The Myth of the Extra-Special Church
My time inside a congregation that seemed like the epicenter of God's work.
I’ve been attending church most of my life. But I’ve only ever been part of one extra-special church.
It was Church of the Resurrection, an Anglican congregation in Wheaton, Illinois. It started as an Episcopal plant in the 1950s, then split from The Episcopal Church (TEC) in 1993 under the leadership of the charismatic (in both senses of the word) William Beasley. Beasley was replaced as pastor in 1999 by the equally charismatic Stewart Ruch. “Rez” later joined the Anglican renewal movement, composed of evangelicals concerned about TEC’s liberal drift, especially on issues of women’s ordination and same-sex marriage.
In 2008, a thousand worshipers gathered in Wheaton to inaugurate what would become the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). Someone at that meeting sounded a shofar — a trumpet that, for the Israelites, meant either a call to war or a proclamation of freedom. For Robert Duncan, the ACNA’s first archbishop, the shofar signaled both: a war against TEC unorthodoxy, and freedom from its leaders and bylaws. Duncan declared, “The Lord is displacing the Episcopal Church."
With this kind of history, it’s easy to see why Rez and other new ACNA churches would think they were special. While TEC churches continue their membership and financial decline, Rez experienced significant growth under Beasley’s and Ruch’s leadership. That growth seemed to signal that God was blessing Rez and her faithfulness, and that God was using Beasley and Ruch to lead his people out of the wilderness of heterodoxy. When I was there, numerical growth came up a lot.
I attended Rez for a little over two years. I had lots of friends who attended and loved it. The preaching was upbeat, passionate, and future-focused. Its worship program and the annual Easter Vigil (what a friend once dubbed “Easter: The Musical”) drew many Wheaton students and families in the Chicago suburbs. It especially attracted educated evangelicals who had grown up in low-church settings and were enthralled by the liturgy, by smells and bells (in theory), by following the church calendar that told and retold the story of God’s salvation in Christ.
Rez leaders and members regularly shared during Sunday morning worship how Rez had changed their life. Or how God had changed their life. Or both, I guess. It wasn’t always clear: who was doing the saving and the changing? Clearly it was the Holy Spirit, moving in and through Rez. But was the Holy Spirit more present here than in other churches? Was the Holy Spirit blowing in and through the dozens of other churches within just a 10-mile radius of Rez’s building? Might the Holy Spirit even blow through an Episcopal church door or two from time to time?
It didn’t take long for me to perceive a kind of spiritual hubris, born of numerical growth, stories of transformation, and self-identity as the good, faithful Christians standing athwart the bad TEC Christians (if we could even call them that!). Rez leaders talked far more about what God was doing at Rez than what God was doing beyond its walls. It was easy to walk away believing that this church stood at the epicenter of God’s work in people’s lives.
It wasn’t just a special church with a unique history, which is true of many churches; it was at the forefront of the Holy Spirit’s movement in Wheaton and beyond. This, despite Jesus teaching the wind blows where it will (John 3:8), that God’s presence can’t be contained in temples and tabernacles and suburban auditoriums (Isa. 66:1; Acts 7:48).
The myth of the extra-special church animates the most successful, now tarnished, churches on the American landscape. It’s the story that Bill Hybels, founding pastor of Willow Creek, told when he claimed repeatedly that the “local church is the hope of the world.” Hybels later clarified that he meant all churches. But even the intended sentiment betrays the belief that a Christian institution —instead of God, whose presence fills the universe and is now at work in the most “unchristian” places — is where and why it all happens. When any one church believes it’s the protagonist in God’s story, it’s easy to ignore signs of unhealth and abuse in its midst. People who raise concerns about how the institution treats the vulnerable are seen as opposing not only the church but also God.
That’s the story of what has happened at Rez.
Spiritual Hubris and Abuse
One of the reasons I always felt I had one foot in, one foot out of Rez is because I had attended an Episcopal church where the gospel was faithfully preached and the sacraments faithfully administered week in and week out. So, although I genuinely understood the concerns over TEC’s trajectory, I couldn’t really buy the “we Anglicans are good, those Episcopalians are bad” binary. Binaries don’t work when you spend time among real people.
Beyond this, I couldn’t swallow the story Rez leaders told because their stories, especially from Ruch, tended to locate themselves at the center of God’s redeeming work. One Sunday, while Ruch (who by then was bishop of the Upper Midwest Diocese) was preaching, he shared an anecdote about praying with a young man who was struggling with something in his relationship. Ruch recounted how, as he and his wife prayed over the man, something emerged from the man’s mouth (it was implied to be a demon or unclean spirit). After that, the man could re-engage this relationship in a “healed” way.
Ruch recounted this story with a dramatic flair that made him a beloved leader at Rez. There, he encouraged congregants to refer to him and his wife in familial terms such as “mama” and “papa.” After this anecdote, I remember looking around to see if anyone else noticed what seemed glaring: In this story of spiritual victory, Ruch was the protagonist. According to this account, he was the person through which God had healed this man. So, it was no coincidence that many Rez folks seem to have trouble distinguishing between Rez as a whole and Ruch’s spiritual bravado. Without Ruch, where would Rez be?
