Today's Nesting Habits - Christianity Today

PASTORAL CARE

I sat in Lois Tyler’s living room, watching her be uncomfortable.

“You have a nice church,” she said, “but we just can’t go there anymore.”

Our church was in the middle of a building project. For eight months, we held worship services in a neighboring church at 2:30 on Sunday afternoons. The Tylers were not pleased.

“My husband cannot worship at that hour, and he will not.”

I thought that was the end of it, but it wasn’t. The Tylers didn’t return to worship at our church, even when we returned to our building. But they did come to many other things, such as a weekly Bible study, monthly seniors’ meetings, and many of our special events. The Tylers had become what I call polydomous Christians.

“Polydomous” is an adjective referring to creatures who live in more than one nest. Poly is from the Greek, meaning “much” or “many.” Domous is from the Latin, meaning “home” or “domain.” People become polydomous for many reasons, some of which are legitimate and healthy. As a pastor with some interest in bird watching, I was amazed to discover how much certain birds have in common with today’s churchgoers.

In fact, using the bird-to-people analogy, I can list at least six types of polydomous Christians.

Magpies The magpie is a bird with a reputation for chattering. This chatter is a mixture of whistles, scolding calls, and rasping sounds. Magpies also tend to carry off bright objects and take them home.

Sally is a Christian magpie. She has been a member of our church for decades. Yet, on any given Sunday, she can be found in any one of a dozen churches.

Why does Sally regularly visit so many different assemblies? She tends to carry shiny objects back home. Sally loves to know what’s going on elsewhere. She is not really a gossip, but she likes having the inside scoop.

Sally actually has been helpful, alerting me to needs among my colleagues: “Pastor Bob’s wife is very sick.” And occasionally by tattling: “I saw the whole Finch family at First Free on Sunday. You’d better check it out.” Magpies are the inter-church pipeline.

Hummingbirds With the ability to hover in midair and fly backwards, the hummingbird is delightful to watch. Flitting from flower to flower, it drinks nectar at about a dozen slurps per second. Its tiny wings beat at tremendous rates (up to 200 beats per second), making its frenetic movement seem effortless.

Ted and Doris wander between Catholic mass, a nearby mega-church, and our local assembly. Bill visits a New Age group whenever the mood strikes. They are the hummingbird Christians—flitting, fluttering, floating from one church to another. They go to see the novel, attractive, and bucolic aspects of church life. Hummingbirds will dart away from nitty-gritty issues of ministry to sample sweet experiences elsewhere.

Mourning Doves The mourning dove is so called because of its mournful call, a sad yet beautiful sound. Like their feathered counterparts, mourning-dove Christians also sound a plaintive call as they temporarily migrate to other churches, and they usually have good reason: legitimate problems in their home congregations.

Sarah’s church was in crisis. She didn’t want to join the exodus of members, but she desperately needed a sense of worship that she wasn’t receiving in her home church. For her own spiritual health, she began attending another church in addition to her own. At a weeknight worship service she was able to find the sustenance, joy, and blessing that was currently lacking in her own church.

No one church can provide everything, not even a megachurch.

Peter was also feeling incapable of worshiping in the church he had attended his entire life. As a leader, he was taking the blame for things that were going wrong. Every time he entered the building, he felt as if fingers were pointed in his direction. Desperate, he began visiting an early morning worship service at a neighboring church. Though it was an entirely different tradition than he was used to, the liturgy gave him the spiritual nourishment he needed. Eventually both Peter and Sarah were able to return exclusively to their own churches, feeling whole and healthy.

Mourning doves become polydomous because they need a place to rest, heal, and be ministered to. They want to receive what is no longer provided at home, without having to leave.

Cowbirds Every spring, the female cowbird deposits her eggs in dozens of nests built by other birds. Never making their own nests, cowbirds instead leave others to care for their young.

The Whittakers don’t send their children to our church’s weeknight children’s club. Neighboring First Church has Awana, and the Whittakers feel their children need the added structure of this program. They do this without any apology nor any indictment of our program. It’s just what’s best for them.

Our youth group is populated with a number of young people from other churches. A couple of them are here because their church is too small for an active youth group. Keith and Mike came because they clicked with our youth pastor better than with the youth pastor at their home church.

Brenda is a single mom with several children at home. She enthusiastically involves her family in Vacation Bible School, kids’ clubs, and youth groups here, even though they worship elsewhere on Sunday mornings. This is the way of the Christian cowbird: laying eggs in a variety of nests.

Ruffed Grouse To grouse is to gripe, groan, or whine. Although I’ve never heard these chickenlike birds, their name makes them an easy target.

When applied to churchgoing, ruffed grouses are those people who become polydomous because they want their home church to know how unhappy they are. It’s a form of protest.

These people don’t completely leave, they simply attend different churches a couple of times a month to explore other events and services, and to let others know about it.

The typical Christian grouse will toss out comments such as: “We were at International Church last week. It was wonderful. We’d forgotten how great things could be.” Or, “We’ve enrolled the kids at Christ Chapel. They have such a superior program, and we can be in a small group at the same time. Now that’s planning.”

Waxwings These social birds can work together to strip an entire orchard of fruit. Sometimes they gorge themselves until they are almost unable to fly. They scour the area for food.

Jackie searched every church within a two-hour drive of home looking for a mate. She was not alone. David did the same, as have dozens more I could name. These Christians became polydomous in order to satisfy a need.

Sam represents a different genus of the waxwing. His wife had left him, and he needed support that just couldn’t be provided in his home church. So he joined a support group in a nearby megachurch.

Christian waxwings are in flight searching for what they need. But sometimes when they find it, they eat their fill and don’t take off again. Although Jackie found a husband and brought him back with her, Sam eventually made his support place his church home.

Learning to love the birds My perspective on polydomous Christians has changed over the years. At first I was jealous and hurt when I discovered some of my people had more than one church home.

Now my reaction isn’t so negative. In fact, I’ve learned to like the idea. As I seek to help polydomous people clarify why they are attending more than one church, sometimes I discover things that make me a better pastor.

I realized that some of my people can be used to bless other congregations. No one church can provide everything, not even a megachurch. Therefore, I’ve learned not to be envious that other churches offer ministries and programs that mine cannot. This also mitigates my pride when my church offers something other churches do not.

For many wounded believers, polydomous church-going can be a useful step in their healing process. A change of locale can become a safe place to mend and be fed during a difficult time. This haven may or may not be temporary, but I have come to believe that having those options is a wonderful blessing.

I also realize that, when it comes down to it, I cannot stop people from being polydomous—and I will only try when the other church is not Christian. For instance, Henry claimed the crystals, meditations, and blue healing lights from his weekly New Age spirituality group were a helpful addition to his “Christian journey.” Although he is not a member of our congregation, the rest of his family is. So, I pointed out the scriptural inconsistencies in his practices and warned him of the anti-Christian nature of his second home of worship. The rest, however, is up to him.

All in all, I’ve come to a more holistic perspective on the beauty of the entire body of Christ. God’s church is much bigger than my church. By themselves, our respective congregations stand incomplete, but together they reflect the wholeness and diversity of Christ’s body. So I will continue to observe and cautiously celebrate the presence of polydomous churchgoers in my flock.

John Beukema is pastor of Western Springs Baptist Church 4475 Wolf Road Western Springs IL 60558 JHBeukema@aol.com