By Steve Brooke
It was the 1970s and ’80s. Most people thought of themselves as “Christians” of some kind, and church was part of their lives. Not us. My parents probably believed conceptually in a God, but if there was a Bible in the house, I never saw it opened. If there was a church in the neighborhood, we never stepped inside.
Today, they’d call people like us “nones,” a term describing people who say on surveys that they believe in God, but when asked to list their religious affiliation or church they belong to, they simply mark “NONE of the above.”
Nones make up more of our population than ever before, and they are an ever-growing concern for Christians and churches who want to help people discover the treasure of faith and family that can be found in Christ and his church.
We’re Missing Something
Back when I was a kid—before all the surveys, labels, and concern—I thought we were just normal people living normal lives. But you don’t know what you don’t know. When I was 4, my parents divorced, my mom became a hippie, and she drove my brother and me across the country to California to “find herself.” My biochemist dad remarried and leveraged the courts to remand us back to Indianapolis. But parents fought, new marriages crumbled, promises were broken, and people were broken in their wake.
And when you’re broken, you do broken things. I teamed up with friends to steal cigarettes, skip school, hide pornography, smoke weed, sneak liquor, and cuss up a storm. These things didn’t feel wrong. They just felt like normal attempts to fit in, fill the void, or fix what seemed “blah” inside.
And even though I believed in a God, not once during these years did I ever think to myself, What I need is a Father God, or a friend in Jesus, or a church where I can find belonging and purpose and family. To many of us nones, broken life is just normal life, most of us just don’t know we’re missing something.
There’s a Love in a Church that can Fill Our Void
When my dad dove into the New Age movement, he met his third wife, Nancy. She noticed my waywardness and said something to my dad that would forever change my life: “I know we don’t go to church, but when I was his age, I did, and I remember it helped me.” My dad went along with the idea. Nancy’s coworker overheard and invited us to her church, East 91st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.
And so, for the first time in my life, I went to a church.
I resisted it at first. I told my dad, “These Christians are a bunch of hypocrites, so I shouldn’t have to go to church.” He saw through my ploy, and said, “You can’t tell if people are hypocrites after two weeks with them. So instead, over the next six months, you’re going to go to everything they do, every time they meet.”
Those were wise words, because Jesus promised that if you get to be around a church of his good-hearted followers for long enough, their love for him, and for each other, and for you, will draw you in and win you over in a way that’s hard to resist.
But I tried resisting. Every time I went to church, I tried wearing, saying, and doing things to get these Christians to dislike me and kick me out of their club. But it didn’t work. Those people, young and old, loved me, were genuinely happy to see me, and cared about my life. It was as if they liked me being part of their group.
In life, I was trying to fit into all kinds of groups, but didn’t. Yet in this group called “the church” (where I didn’t want to fit), I fit!
And after those six months passed by, instead of calling those Christians in that church hypocrites, I came forward, confessed my faith in Christ, was baptized into him, and that whole church, young and old, became the kind of loving, healthy family I never knew existed, or that I needed, or that I’d ever hope to build.
On our own, my unchurched family of nones would’ve never solved my problem of brokenness and sin or unlocked this treasure I now have in Jesus and get to share with others! Jesus’ church saved my life. The way they genuinely tried following him, and loving each other, and inviting outsiders like me and my family into their circle, it gradually warmed and won me to trusting Jesus. It’s why I’ve spent the last 30 years just trying to help his churches be the healthy families that can love more of us into his family.
There’s a Gospel in a Church that Can Light Our Way
Once a church wins a none (or former none) with love, there’s still a lot more work to do. Most of us don’t possess the same bank of Bible knowledge or ethical assumptions as those who grew up with the Bible and in church. It will often require more time to teach us, and more patience to help us navigate the confusing web of beliefs and values we built along the way.
In college, a new minister and his wife at my church saw potential in me, befriended me, and asked me to help them minister with the youth. It was wonderful to feel like I was making a difference. The more I got involved in the church and in ministry, the more excited I became about my faith in Jesus.
And then my hippie mom sent me The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ. In retrospect, the name should’ve been a giveaway that it was bad news for me, but because I’d grown up in hippie and New Age culture, and still hadn’t read the Bible, this different gospel of a more New-Age Jesus was a comforting mash-up of the beliefs I’d grown up with, mixed with the Jesus of my church. I was hooked.
Problem was, I started sharing it with others around me, even young people in church. Not good. Looking back, I would have understood if the youth minister would’ve found a way to quietly dismiss me from their ministry team, or if the church would’ve discreetly distanced themselves from me. But they didn’t. They worked with me.
