Book Review: Once an Insider, Now Without a Church Home

 

 One couple's faith crisis due to the infiltration and spread of Authoritarianism, Calvinism, Complementarianism, and Covenants....

"Pastors quote other pastors and align their teachings with the teachings of other men and staying true to those teachings becomes more important than finding and adhering to God's Truth...And then people suffer." --Amanda Farmer in, Once an Insider Now Without a Church Home, 2018.

 I resonated with the experience of Amanda and Gordon Farmer on too many levels to go into in detail, but suffice it say I wholeheartedly recommend this book to every Christian who is either in a leadership position or who just wants to be a good brother or sister in Christ [to those whose past experiences with pastors and church leadership has been confusing and painful].

After twenty-five years of faithful service and fellowship with a church family they loved, the Farmers found themselves marginalized, lectured, shamed, weighed in the balances and found wanting by the same leadership they had participated in bringing into the church to begin with. 

Any Christian who may have experienced shame, confusion, and hurt during encounters with respected church leadership, can benefit from reading about how the Farmers connected what was happening to them with Calvinism and Complementarianism (their church had never previously been aligned with either). 
 
In attempting to be good Christians and faithful members of their church, Amanda and Gordon Farmer found the respectful dynamics that [had always existed] between the leadership and church membership had dramatically changed--but only in favor of the leadership.  

This book does not describe isolated and rare incidences. I believe the paradigm shift described in this story has become the norm in thousands of churches. Farmer identified complementarianism as the source of some but not all of the problems she and her husband encountered and did a stellar job of telling the story of one couple's spiritual journey and the metamorphosis of one church that went from a more congregational form of church governance to almost absolute authoritarianism, with only three or four at the top making most decisions--and those few strictly chosen according to gender. 

Farmer writes:

"Women have been left totally out of actual leadership roles. The only ministries open to women in the church are now kitchen duty, teaching children's Sunday School, Children's Church, nursery, and baking and cooking for meals. We have become polarized as to men and women's roles. Men no longer assigned in the nursery or children's church or the kitchen. No women count the money (except me in the past**), no women ever read scripture from the front, or facilitate an adult Sunday School lesson, or lead a life group."

**The author was former church treasurer.


I recommend this book to every Christian, regardless of  church affiliation or whether their experience has been good or bad. Do you feel loved and affirmed in your Christian experience? That is awesome! But what about those who attend your church or group who have had devastating experiences in former congregations. Once an Insider..., can help you better understand and help meet the emotional and spiritual needs of wounded brothers and sisters in Christ. If you are a wounded Christian yourself, this book will help you understand that you are not alone.
 

Churches are where Christians go to worship our Creator and Savior, to meet, fellowship, and hopefully establish true friendships with other Christians, to learn of and help bear one another's burdens, to rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. But sadly, congregations where this was once a healthy and fulfilling dynamic, find that what was once joyful service and commitment with true friends who shared a passion for the gospel, has been undermined by covenant requirements and authoritarian leadership determined to implement step by step, systematic theology that leaves little to no room for unity beyond almost absolute agreement with church positions, covenants, and by-laws. 

This type of authoritarian approach to congregation building, weeds out "dissenters" [who may in fact be true and faithful Christians]. Legalistic covenants, suppresses true unity, fellowship, and Christian growth, replacing these with stifling uniformity and a cult-like following of people depend almost exclusively on leadership for most Bible truth and who are kept in line through fear of ridicule, shame, or being labeled as divisive.

Gordon and Amanda Farmer, through devastating personal experience discovered the painful realities and fruit of pervasive popular movements within evangelical Christianity, where those who dare to voice disagreement with the declared consensus of the leadership, are marginalized and finally neutralized through being labeled as divisive, immature, trouble-makers. 

Amanda Farmer's first-person and heartbreakingly transparent account provides many examples of  how both men and women suffer and the faith crisis that can and does result from Calvinistic authoritarian and complementarian leadership within churches.

 ....Buy the book, HERE. Read it. Share it. Give it to your pastors, spiritual leaders, friends, and family as gifts.

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