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Last Wednesday evening at our first session of 'Lost for Words' we thought about how the number of people who profess no religion (the 'Nones') has exploded in the last 20 years. We saw that the church's failures (moral and spiritual) have often alienated people of younger generations. They have become hurt and disillusioned, and quit church. Today, we'll read about the experience of our own Constance Rodgers. But instead of becoming a 'None' in her disillusionment with organized church, she found another path. -Duncan

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I was raised in church. My mother was raised Catholic and my father was raised Methodist. For various reasons, mostly tied to the U.S. Army, we were raised in a series of Baptist churches. We regularly attended services on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night. We did Backyard Bible Club, Girls/Boys in Action, and Vacation Bible School, where we got saved once a year, whether we needed it or not. If the doors were open, there was a pretty good chance we were there. It felt warm and familiar, and I embraced it fully, even choosing to attend a Baptist College.

When I got to college and started really learning about the theology of my church, it began to feel a lot less warm, and a lot less familiar. Suddenly, God didn’t feel like a comforting Grandfatherly figure, so much as a stern and disappointed parent. The Golden rule was replaced by a series of expectations that became harder and harder to satisfy, and quite frankly, seemed less about my relationship with God and more about pleasing the people who ran the church. My faith hadn’t changed, but my relationship with the place that had always anchored my faith had been shaken. I found myself attending less and less frequently and making excuses to justify my absence. I participated in fewer church-led events and was well on my way to becoming an unchurched person.

In college, I babysat for a teacher who had a rule: if you slept at her house on Saturday, you attended church with her on Sunday, and then got a home-cooked meal. She was from Louisiana, and I have to admit that on the first Sunday, I went to church for the gumbo, not the Holy Spirit. I walked into a tiny white clapboard church in the middle of nowhere, with very low expectations. The first time I held that red prayer book and prayed with everyone around me, I was hooked. The liturgy captured my attention. The knowledge that worship in any given church, on any given Sunday, would follow a predictable pattern was comforting. The idea that the Scripture would be presented in an orderly fashion, not tied to the whims of the message the preacher wanted to give, was exciting. The carefully considered and crafted words of the prayerbook had significance and a timelessness that was missing in my past church experiences.

Almost every church Service in that church ended with “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Thanks be to God.” This is still my favorite Benediction, because it summarizes what I was missing and found in the Episcopal Church, a peaceful place with an emphasis on service.