The youth minister and other older, wiser Christians invited me into their prayer groups and their discipleship groups. Christian friends encouraged me to read the Bible. All the while, the church just kept lovingly, responsibly teaching the gospel from the Bible.
When I finally decided to read the Bible (even if it was to prove to myself that my different, angel-delivered Aquarian Gospel beliefs were right), the first place my new “one-year Bible” opened up to was Galatians 1, where Paul said,
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!
My first words upon reading the Bible were, “Oh [expletive], I’m wrong!” And I couldn’t put the Bible down, every day I read things that were changing the way I saw God and everything in life!
When nones come into the church, we don’t come as blank slates. We’ve built up a confusing web of backgrounds, beliefs, and values that Christ’s church and his gospel can uniquely and patiently help us untangle, to help us see life through his lens.
There’s a Mission in a Church that Gives Meaning to Our Lives
And the more we feel the love of his family and see life through the light of his Word, we encounter another powerful medicine Christ and his church uniquely have for people: the sense of meaning and purpose that come with his great mission to help people find the faith and family that’s in Christ and his church.
I was attending a state college, where I’d already declared education as my major and was planning to be a teacher. I was on campus, reading God’s Word, when I heard his quiet voice say, “Yes, you’re going to teach, but you’re going to teach what’s changing your life.” I remember it like it was yesterday.
And the same church that loved me to Christ, and patiently led me to his Word, helped me in countless ways after that onto a path to becoming the Christian man, husband, and father I never dreamed this brokenhearted, broken-homed, unchurched kid would ever amount to, and they helped me become the Christian Church minister I’ve had the privilege of being over the past 30 years.
From spending my twenties ministering in my church home in Indianapolis, to spending my thirties planting churches in the wild unchurched frontiers of Portland, Oregon, to spending my forties ministering in Jacksonville, Florida, sometimes I pinch myself that, somehow, by the grace of God, this kid who once had none of church or Christ in his life, has now gotten in on witnessing and helping some thousands of people (even nones like I was) all over the country trust Christ, be baptized, and discover the rich faith and loving family and life purpose that can be found in full only in Christ and his church.
Christ and His Church Have that Something People Need. Let’s Believe It.
Even now, spending my fifties helping lead Legacy Christian Church in Lakeland, Florida, I find myself believing all the more that Christ and his church hold the love, light, purpose, and hope the world around us needs.
I’ve never had a ministry assignment of helping nurture a wounded church back to health, so I’ve been learning that kind of ministry right along with them. I’ve loved witnessing them becoming a healthy, happy, loving, and trusted church again. In fact, the “inside” of the church has never been healthier.
But an even greater joy is seeing a revived evangelistic heartbeat for us “outsiders” to be invited and welcomed into the loving “inside” of a church family, where they can warm up to the faith in him and the family in his church, where they can learn his Word and find a higher purpose in his world. It’s actually happening in ways I’ve never imagined!
We’ve partnered up with a Spanish-speaking church in our city to share space and build friendship across cultural, language, and even denominational differences. For the past few years, we’ve visited neighbors and done occasional outreach events together. We’ve even orchestrated some Spanish-English services together. It’s heavenly! It’s modeling unity in the kingdom, but it’s also winning people to both churches!
I’ve always had to invent ways to go “love our neighbors” like Jesus taught us. But our neighbors have grown to trust us so much that they now come to eat lunch with lots of our church family every single week. Sometimes you can’t tell the church family from the neighbors, because we’re all eating together. And as they get to know us, they start serving with us, joining us in church on Sundays, trusting Christ, being baptized, and becoming part of the church family!
And having so many new unchurched Christians inspired us to create a simple 40-day journal to develop or strengthen the core habits of being a Christian. It’s helping all our unchurched become stronger in the faith and more engaged in their church family.
But my heart especially skips a beat when I see the unchurched neighbor teens coming to church, experiencing the love of a church family where they’re hearing his good news, asking questions, trusting Christ, being baptized, living life with God, telling others about him, serving meaningfully in their church, inviting their friends, even baptizing and discipling their friends!
Because that’s what Christ and his church did for me. Thank God, they can take a life of little-to-none and transform it into the life of full-and-forever. Let’s never stop believing it!
Steve Brooke is a proud product of East 91st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he was led to Christ, grew in faith, met his lovely wife, Renee, and was called and equipped into a life of ministry. Steve currently serves as lead minister of Legacy Christian Church in Lakeland, Florida.
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