A cynic’s guide to finding hope
I met Dr. Jo Anne Lyon a few springs ago at Houghton College’s commencement. Now in her eighties, she exudes both an idealist’s enthusiasm and a seasoned leader’s grit. It’s an exceedingly rare combination. Her infectious joy and winsome invitation to the next generation of servant leaders inspired me to learn more—and the more I learned, the more I realized I had a lot to learn from Jo Anne about how to serve faithfully not just for years but for decades.
As I got to know Jo Anne, it became clear that she is not, in fact, an idealist. She’s a recovered cynic who practices the virtue of hope. As the daughter of church-planting pastors and the wife of a pastor, Jo Anne has had a tumultuous relationship with the Church. Her roles have offered an inside perspective on both the beauty and the brokenness of the institution.
Just weeks after planting a church in Kansas City in 1968, Jo Anne and her husband, Wayne, joined peaceful protests against racial inequality that were spreading across their city following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Jo Anne was eager to invite and involve church members, but despite passionately proclaiming love of God and neighbor, their congregation and the denomination more broadly wanted no role in the work of justice.
In the church’s silence and inaction, Jo Anne perceived complicity. If this was the body of Christ, it had become paralyzed. Her disappointment in the Wesleyan Church—an institution she had loved—soon morphed into disdain. “I didn’t like to go to church, frankly, and I didn’t like the people.”
Jo Anne’s marriage grew strained as she made no secret of her distaste for her husband’s pastoral calling. She vividly recalls returning home from work one evening and hearing God prompt her to get her spiritual life in order. “Well, it will have to be in February because I have to get [the church’s] Christmas program together right now,” she snapped back.
Speaking into the Church’s hypocrisy from the firm ground of moral certitude, Jo Anne was unable to see the dangerous trajectory her own heart was taking. She had grown cynical toward the Church she
once loved.
Wayne often urged Jo Anne to read Catherine Marshall’s book Beyond Ourselves, but it wasn’t until she was hospitalized with a mysterious illness that Jo Anne finally accepted the invitation. When she came to a chapter on ego, the Holy Spirit convicted her. She repented of arrogance, pride, unforgiveness, and anger. And suddenly, for the first time in her life, she became hungry for God. “I wanted God more than anything else in this world,” she recalls. Her pain resolved as mysteriously as it had originated, and she was released from the hospital.
Later that week, Wayne was traveling, so he asked Jo Anne to lead a prayer meeting at the church. She hungered for God, but she still had no desire to be involved with the Church. But when no one else volunteered, Jo Anne begrudgingly agreed. During the prayer meeting, the Holy Spirit came over Jo Anne powerfully. She began confessing to the people in the prayer meeting her reactions toward the Church, toward them. “As I confessed, suddenly, I was so filled with love for people that night that I could not contain myself. . . . I had love for those people I could not will myself to love—and that changed the course of my life entirely.”
Jo Anne felt God’s love uprooting cynicism in her own life. This awakening came with the realization that she had been looking for hope in the Church rather than in God.
Her misplaced hope resonates. When we encounter church leaders obsessed with political ideologies or abusing their power or practicing all flavors of hypocrisy, we’re ready to join Jo Anne in writing off the Church. When the next scandal makes headlines, we feel our hope eroding. We feel a sense of personal superiority bubbling up within us, our anger seeding our growing cynicism.
In a paradoxical way, cynicism appears to be the plague of what others are or are not doing. But at its core, cynicism is a byproduct of pride. It is a disbelief that positive change is possible based on our assessment of our own strength to enact that positive change.
Jo Anne began to recognize that the Church is not immune from the brokenness of our world. It can be a place where sinners find grace and peace, but it can also be a place where followers become wounded and disillusioned and faith falters. Many see the shortcomings of the Church and give up not only on church but on faith altogether. Many conflate God and the institution.
Yet God grieves when the Church is complacent, when politics matter more than people, when the priorities of the Church blatantly disregard the priorities of the One they seek to represent. The Church’s failures and shortcomings undoubtedly breed cynicism, yet the Church was never intended to be the ultimate source of our hope.
Like the prophet Jeremiah, Jo Anne refused to succumb to cynicism and instead said, “We set our hope on you” (Jeremiah 14:22b ESV). Those who hope in the Church will grow disillusioned and eventually cynical, but “those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength” (Isaiah 40:31a NIV). She went on to serve faithfully for decades, both in the Church and in the nonprofit sector as founder of World Hope International and ambassador of The Wesleyan Church.
Jo Anne believes that just as the turbulence in the 1960s eventually gave way to the Jesus Movement in the 1970s, there is a movement in store for the Church today as hearts turn to Christ and to the mission Christ gave us. Although many view this as a dark and difficult season, Jo Anne believes it is a moment not for cynicism but for hope. A moment to recapture a faith that is inextricably linked to action. A moment not to pull back or to give up but to look upward to the One who sustains our hope.
Jo Anne’s story is adapted from The Gift of Disillusionment. For more on rekindling faint or forgotten hope and leading with enduring hope, order now.
Photo courtesy of Houghton College.
