Four years ago, my life was shipwrecked by the church. In the heart of the pandemic, the doors of my church were closed and I found myself sitting in the pews of a non-denominational church as the only place I could find hope, protection and a religious exemption for my livelihood.

As an Adventist pastor’s grandchild, I never dreamed I would be on the other side of the religious tracks, but after seasons of healing I was ready to go back home to Adventism. The sermons of bygone pastors of yesteryear rang in my ears not to forget our creed, our theology, our distinctive doctrines and our peculiar way of life; but it was the brave elderly pastor who found me like a wounded sheep in the thicket of all the turbulence who gently led me back to our denominational pews.

The pandemic of 2020 was the shipwreck of my life and I relate and empathize with many of you who lost your livelihoods, careers, relationships and family ties. This article is not to contribute to whatever controversy threatens the unity of our church, but I would like to speak directly to the victims out there who, like me, were wounded sheep in the thicket of a turbulent shifting church culture.

Let the Healing Begin

For me the eye of the storm was not the medical militia, rogue politics, bureaucratic oppressive regime or the inexperienced pastor who closed the doors of my church. The real pain in my heart was letting go of the innocence of the church that my grandparents scarified their entire lives in ministry for. I remember the holidays when I would visit my grandpa who served as a local church pastor in the bushlands of Africa. Every day, he walked the dusty steps to his church office, leaving the door open for the wounded, troubled and afflicted. In his office, marriages were healed, children were restored, demons were cast out and the vision of a homey church grew one soul at a time. Everyone knew him by name and he tried his best to keep up with the growing multitudes as a fatherly shepherd. No politics, no bureaucracy, no red tape: a simple kind Christianity. How do you let go of tradition when it offered such a clear picture of Christianity? May I suggest to you, brother and sister, that is called grief. In my turbulent season, that’s the truth I found. I’m not angry or bitter or disillusioned, I bear no grudge no personal vendetta or unresolved conflict, not at all. I am a grieving Seventh-day Adventist. What does that mean? There are generally five stages of grieving:

Denial: the inability to deal with a painful reality
Anger: the expression of deep soul wounding
Bargaining: trying to find answers or explain the unexplainable
Depression/Weeping: dealing with emotional turmoil
Acceptance: an acquiescence with reality

Might I suggest what has helped me deal with grief: don’t fight it but allow yourself the permission to grieve. This is why freedom of assembly is imperative and why online spaces like this are the lifeblood of the healing ministry. We do not heal in isolation. If injury occurs in community it can only be healed in community, so allow those who need to grieve to grieve. Allow spaces for people to air their grievances against abuses of religious power and give them a platform to be listened to. It is silence that empowers bullies because they think they can get away with it. Where does that exist for victims of the events of 2020? What has the church done to create spaces for healing for those who are still wounded four years and counting? What provision has been made for reconciliation to take place between injured parties and those who were in positions of authority to be held responsible? In lieu of any accountability and action, has any public apology been offered?

In my healing journey, I learned that out of all the types of trauma in the world, religious trauma or trauma concerning religious institutions, is the most damaging kind of trauma because it affects our sense of self, life and our relationship with God. The abuse that proceeds from those in religious power distorts our perception of the nature of God and destroys the kind of trusting loving obedience that is required in religious life. Perhaps that why those who have been abused struggle the most with authority; they fear that complete submission would make them vulnerable to future wounding and so many will either keep an emotional distance, fence their hearts or create elaborate systems of self-preservation. The end is: an abused person is religious outwardly but their hearts are drowning in waves of trauma and turmoil. Religious wounds are designed by evil not to destroy our lives but to destroy our eternity by putting everything in existential terms.

For example, in many churches, many are taught that they are not allowed to be angry or not to question religion powers or else they will incur damnation. But may I submit to you that it is this bottling up, or hiding of reality, that causes a fake, superficial, hypocritical and toxic church culture to begin with. The church isn’t healthy when it requires robotic adherence, on the contrary, the church is healthiest when individuality is treasured.

More memories flood my mind of my little home church that my parents founded in our African neighborhood. We barely met the quota to become a church and began reaching out to all our neighborhood friends to join us so that we could be officiated by the conference. That’s all we wanted, a church where people came together to be together. It was quaint: we all knew each other by name, we attended each child’s birthday party, teenager’s baptism, young adult’s wedding and elderly’s funeral. We were people going through life together in our different stages of sanctification.

But of course, the higher ups in the conference didn’t like us: we were the rogue church not demanding enough strictness to this or that requirements that came from the higher ups; I guess they couldn’t find robots in our church. We were individuals who freely served each other and worshipped God as best as we knew how. It was in this church that Jesus Christ was honored as our Head and we became the leading church in our conference for rebaptisms for backsliders who had left Adventism.

