The first thing Jonah noticed wasn’t the cross; it was the sign-up table. Three clipboards: Membership Class, Men’s Skeet & Breakfast, and “Serve to Belong.” A woman with a lanyard and the stabilized smile of a flight attendant explained the order of things: attend three Sundays, join a class, get placed on a team, meet your “shepherd,” learn the covenant. She slid a pen across the table like a key card.
Jonah had come hungry—soul hungry—but the church moved like a machine that ran on sign-ups, schedules, and a quiet fear of being unknown.
Inside, the ushers wore matching jackets. They didn’t ask names so much as categories. “Married? Kids? Where are you serving?” The questions weren’t cruel. They were just…club questions—intended to place you.
The service began with a countdown clock and a welcome from the “Lead Visionary.” He opened with attendance metrics, then last quarter’s giving tiers: Bronze, Silver, Legacy Circle. A slide flashed names. Applause. Jonah clapped because everyone clapped. He felt like he was learning a choreography whose steps had nothing to do with God and everything to do with belonging.
After the songs (tightly rehearsed, hands raised on cue), the sermon was a strategic plan: five pillars, four targets, three lanes, one brand. “We’ll become who we measure,” the pastor said, and the elders nodded like a board of governors approving a renovation of the 18th green. There was Scripture, but it arrived as footnote—to validate the plan the way bylaws ratify dues.
In the lobby, the real work happened. People orbited the influential: a deacon who owned a plumbing company, a small group coach whose wife ran the homeschool co-op, a trustee with a forklift of advice. The prayer chain ran like stock tips, equal parts compassion and soft surveillance.
“We’re praying for your nephew,” someone told Jonah, and then offered him a discount on a water heater.
He tried a small group. The leader opened with, “House rules: no doctrinal debates, no criticism of leadership, questions go up the chain.” They studied a book written by the Lead Visionary. The discussion guide answers were in bold. When Jonah pressed a little—“What does repentance look like for a church, not just a person?”—the room shifted. The leader smiled the way people smile when a tee shot lands in the wrong fairway. “That’s a great question for Step Four of the Covenant Class,” he said, and they returned to page 23.
Ministry, he learned, was earned. Serve six months, show up to volunteer rallies, wear the church-branded shirt, laugh at the right jokes, and you might be invited behind the rope. There were levels: door-holder, coffee team, kid-check, worship auditions (“by invitation only”), then the coveted tiers—coach, captain, core. Titles were jackets. Jackets meant you didn’t have to introduce yourself anymore.
Rules sprouted everywhere like little white stakes. Don’t park in the Legacy Circle spots unless your giving statement says you can (no one said it out loud; everyone knew). Don’t sit in the second row—reserved for staff families and major donors. Don’t post questions online. Don’t pray into the mic unless you’re pre-approved. Don’t change the room setup; Facilities has a diagram. Don’t move the artificial ficus (acoustics).
On one Sunday, a visitor arrived late with a crying toddler and a diaper bag that looked like a plea. An usher intercepted her the way a marshal redirects foot traffic off a green. “Children’s wing is down the hall—check-in closes at 10:10.” It was 10:12. He offered a pager and a pamphlet about excellence in worship environments. She left before the second song ended, hunger unaddressed.
At the Vision Banquet, the elders sat on a dais like a board unveiling a new clubhouse wing. A consultant in a blazer said, “Our brand promise is Connection.” Everyone nodded. Jonah wondered when the promise had stopped being Christ and started being each other.
He tried to meet with a pastor. The assistant smiled apologetically. “He’s protecting his preaching block. And the Executive Pastor handles soul care—by appointment, after you finish the membership pathway.” She handed him a QR code.
So Jonah kept serving. He learned the traffic cones, the tone of voice for greetings, the correct answer to “How are you?” (“Blessed and busy”). He received texts: “We missed you at Huddle.” “Your giving statement is ready.” “Don’t forget to RSVP for the Leaders’ Golf—uh, Leadership—Retreat.” He received fewer questions about how his soul was.
He watched a young man ask if the church would host a Bible study at the shelter downtown. The Missions Committee chair—kind man, crisp beard—thanked him and suggested instead partnering with a branded program run by the church. “Alignment,” he said. “We can’t dilute the experience.” It sounded like protecting a logo from the weather.
The longer Jonah stayed, the more the analogy sharpened. The institutional church here was a country club for those without country clubs—status paid not with money (though money helped) but with compliance, hours, and the gentle art of admiring the right people. Friendship was real, yes—potlucks, hospital visits, moving days—but it functioned like member benefits. The spiritual life—confession, lament, awkward holiness—lived in back corners, unsponsored.
One Wednesday, he volunteered in the prayer room. It looked like a tasteful waiting lounge. A laminated sheet listed “Approved Topics” and “Prayer Language Guidelines.” A woman entered, eyes red, voice shaking. “My marriage is breaking,” she said. Jonah leaned forward to pray from his gut, but the coach touched his sleeve and handed him the script. “Use the template,” he whispered, pointing to a box labeled Marital Distress. Jonah read the words. They were correct and lifeless, like a form letter to a drowning person.
On a rain-slick Sunday, Jonah sat alone in the balcony and watched the choreography perform itself—ushers in place, cameras on rails, smiles calibrated. He tried to picture Jesus walking through the lobby with its banners and brand promise. Would He be put on a team? Asked to take the Covenant Class before speaking? Corrected for praying off script? Given a lane?
He imagined Him slipping out the side door with the woman who had been two minutes late, sitting with her on the curb, talking about living water while the countdown clock hit zero again inside.
Jonah didn’t leave angry. He left the way you step off a manicured green into regular grass: mud on the edges, honest underfoot. He joined a few neighbors in a living room with mismatched chairs and a Bible that didn’t come with a logo. They sang off-key and prayed without templates. Sometimes no one had answers and they sat in the silence until the silence turned into something like presence.
He still saw his old friends at the big church—at the grocery store, at games, at the stoplight. They were good people. Many were kind. But when they said, “We miss you,” they meant the roster, the rotation, the shape he made in their machine. He nodded, and they nodded, and the light turned green.
He could finally name what he had felt all along: the poor man’s country club. A place that promises belonging to people who can’t afford the other kind, whose price is conformity instead of cash, whose rewards are connection instead of transformation, and whose rules make sure no one upsets the course.
It isn’t that no grace lives there. It’s that grace is rationed like tee times—scheduled, managed, available to members first.
Jonah chose hunger over membership and found, slowly, that his hunger led him to the One that asked for no dues and offered no titles—only a table, and bread, and a Name that wasn’t printed on a slide but written, inexplicably, on him.
Many who have been in the institutional church have felt the pangs this fictional allegory notes. They go to a church looking for transformation and relationship with a Savior and instead it becomes something akin to a country club with dues paid in obligation and towing the line.
Perhaps you have felt this way or you have been a part of a church only because it was a social connection to others and you missed out on the true purpose of what faith is all about: relationship with the Creator of everything. It’s not that an institutional church cannot help a person with their faith walk. It’s that the foundation is off kilter and leads away from the Father in way too many ways. It’s not that the people are bad (in most cases). They are, after all, our brothers and sisters in Christ if they truly have a relationship with Jesus. However, they are often focused on the wrong things.
Asymmetric Faith is about choosing to refocus on the Savior instead of the institution. Hopefully, the materials we are developing on this site will help you grow closer to the Father…after all, that is the reason for our creation.
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