3. BECAUSE YOU ARE AFRAID.

Fear manifests in congregations in more ways than can be described here, but for our purposes we can focus on three:  anxiety, urgency, and withdrawal.

•Anxiety

The needle on the PCUSA conflict-ometer is in the red zone, but while conflict is inevitable, anxiety is not. Anxiety produces bad decisions as a rule. Self-preservation mode kicks in and any of the finer motives are eclipsed by a sense of doubt or even doom.  Anxious congregations are more likely to react than respond to crises, and the present PCUSA crisis certainly demands our best response. Congregants all over the country are slamming down copies of The Layman on pastors' desks, demanding to know just what we are going to do about it all and when!  When indeed is the question, and the anxiety of when is what we call urgency.

•Urgency

Obnoxious television commercials and hard-sell salesmen know that urgency boosts impulse buying. Act now! This offer not available in stores! Today only! Don't miss your chance for a bargain! Just do it! It is all about exclamation points and ticking clocks, and ultimately it is all nothing but hype. The words may differ with the PCUSA but the tone is the same: Move now! If we act now, we might get through it free and clear! The denomination is planning to clampdown hard! The EPC's open arms may not be open for long! The doors are closing! Even if some of these claims are true, to be goaded by urgency is no way to make a decision.

We certainly don't want to be like those Wall Street traders who wish that they would have sold their stock a few hours earlier, nor like those congregations that have had to bitterly battle over they properties they paid for and maintained. No one wants to be forced out onto the street and have to start over.

The thought of getting out while the getting is good is certainly an attraction, and plenty have simply given up hope of any chance of positive change for the PCUSA.  Even so, seeing a storm on the horizon is not the same thing as being hit by lightning.  Urgency per se is nothing but a lot of wind.

But the fears involved with getting out are nothing compared to that of frozen feet and the more familiar head-in-the-sandisms of congregations that just want all the trouble to go away by itself.

•Withdrawal

Plenty of evangelical churches have been too afraid either to take a bold stand or to send strong messages (withholding per capita, providing quality volunteers, etc.) to governing bodies. The denomination has been a source of frustration, but now with the ideological center of power moving left, and real storm clouds forming on the horizon, they neither flee nor take shelter—they just give in. Like the irrational fear of one who is being chased—the impulse to turn around and give oneself up—the fear of being controlled or dominated can provoke wrong behavior.  But as this article is supposed to be about those who want to leave for the wrong reasons, we have to look at another kind of fearful withdrawal.

Maybe it is denominational despair, but it is that dissociation from the governing bodies whose message-by-message refrain clearly communicates: WE are not YOU.  Congregations that are fed up tend to give up.  They have conceded that a stay, fight, win strategy is a lose/lose scenario. They fear that they are already utterly disempowered.  If that claim is not based on real evidence or real efforts aimed at solutions, then it is merely fear at work.

•And so. . . .

Fear is never okay; it is always a kind of spiritual sickness. It is an inappropriate motive for anything we're talking about here.

Fear is cast out by love.   If you say (or think) "I have no love for the PCUSA and its people," then that is your spiritual problem, not the denomination's. 

You and I are responsible for choosing the kind of love that leaves no room for fear.

If love can lead you out of the PCUSA, and you can clearly articulate how this is so, then that would be a most excellent rationale for seeking dismissal.

Next Reason #4: Because it will attract new, younger people.