Fitting back into the UK Church

[Mike Frith]

I'm interested to hear your experiences of fitting back into the UK church when you returned from mission outside the UK. Have you found it easy or difficult? What are the barriers that you've encountered or the attitudes that have hindered (in you, in others or with the 'establishment')? Let us know.

[Neal Pirolo]

Acts 14: 26-28, 15:35!

[Helen Watts]

Where do I start?! We found it incredibly difficult, and after three years of trying to fit in / belong we eventually left our baptist church for a small house church, which suits us down to the ground.

From our side (and I'm going to be brutally honest, but also fairly general, so please don't pick up on individual words, rather the gist of it!):

• we found it to be a shallow place (we had been used to being expats and relating on very deep issues including our faith; people in the UK generally don't go that deep; we struggled with that. We couldn't relate to sermons and often came away feeling at odds with what had been put across
• our faith had broadened and deepened and we didn't feel comfortable or find ourselves able to meet God in the structure of the sunday service or the overly structured house groups
• we questioned a lot, and many people just wanted to fix us and give us the right answers (part of the journey for us was probably having the freedom to ask the questions)
• we hadn't been able to go to church for a long time because of endangering local people, so had developed our own way of doing "home church" - the children and my son in particular didn't want to sit down and do craft on a sunday morning, he needed something more active than that
• we tried to get involved by joining a coffee rota (we were asked in very early days back to lead a house group, but were still reeling with re-entry after a revolution and needed first and foremost to receive) and helping out with creche, but realised after a while we were just hiding there and not engaging
• we "debriefed" each other weekly after our church experience, which helped us survive the experience, but after getting quite wound up for a long time, I ended up wandering the local park during services where I met God much more than in the building

Barriers we encountered:

• Church didn't know what to do with us - they wanted us to do something as part of the church and not just fill pews, they couldn't quite get their heads round us just needing to be part of something and not active
• The few people that we had longer / deeper conversations with didn't seem to know what to do with us either and wanted to give us the right answers to our questions rather than just listen to us
• Church didn't understand how we struggled to relate to the services - it was put across that it was something (probably an attitude) wrong in us
• I also struggled with depression when we came back and the church didn't know what to do with that either (understandably)

The house church we now belong to meets the needs that were missing in the larger establishment - we can be vulnerable, ask deep questions and be accepted for who we are whether we actively participate or hold back for a while. And we all journey with God together in different ways and challenge each other in different ways. A very human but sacred space.

I hope that information is helpful and not too much information!

[Mike Frith]

Thanks Helen. Very insightful and honest ... which is really helpful. I could echo many of the points from our experience, but I will be interested to see if there are many others in the group who also identify with these.