We Fall Down - How Problematic Churches Can Be Overseas

Let's talk about what it's like to live in an expat community and how hard it can be to find the right church community!

This is where you can find me now, and where today’s tale of super-church-hopping Jordan starts! Jordan is not his real name.

Eight years ago I moved to Costa Rica, starting in a tiny village in the Tarazzu section. It was about an hour south of the capital city of San Jose. There the closest thing to church was a large antique wooden structure that housed the local Catholic church. The center of the village, the center of their world. It was my first experience with faith in Costa Rica. I liked it, I found the ritualism of the Catholic church I remembered from my childhood comforting and the rotating priests spoke slowly and distinctively enough for my very rudimentary Spanish to understand.

Towards the end of our time in that village that particular Catholic church burned to the ground.

This photo I took as the building was fully engulfed before the fire trucks arrived from nearly an hour away in Cartago. That photo, and that night were the genesis of my front cover image for my upcoming book “With Strange Fire” My book involves my years as a Quiverfull Evangelical wife and mother before I burnt it all down. Sadly the Catholic church hasn’t contributed anything towards rebuilding a church and the site sits empty now.

It also symbolizes something important I’ve learned living here in Tamarindo, that non-denominational Evangelical churches can go even farther off the rails and away from the basic messages of Jesus the farther they are from accountability. It’s a small community with only three churches that weren’t the Catholic church. I was disappointed to find there were no nearby Methodist or Congregational churches.

There are other factors at play in this too, a) people with money very used to the idea of influencing church culture in their U.S. churches, b) people getting offended when the same money buys little influence here and they end up stomping off to another church, church hopping and c) it seems that many folks turning up here from the United States have an essential streak of rebellion within them. Just like Jordan. Now Jordan, he hits all three of those all too well, and I’ve had the good fortune to view him and his behaviors up close now for nearly eight years.

I first met Jordan at our first local church here when I joined worship team. Jordan played the guitar, and was one of the most naturally gifted musicians I’ve ever seen. He was also one of the smartest folks I’d ever met. I’d venture to say he was literally someone of a genius IQ. He’d come from the Midwest after retiring from his job at an investment brokerage. Jordan was the first feckless billionaire I met here too. Why do I say ‘feckless’? Read on.

During those early days at this church I got to see Jordan grow increasingly dissatisfied with the fact that our pastor was inured to Jordan’s tactics to take over the church and remake it. Jordan started to gainsay the pastor during worship rehearsals. Then he stepped up his campaign of harassment, recruiting others to agree how awful the pastor was. He tried to poach me for his posse, but I told him if he had a problem with the pastor it behooved him to go talk to the pastor, not everyone else.

Jordan never did. What he did do was get his little posse stirred up to pull stunts like pointing and laughing at the pastor during sermons and a million other childish little takes. Eventually Jordan was asked to leave, but it was too late, the damage had been done. His group of followers took over the board and voted the pastor out eventually. Even as Jordan had landed at a much smaller church by then.

After we left our original church after the pastor was voted out and the board decided to stop accommodating my disability we landed at the small place Jordan was a member. I could see all the good that Jordan’s plentiful dollars had done at church number two. We only attended once or twice as this place was just not for us. This church was all about preaching on hell and damnation, that’s not how my husband and I roll. I heard later that the pastor at church number two and Jordan had some sort of falling out. Jordan took his money and he left.

They appeared at my husband’s church, church number three and left after two visits. I get it, I rarely attend myself, so when Jordan’s other half Mandy told me it was because they were offended by the pastor number three making references to his church being a megachurch in the jungle I understood. I still gag every single time I hear that phrase. I struggle with the fact that the worship music is thirty years old, and they’re trying mightily to conjure up a Brownsville Revival in Costa Rica. They don’t seem to understand you cannot force that to happen, revivals happen naturally or you’re just playing games. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, just like the fire and brimstone sermons aren’t going to leave some of us best pleased.

Jordan and Mandy disappeared. I had heard they were doing that thing that so many offended Evangelicals end up doing - home churching. Until Covid I’d been very skeptical of home church, calling it “The Church of the Holy Basement.” Now I see it as necessary for some. I attend online church, sometimes the one Kevin Young does, sometimes the one affiliated with Trey Ferguson, sometimes the Anglican one I like, sometimes my old Methodist church. I guess I am theologically promiscuous. Disability changed my view of what church is and how it happens.

Then a strange thing happened. I heard that offended church hopping Jordan and wife had gone back to church number one, and he’d taken over worship team. I was surprised to hear that. I guess now that he’d managed to run off the first pastor all was forgiven.

What I learned throughout my eight years here is that I relearned something. Non denominational high demand religious groups suck so hard! Restless folks that hop from one to the other suck. They contribute so much to the cultesque nature of many of these places. You’re so much better off living overseas, or back in your home country sticking to churches with oversight, with regional, state and national oversight, with clean clear denominational protection and theology. These places offer none of that. They tend to be making it up as they’re going along places hosting strange fire.