I wrote this about 6-7 years ago.
I can go, I can help while I’m there, and then eventually I can leave. Or I can put down a few tentative roots and see how things go. The things I like about the church aren’t even really doctrinal. I like the stability–they agree on a few fundamentals and I share those beliefs. I like the friendliness, the proximity to my home, the fact that I’m accepted even if I haven’t joined and even when I blow their minds with some off-the-wall statement, the fact that I already know quite a few people from my previous job… (which is humorous. Apparently for all the rumors that I only hired people from FT, I actually hired more from this church, and had many MANY fewer problems from them!) I really like the fact that people say “thank you”, don’t push (physically or for me to do anything), and have some shared interests with me. I really REALLY like the fact that the pastor doesn’t think of himself above anyone else. No reserved parking place, even!!!
This really struck me tonight. The church I’ve been going to is a lot like what I described 6-7 years ago from a church I eventually joined. Then I left, then the pastor left, then the new pastor came and was just… proud, unyielding, inflexible… he majored on a lot of minors. In my mind he and his wife were trying to make names for themselves. It got worse over time and I think a lot of people probably left. But it was a good place to be while I was there, and the church I’ve been going to is actually better in a few ways–the preaching is better, there is more interest in study, and there’s a little more leniency in doctrine in several fairly big ways.
So this was interesting to revisit. And maybe, just maybe, a bit of comfort to me in my current decision on where to attend.
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Author: Through Grace
I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12).
I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ.
1 John 4:7-8
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
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