In spite of these present realities, I believe it’s worth talking about the C
I’m asking you to confront your church experience with me and see what we lover’s of God can salvage from our past in order to rebuild the future. I believe God’s intentional design for Church can still be a present reality.
(Please remember, this is my personal story and if it offends you I am sorry, it has shaped my journey and just is.)
The waiters carried it in on a silver platter. Tiered high in a conical tower, the thin round pastry-balls looked filled with chocolate cream. After a month in China with no sweets, the vision of that mountain of delight stills makes my mouth water. Anticipating the sweet Lindor-like mousse, I grabbed my chopsticks and greedily devoured the treat only to shamefully spit it into my cloth napkin hiding the remnants of my embarrassment. I thought it was chocolate, but in reality, it was sweet red bean paste.
Like those assumed chocolate balls, our church experiences can sometimes leave a bad taste in our mouths. The first time I walked into a church as a middle-schooler by personal choice it did not disappoint. Surprisingly, it changed the course of my life eternally in which I will never regret. It was in a church where I fell in love with God, but as with the mind of a young person, the church had very little to do with it. Up until high school, I had a neutral concern for the church. Everything changed when I stepped out of my childhood toward independence.
My first encounter with a church centered on one element for me—the Bible. To this day, I look back at my early church mentors as men and women who loved God’s word and fostered a fire and hunger for
When I left my small-town, Bible-loving, missionary Baptist church to attend a
Up until this point in my faith journey, my experience of the church consisted of Sunday morning services where I was meant to sit quietly, listen and take notes on the sermon—a passive role, alongside involvement in youth group—my intended place in the church. Even as a youth I sensed separation from the larger body of my local church and it irked me. Everyone had their place in the hierarchy of church life. Now in college (older and wiser), I assumed my new status would move me closer to the inner circle of church life and vocational ministry—boy was I wrong.
On-campus I could freely engage in any extracurricular ministry I wanted, so I participated in a youth ministry outreach program and our campus missions committee. These para-church groups were designated for students, led by students, and operated completely outside the church at large. The delineation for each of these roles was clearly drawn apart from the church; each in their own tidy and controlled box so as not to interfere where they were not welcomed. To further prepare for ministry vocation, I decided to take an internship with a local church. I was so excited to finally cross the line and join in the life of ‘the church.’ But, even in that role, much like a youth group attendee, I still didn’t seem a place at the adult table.
Though I didn’t realize it at the time, all these versions of the church were muddled up in my mind and in the midst of the mire a seed of disillusionment with the church was planted. A twisted and misconstrued sprout began to grow without my knowing.
That’s when the church hurt me.
My church internship where I expected to be welcomed into the church for mentoring, discipleship, and encouragement ripped me to shreds. Being a girl raised the south, I was not entirely naive to the realities women faced in home-life, the work place, education etc. I, like most girls, learned that women have their place in society and I should exist in my designated roles submissively and quietly. What I hadn’t experienced fully as a child was the opposition of women serving in ministry. At that time in the early 2000’s the debate of women being called and serving in the church, as well as general ministry, was a big debate among Baptists in the south. Tangled in that netting during my church internship and exploration of calling taught me one big lesson—I was a young woman, and I did not belong in a man’s club called the church.
At the end of that appointment, I felt more like I’d been through a few rounds of a boxing match rather than embraced by a loving family of whom I thought were fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who wanted the best for my spiritual growth. I felt more like a useless commodity. I began wondering if the church was my friend or my enemy. I began believing the latter. It also fostered doubts in my heart; could God really be calling me, who am I in the church, what’s my value?
I continued going to church out of obligation. I had no qualms with God. His word still rang true in my heart, but my experience with the church confused me causing me to live in constant contradiction with what I read in the Bible and what I heard the church teaching. The wrestling matched continued. When I looked toward God I had to believe there to be a sliver of hope that more existed beyond my current experience of church. He created the Church, it’s meant to be good, but it felt so painful. Caught in a moral conundrum, I begrudgingly dragged myself out of bed each Sunday to be in a place I felt betrayed and unloved, and I only did it because I loved God he kept pursuing me.
I lived this way until I met my husband–a man I couldn’t understand because he deeply loved the Church. Yet even in all his persuasiveness, my heart was not completely convinced the Church was worth it. It would take many years for that to happen.
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