Why I left Nashville

In January, I decided to move back to the Washington D.C. area from Nashville, Tennessee, where I had been attempting to plant a liberal Christian church with a couple of other part-time ministers.  This was a difficult decision to make, for various reasons, and I realize now that it marks a huge turning point in my life.  In my next post I will go into more detail about why that’s the case, but for now I will simply explain the facts of my decision to move.

The church planting project began very well.  We had three ministers including myself, and our ministry team was diverse in terms of race, age, background and style.  Two of the ministers already had been living in Nashville for years and were well connected in the liberal Christian community there, and one of them was leading multiple religious discussion groups in her home.  Our first worship service attracted an attendance of about 30 people.

However, disagreements among the ministers about the style of preaching and worship, as well as personality conflicts, quickly led to the resignation of the minister who had brought in over half the people who came to the first service.  It was a hostile resignation.  Even though she had signed a contract along with me to reserve a meeting room in a hotel for six Sundays — at a cost of over $1,500 which was to be paid by the church itself or by the two of us as individuals if the church wasn’t working out as planned — she refused to honor her part of the agreement and left the church and its two remaining ministers with a huge financial obligation.

This was a major setback and a source of great stress.  Our next service had only about 15 people in attendance.  We tried doing a lot of advertising with fliers and brochures all over town, but it didn’t work, and our third service attracted only 8 or 9 people — despite the fact that we hired an excellent Christian rock band to provide the music.  After that, we scaled back our plans for worship services and decided to hold weekly lunch discussion groups instead, at a local food court.  We did this for several weeks, and never got more than 5 people to attend any of these meetings.

Eventually, I decided that this church planting project was unlikely to succeed.  I became increasingly aware that Nashville was dominated by conservative Christians, and the few liberals in the city already had nice churches they were attending and supporting.  I visited a couple of those and realized that it would be difficult to compete for the small number of people who wanted a liberal religious alternative to the pervasive culture of right-wing evangelical religion — even though I felt that my sermons were very good and that I have what it takes to be a successful pastor.

I decided to move back to Northern Virginia, focus on my paid employment leading the Christian Universalist Association, and look into graduate school programs in Religious Studies.  The Nashville church plant was shut down.  However, just a few weeks ago I was asked to get involved as one of the leaders of a new and very un-churchy church plant in the D.C. metro area – a God-centered, interfaith spiritual meeting group that may slowly evolve into something of a church.  This one will be based on a theological Unitarianism and Universalism, not specifically Christianity.

Am I going in a post-Christian, interfaith direction?  Yes.  Although I love Jesus and his teachings, the fact is, my spiritual journey is taking me beyond the confines of just the Christian tradition — far beyond it, in fact.  Coming to terms with this reality in my mind, my heart, and its implications for my life will be the subject of my next article.

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