite restaurant and refusing to attend a church that was overseen by a sanctimonious elite. When the church elders visited and requested that he surrender his membership following his divorce from my mother he willingly agreed to part ways.

My divorced mom was a regular in the church choir when the preacher directed a sermon about the unrighteousness of divorced persons being up-front in church services. Even at the age of thirteen this seemed overly passive-agressive.

An emphasis on right behavior was a cornerstone of the foundation of the legalistic denomination I was raised in. I am appreciative of the bible study and memorization they emphasized. However, now many years later, I realize that much of their key text doctrinal explanations were out of context and slanted. Ah, well, to each his own.

My first step to becoming an active backslider from the church came when I received a letter in 1982 asking me to resign my membership. Although I was encouraged to join the church at worship services, my membership was no longer desired. In those days my church had a pretty strict policy about divorce. If you were the “guilty” party, then you were disfellowshipped, the word for “excommunication.” In the absence of private detective reports and salacious pictures, the clearest determination of guilt was remarriage.

I had been living in San Juan Capistrano where my second wife and I were married by Robert Schuler, the younger. When we moved back to Loma Linda, I received my letter. I’ll admit, I hadn’t expected it, so along with the anger and hurt, the surprise added to my shock.

I had been an active attender and then church member literally from birth. I was baptized at the age of 13, had attended church schools and had even studied for the ministry at one point in my college career. I had been raised to believe that my church had the “truth,” were the “remnant,” and that only active church members would be taken to heaven at Jesus’ second coming. Being kicked out as a church member hadn’t been on my radar!

On the other hand, this probably shouldn’t have been such a shock. Both of my parents were disfellowshipped when they got divorced. My dad hadn’t attended church for many years before that, and although my mom had always been a pretty active attender there were serious questions about whether or not she should be allowed to sing in the choir!

I was also more than a little hurt because going through a divorce isn’t easy. For my first wife and I it was about a two-year process. We had been next door neighbors with one of the pastors of the church. My wife and I were fairly active in church activities when we separated. She was an employee of the church, so it was natural that she got pastoral staff support. I suppose it was also natural that I didn’t get even a single phone call from a pastor until I received “the letter.”

My journey of church exploration began in earnest once I resigned my membership. We started attending the Calvary Chapel in Redlands where Don McClure was the pastor. I remember how different this church was! There was no pipe organ or choir! The pastor didn’t where a suit, nor did the attenders! The service started with lots of singing, and at least one woman in the front row raised her arms during some of the songs! On top of that, the church met in a converted packinghouse! There was no steeple of any kind!

For a baby boomer like me, someone who was a teenager in the 60s, it seemed as though Calvary Chapel had been designed for me. I really loved the music. Larry Elizondo would sit at the piano and move seamlessly from one song to the next. It was the first time I had been exposed to praise and worship music. I began attending the weekly men’s prayer breakfast.

I remember asking Larry at my first breakfast after the prayer time at the church about the organizational structure of the Calvary Chapels. I asked him who the head of the church was. The church I was raised in had a layered structure of conferences, union conferences and then the general conference. The general conference president is the “head” of the church. I remember how surprised I was when Larry replied, “Jesus Christ [is the head of the church].”

“Okay, right, I know that but do you have a local conference office?” “No,” he replied. “Well, what about elders?” I asked. Surely, the Calvary Chapels must, at least, have elders, I thought. How else would one know the proper stands of behavior? Larry seemed to consider my question for a moment before he answered, “Mel, might be an elder.”

What? Here was a church with no denominational headquarters, no church board (that I could see), no large church staff, no elders, or deacons, not even a Sunday School Superintendent. Clearly I had stepped through the stained glass looking glass into a new ecclesiastical world.

At Calvary, the mind-shifting surprises just kept coming. For instance, in the my former church baptism is preceded by weeks-long study of the foundational beliefs and practices of the denomination. Once a candidate has demonstrated their understanding of the beliefs they are approved for baptism. After being baptized in the baptismal during the main church service, the new member’s name is printed in the church bulletin for two weeks and then they are voted into membership.

At a church party at the local YMCA I experienced my first Calvary Chapel baptism. There was a lot of church potluck food, volleyball and basketball and then we moved poolside. Someone was playing praise and worship songs on a guitar. Three of the pastors moved out into the pool. Pastor Don spoke for a few minutes on the meaning of baptism and then people began swimming out to the pastors who baptized them, one after the other.

I remember asking someone sitting next to me about the baptismal classes. The quizzical look on their face told me I had asked a nonsense question.

Those were good church years for me. I learned how to sing praise and worship songs and to lift my hands in worship. I learned to pray like I was actually talking to God. I learned to give as God prompted me and I was filled with the Holy Spirit in a new and unexpected way. I experienced fellowship in the home bible studies.

Things were great until one of my close friends and leaders was demoted and I got mad at the pastor because of it and stopped attending church. This time I hadn’t been kicked out, I had left. Not attending church on a regular basis didn’t feel right, but it wasn’t long before I was having “regular nature walks” and “worshiping” on the golf course!

And that was my condition when I emerged from the RV at about 5 p.m. the next Saturday afternoon and walked over to the campfire and sat down.