The Dawn of a New Era

I cry when I think about the church. Perhaps because I don’t have the words to describe religious trauma. My mind struggles to reconcile these precious memories and a modern day church that is so far removed from anything I recognize as a simple kind of faith. I’m often resigned when I feel suffocated by battle fatigue holding onto the church of yesteryear. Acceptance is the last stage of grief and I have accepted that the church of my grandparents era is not the church today. Like many on this site, I’m trying my best to restore our traditional values with a political world that divides us further. I’m unhappy because I care a lot about the direction of the leadership in our church and I fear it will not serve the utopian end they claim. I don’t believe God created us to be monolithic, robotic or cookie-cutter. I don’t believe that God gave us mouths to be silent. I don’t believe God gave us emotions to hide. I don’t believe God gave us brains to stop thinking. These are the times when we need to speak up, not be silent, about the experiences of being a Seventh-day Adventist in a modern world.

For some, being a Seventh-day Adventist is a one-way ticket to living a comfortable lifestyle working in our institutions and I’m happy for you if that’s you. But for others, being a Seventh-day Adventist has come at a such a high price many wonder if the sacrifice was even worth it. I think about our missionaries serving in distant lands fearing imprisonment, Bible workers whose salaries cannot put food on the table, health workers who have to abandon naturopathy to hold onto professional licenses, and an entire generation, called gen z, who can’t find suitable marriage partners, can’t get pregnant, can’t afford a mortgage, can’t afford to attend our institutions or get ahead in this modern era.

I perceive there is only two groups of Adventists today. It’s not: Black vs. White; rich vs. poor, Westerner vs. Foreigner, Patriarchy vs. Feminism, Liberal vs. Conservative, or young generation vs. older generation. No, the only distinction I perceive in our modern church are those who are receiving the full privileges of modernity on one side, and on the other are those who have been left behind by change and still cling onto the faith of their fathers. What does the future hold? Spirit of Prophecy tells us more shaking and sifting is on the horizon and this division will only widen until the other side will seem unrecognizable. One church, two groups: the wheat and the tares, the sealed and the marked, the world wandering after the Beast and those that follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth (Revelation 14:4).

Buckle Up!

How do we reconcile the division caused by religious trauma? Should we fight, flight or feign ignorance of the tensions that are pulling us apart intellectually, morally and emotionally? I struggle with this in my spiritual journey. It’s hard for me to feign ignorance when I see injustice abound and hear the voices of victims whose testimonies have been silenced, and when all efforts of dialogue have been suspended. Naturally I fight because that’s all I know. Generations before me were fighting men and women who fought against oppressive colonialism for homeland and sovereignty.

Both my grandparents and parents fought against a corrupt conference system to preserve their little home churches from influences within and without. Nothing is for free, especially our religious freedom; it cost the Godhead the innocent life of Jesus Christ to secure our freedom from the bondage of sin, so why would our Christian life be any less? Three generations on and here I am still fighting with my writings. It’s not easy being a third-generation Seventh-day Adventist. You need a thick skin and a very forgiving unbreakable heart and all these I pray for daily because my flesh is weak. We are the church militant because we believe in the Great Controversy, but it’s not the fight against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

Moment by moment, issue after issue, we are fighting against every high thing that exalteth itself; whether it may be our policies, our politics, or personalities that threaten the purity of our church. We fight on our knees, with our tithes, with our pens and emails, with our voices and choices, and we must be prepared to give all for the cause of Christ. Never leave a sinking ship if the ship is this church. I did that four years ago and I can tell you the grass is not greener on the other side. We are a peculiar people, we were never designed to fit in no matter how hard we try. There will always be something that gives away our true identity.

There is no home away from home, it’s just a lonesome exile that offers temporary relief and then at some point comes the homesickness for Adventism. Some of you have wondered about your wandering relatives: will they ever come back home to Adventism?

I did, only when I knew what Adventism was and the great privileges bestowed upon us by the Spirit of Prophecy. People don’t wander because they’re lost, they wander because they forget who they are. We are Adventists, the ones who didn’t fit in with Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists or Catholics; we came out of these churches and out of the world because we sought a city whose Builder and Maker is God (Hebrews 11:10,13), and so we continue our pilgrimage from this world to the next.

I repeat: whatever happens next don’t leave this ship! Listen to our Commander in Chief to hold fast till the end (Revelation 3:25). Jesus Christ the Captain will steer us through these turbulent times. Never compromise with evil. Never surrender to tyranny. Never renounce the truth. Never allow anyone to shipwreck your faith. Keep pushing, keep fighting, keep on keeping on. Soon we will reach our eternal home. Onward and upward we go!

Until next time folks, see you at the rodeo.