Part 2: Disillusionment with Church
Oh no. I can guess what you are thinking. “Here she goes. Another woman on a mission for women’s rights in the church.” Well, rest assured, that is not the story I have to tell. I am not a feminist. I am not a “Christian feminist,” (a term I’ve recently learned while acclimating back to American life; a merely western term), and that’s not because I don’t care, I do deeply. It’s rather that I dislike labels, categories, or movements that breed divisiveness and disunity. I just suppose there has to be a healthier way to fight injustice other than highly polarized ideology. I believe a gentler spirit of compassion, empathy, and grace toward all human-kind is more necessary (among both sides of the story). But I digress.
As people, we are in the business of labeling, categorizing, and putting everything in it’s tidy, appropriate place—white and black, conservative and liberal, rich or poor, denominationalism, etc. I don’t discount all forms of order. Systems of structure can help us make sense of our world and facilitate lawfulness, scientific research, societal stability, peace, and happiness. I believe God is a creator of order out of chaos, but when methods of order foster chaos, division, and disunity, I believe God’s heart grieves over us for missing the mark. When our categorizing belittles, ostracizes, or creates a hierarchy of power and superiority that dominates and lords over another person or group, then we are not living in holy order and unity. This is where the church was breaking down for me.
But back to my husband.
His devotion to the church rivaled my reluctance to attend on most Sundays. He seemed to understand some element of importance that the Church offered that I had not yet experienced. Curiously I would wonder what mystery he beheld, and perhaps he’d told me at some point, but my ears were deaf to hear. Nonetheless, in God’s loving grace, my husband landed a job among a church family not tangled up in the roles of women in ministry (or any qualm really), open to inter-generational ministry, passionate for God’s word, service, and love.
They worshipped in the Christian essentials established by early Christians, and decided as a local body which non-essentials best-fostered unity within our local church. I started to breath easier, feeling I’d finally found a church that wouldn’t be bound by labels, but see each person through their giftings and uniqueness as having value in the greater church. Our five years there became a turning point in my heart for the church. The fellowship and community we experienced showed me another facet of church-life beyond headship, authority, power control, and categories for service. I found goodness and family–and that is one characteristic of the church.
Church is family.
For the first time, the church meant more than a place to read the Bible. It meant more than a means to an end—for me working my way toward ministry (a job). It was a place where everyone, no matter the life they had lived, could find grace and a warm embrace. It was a place where hurts could be tended to with gentleness and wisdom.
My husband served in the youth ministry and I began to experience how youths could integrate as full participants in the “big” part of church–they had a voice, value, and place. I met and was mentored by women gifted in ways I’d never known women could be who were living their calling freely within the leadership of the church. No one looked at me and passed judgment or put me in a corner, they loved me, they saw me, and they welcomed me into the community.
Though not perfect, the people in this local church became my family; they were (and still are) my mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, grandmothers and grandfathers, aunt and uncles, and children. The church is meant to be a collective of God’s children together as a family. They taught me what family within the church looks like on a day-to-day basis. They showed me that in church we should be in the habit of meeting together for meals and fellowship, building up one another in love, serving each other and others in our community, supporting each other in hard times, growing up together in God’s word and truth (the Bible I loved finally integrated with church life), wrestling with sin together, looking back at where’d we’d been and being able move forward, grieving and rejoicing together–simply living all aspects of life together. And to top it all off, it crossed all generational lines, no one was greater or smaller, we all were as one. God established the church because we were never called to lead a solo mission of faith, the body is a collective of many serving and loving one God, we were made for relationship, community, we need each other. This view of the church is a glimpse of what is meant when we pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Like a good family, they helped raise us and then, under their affirmation, like a student off to college, they commissioned us out as sometimes the church is in the habit of doing. (Acts 13:1-3)
That season was a safe haven, a calm before the storm. My ship had been harbored in a place of peace for spiritual formation, healing, and to give me a taste of goodness found through a spiritual family. I saw a glimpse of how God intended church to exist as a community and how it might be one day in heaven. When we shipped out, the waves came crashing, ocean water stung our eyes as we approached a new encounter with the church on the horizon.
In spite of what lay ahead, my church experience was being redeemed. My hope for something bigger and better was being restored. I recognized that the church didn’t need to be divisive, or label creating; there could be peace and unity among believers, who were each different and unique, without seeking control, power, and tidy compartments. But, I had more to learn, more experiences to come, more hurts to bear, and more scars to complete my story.
Now being sent out as cross-cultural workers, we were soon to be caught up in a triangle and not the love kind. Three types of churches were steering our ship. Oh, the compartments and impossible expectations you will see.
Join the conversation. What’s been your church experience? Good or bad? What are you learning?
