To post-evangelicalism and beyond
There are many ways people find Harbor, but the data is clear that there are two primary ways: our Facebook ad and Google searches. It’s actually not so easy to have a web page show up on Google searches (hence the monstrosity known as search engine optimization), but we got really lucky with an early blog post. It turns out a lot of people are asking Google, “What is a post-evangelical church?”, and our article of that same name is one of the few places on the web to find an answer.
This is awesome, and we’re really glad that so many people have found Harbor and joined our email list—or better yet, our Zoom calls—because of that blog post. However, the post, along with one of the distinctives on our website being “Post-evangelical and inclusive,” have led some folks to wonder if they can belong here if they aren’t so-called ex-vangelicals.
The answer is a resounding “Yes!” So resounding, in fact, that we will be changing up some of the language on our website soon. This may seem like a drastic step, but (in addition to the fact that it’s just time for some new verbiage) we are excited to bring greater clarity for people checking out who Harbor is for the first time. Which leads to the question… who are we?
A rich tapestry
Yes, we are post-evangelical as a community. This is to say that the initial group that formed Harbor did so as a reaction to, rebuke to, resistance to, and escape from harmful, toxic, or traumatic church contexts we used to inhabit. These church contexts were conservative evangelical ones, and so “post-evangelical” is just a factual description of our history. But as our community has grown and evolved, it turns out this word is not the silver bullet, one-size-fits-all label we thought it was when we created this website.
Harbor is made up of people from a wide array of religious and spiritual backgrounds. Yes, we have some who were entrenched in the theobro atmosphere of Piper and Driscoll. Some who shared the evangelical gospel in foreign countries, and some who played in charismatic worship bands amid fog machines and lasers. Some folks have joined Harbor while still actively participating in these other churches because they haven’t found a way to extricate themselves.
But we also have people who have lived inside God’s ultimate “hedge of protection” and never stepped foot in an evangelical church their whole lives. Some have spent decades in liberal “mainline Protestant” denominations. Others have practiced and left different traditions like Roman Catholicism. Some Harbor folks have journeyed for years in the wilderness, charting their own religious course without a church. It’s a rich tapestry of experiences and journeys, and it feels a bit wider, deeper, and higher than the lone word post-evangelical can communicate.
Describing who we are
How will we summarize who we are in the future? Stay tuned as we figure that out together! I can offer you a few thoughts now, though, about some things we share that bring cohesion to our community.
Most of us have a background that involves religious or spiritual trauma. In light of that, we desire healing and wholeness.
Despite our painful church experiences, we still feel drawn to follow the way of Jesus and to belong in a spiritual community.
We share certain values, like inclusiveness, expansive faith, social justice, and valuing people over beliefs and institutions.
While Harbor feels so fresh and new (and I dare say, delightful) to those of us here, we should remember that what we’re doing, at its core, is neither groundbreaking nor unique. For the whole history of the church (and further back to older faith traditions), people have been discerning how to best believe, practice, express, and embody their spiritualities in their own evolving contexts.
We are also not doing this work alone. We are grateful for our friends in the United Church of Christ (UCC), the Presbyterian Church USA, and Launchpad Partners. One of those partners, the UCC, is fond of saying this: “Our faith is 2000 years old, but our thinking is not—because God is still speaking.”
If you’re here for the first time, welcome. Feel free to stay and listen with us.
