Stay Connected
Don't leave just yet. Besides these articles, sometimes I send out extra special stuff. Don't miss out. Sign up here.
Today I am guest posting over at my friend, Preston Yancey’s blog, as part of a series about “the beautiful, mangled Church.” He’s featuring over 50 amazing writers, so be sure to check out the entire conversation, which is entitled At the Lord’s Table.
Enjoy!
I respect people who have intellectual reasons for walking away from the church. Not because I agree, but because I can empathize and grapple with questions, too.
But then I dig deeper, and usually the reason people have left the church, faith, or organized religion comes down to one thing…
People.
But, as my dad always taught me, people in the church can hurt us because it’s often the only place that says, “Welcome, all sinners!”
The church attracts people with deep problems whom many other organizations may stiff-arm. Those people get involved as volunteers and end up rubbing their fellow pew-sitters the wrong way. Jesus also warned against wolves in sheep’s clothing. Sadly, some people end up getting bitten by these wolves and then claim the sheep did it.
The wounded then leave the church.
Often I hear myself apologizing for the church and how screwed up we are. (And we are.) So instead, I would like to highlight people who come to mind as reasons why I love the church. It will be from a child’s point of view since the people who first came to mind were from my days growing up in Michigan and attending the church my father pastored. Our family lived in the parsonage, which connected via sidewalk to the people who worshiped within the four walls of Trinity Church.
There were many good people at Trinity and a handful of bad. To those listed below, I simply want to say thank-you for living your life in a way that reflected the good and kind Christ whom I love. When I look back one day on the film of my life, I hope as an adult I was as generous with my time as you were with yours and that I care for the people in my church as you did.
Mr. Smith: He was a janitor at our church, and, for whatever reason, I was fascinated by the large sweeping dry mops. They were as wide as I was tall, and turning them felt like I was moving a dead body. Mr. Smith would assign me a long hallway (hello, child labor) and then take me to Burger King. Sounds sketchy, but it wasn’t! He loved our church community by keeping it clean, and he loved me through Whoppers…
Stay Connected
Don't leave just yet. Besides these articles, sometimes I send out extra special stuff. Don't miss out. Sign up here.
Love and Respect (Now) is a division of Love and Respect. Please be considerate.
My roommate and I got kicked out of a house we had been renting for all of a month and a half this summer after we hosted a slumber party for 15 jr. high girls from our church. The night before, I asked the male youth leaders (3 of my closest friends) to come over during the sleepover and prank the girls to make things a little more memorable. I did not lay perameters for this prank. I also grossly underestimated their dedication to this task. The story of the prank and description of what went down is one for another day.* But long story short…we had to move. It was a clustercuss of a situation at the time and I felt really bad for the misunderstandings that it caused between us and our landlords, but despite all of our apologies and explanations, they refused to believe that our fun was innocent, and they terminated our lease. When I told the story a week later to my former youth pastor in Michigan, he made me feel better by laughing until he cried. He told me he was sorry for the stress we were facing, but he couldn’t be prouder of us for our work with these girls, and he assured me that those kids would never forget that night for as long as they lived. It was also completely awesome to see how supportive our church’s pastoral staff and youth leadership team was of us as they offered to call and even visit our landlords to both defend our character and apologize on behalf of the church for the misunderstanding and disturbance. I do not reccommend making your neighbors and landlords angry in order to mentor some teenage girls…nor do I condone suggesting to anyone that they pull a prank at your residence, but I will say that going through this entire experience further solidified my love for the church and the ministry I am a part of today. And as a sidenote, the pranksters who’s skills left us homeless are now the best roomies we’ve ever had. They opened up the bottom floor of their house for us–out of love or guilt, who is to say–and we have had the greatest time living in community! Moral of the story: Life is messy. So is ministry. Forgive each other. And if you get a friend kicked out of your house, offer her your basement.
Lisa thinks...
I loved the way you wrote about people from your childhood. Especially the first janitor. It makes me wonder about why we remember so many vivid details from our youth and as we get older remember less and less. Anyways, I thought it was a great reminder to dwell on being thankful for what is going on around me instead of being critical. It also reminded me of the time last year when you wet the bed at our house and left it for me to clean up 😉 I still love you!
| at |