This question has hung in the air since 2021, when allegations of abuse at the hands of a longtime Rez-affiliated lay minister came to light. I truly can’t recount the whole story here. It now involves disciplinary charges against Ruch and an impending church trial. The advocacy group ACNAtoo has compiled various stories, timelines, and resources, and Religion News Service’s Kathryn Post has covered the story as well.
But here’s a top-line summary:
In 2021, a lay minister at an ACNA church plant in Ruch’s diocese was accused of raping a woman and sexually abusing a child. His victims allege that, upon hearing these allegations, Rez leaders failed to report to the authorities, and didn’t tell church members about it. The child victim’s family says Rez withheld proper financial, legal, and spiritual support; Rez members maligned the adult victim’s character. In addition, Ruch attended the accused lay minister’s first court hearing after his arrest; the former lay minister claimed the diocesan chancellor (legal counsel) helped him find a defense lawyer.
The former lay minister is serving a 15-year prison sentence for felony child sexual abuse and assault.
I have followed this story since it broke in 2021. It is tragic, disturbing, and complex, and also, it’s so tragically predictable. It’s the story we see at countless churches where abuse has taken place: Leaders fail to contact the proper authorities. They keep the allegations under wraps. They show sympathy for the accused and their family and demonize the victims. Worse, they portray their critics as evil or Satanic — as if trying to rightly address sexual abuse in a public forum is worse than the abuse itself.
As an example, here’s how members of the bishops’ council spoke about the victims and the advocacy group ACNAtoo, according to a former council member who resigned in pained protest.
You should fast and pray before you read ACNAToo because it is definitely Satan’s work in our diocese . . . You know, of course, that everyone who signed the ACNAToo Statement is ultra-liberal and is out to promote female ordinations and/or out to destroy the traditional Biblical views on marriage? You know that the Evil One is out to destroy Bp. Stewart and he is using Joanna/Cherin [the victims] to do this work?
When your church operates from a good/bad binary, you won’t be able to clearly discern badness when it happens in your midst. You will deflect and locate the badness among the people asking hard questions. You won’t be able to imagine that those leaders — gifted, passionate, and well-meaning though they may be — could have failed egregiously to uphold their moral duty to tell the truth, protect the vulnerable, and follow the laws of the land.
When you operate from the sacred/secular divide, you’ll see civic authorities and journalists as out to tarnish the church’s reputation instead of doing their jobs. If your church is the epicenter of God’s work in the world, then critiques or allegations will easily bounce off as “spiritual attack,” as they apparently did at Rez. To be clear, it’s safe to say Satan wants to destroy God’s gathered people. And also, I think the way Satan does that is by letting the horrors of sexual violence and abuse go covered up and obscured for the bad PR it could bring an extra-special church.
More Ordinary Churches, Please
I left Rez in 2016, several years before this story became public. Today, several friends of mine would still say that the church and its leaders blessed their lives, even that God worked specially through Rez. I honor their experience. While it wasn’t true for me, I can accept these leaders are capable of good. To deny this is to make the same mistake Rez leaders seem to do, and perpetuate a good/evil binary that is always and ultimately born of spiritual hubris and self-righteousness. The wind blows where it will, and the kingdom of God cannot be shaken.
But churches can and are, all the time. God doesn’t promise us, or our institutions, an upward trajectory, a path that’s always up and to the right. Churches that appear to be on the path of success can fall off seemingly overnight. Leaders that seem specially ordained can become their own worst enemy. Church members that seem animated by Christ’s love can become haughty and cruel when their church — which they’ve invested too much of their identity in — is criticized or tested. The common denominator in all of this is humans. May we never underestimate our ability to deceive ourselves and believe our own hype.
The older (and possibly more jaded) I get, the more suspicious I am of a church with an amazing and incredible success story that asks me to join in its mission of saving the neighborhood or transforming other people’s lives or whatever. Because too often, we start to think that God needs us to be amazing so that God can be God.
And, the more interested I am in belonging to an ordinary church. A church whose leaders aren’t charismatic or impressive but faithful and shepherd-like, intimately familiar with the needs of their people. A church where worship is enriching and Spirit-filled and sometimes can stand to be quiet or even boring. A church where the preaching is centered on God’s story of redemption, not the preacher’s stories of amazing spiritual breakthrough. And most centrally, a church that is eager and proactively equipped to stand with the vulnerable and wounded when the worst is done to them. I’d trade all the extra-special churches in the world for one who, by God’s grace, can stand to be a mere church. —KB
So much of this is rooted in the lie we’ve been fed for decades now that God needs us to do big, radical things, to not waste our lives. Leaders who believe that are more likely to build churches like this. When we buy the lie of radical Christianity and begin to believe that ordinary faithfulness is beneath us, we’re in dangerous territory.
As the pastor of a very ordinary church, I am encouraged by this post