Who is Church For? Sinners?

The other day when you asked me why we stayed at the church after people were so unsupportive of Malachi and I said I needed to think about it before I answered.  My first answer was a pop-off answer and I knew it. 

1)      I was tired of changing churches and searching for a place to truly belong and fit in.  But there were even more reasons. 

2)      Malachi was old enough to make his own choice and as much as I wanted, he obviously did not fit in there- this isn’t the worship style and never has been that he likes best

3)      Things went off the rails much before that when Sam was basically run out of the church, and I stayed then, too. 

4)      I have never truly “fit in” to a church I have attended since……..no, not ever.  I have always been a fringe wierdo and have never really had close friends in church-because me and mine are just to strange to do things outside of church with and that’s honestly where you build relationships-  not actually in services. 

5)      I stayed because it seems now, maybe I’m supposed to try to protect others who don’t fit in what will come along…

I have been asked to leave three church settings over my life. 

The first was when I was 17 and  I told my Sunday school class that I (and my family) have Some kind of telepathic communication thing that is NOT evil as the teacher was saying, because it has never happened in any situation that was not for good.  I was called evil and asked to ot come back because I was scaring people.  I left and didn’t go back to church for about 14 or so years.

I ended up in a marriage that I was pretty much forbidden from attending church, any time and any place.  I could easily have gone but it would have created a fight and I saw no need to fight.  I just figured that he could forbid my corporate worship experience but he couldn’t control what I read when I wasn’t around him and he most certainly couldn’t stop me from praying.  So when our marriage fell apart, I went BACK to that church as one of my friends down the hall at school went there.  The pastor of the church then was contacted by that friend and so he came to visit me.  He sat in my home and told me that he honestly had no idea how to help me through a divorce, he thought I just needed to go back and try harder.  I said, “we are sitting here in my living room, with my two children nearby, and I’m not sure what you are telling me to go back to… I DIDN’T LEAVE>>> ‘Im right here.. HE LEFT not ME.  I did not cheat, I did not desert my children, I did not leave my spouse.. How do I go back?  He stared at me for a few minutes and said I don’t have any idea what to say or how to help you, and he left.   After Jonathan and I got married he wanted to go to church but for obvious reasons afore mentioned I think he was not comfortable at that churchso we changed churches.

When Sam was a toddler, I was teaching the 2-3 year old class in Sunday School at our new church because I had been asked to teach it along with another friend who had a son that was 10 days older than Sam.  One day, after we had moved to Cloudcroft I had a visit from the deacons telling me that they felt they needed to find another teacher for that class because I was failing to teach my children to sit quietly in church and their parents were frustrated and the people who had to sit around them wiggling around were frustrated.  They would find someone else who could do a better job than I was doing.  That’s when we changed churches to Cloudcroft after all that’s where we lived. 

We were part of the inner circle at the church we attended in Cloudcroft for years.  We were committee members, teachers, neck deep in moving and shaking-I can’t tell you how much sleep I made Jonathan miss when he was on rotating shifts for us to be “part of Gods work” That was horrible of me in retrospect because it was mostly to fit in.  Even with all the effort I put in to at least “LOOK NORMAL”, my 4 year old son was shaken by the pastor and taken in front of the congregation to be told what an awful child he was and NO  BOY would mistreat a girl in “HIS CHURCH” (Sam accidentally stepped on a girls hand when she moved her hand , she was sitting on the floor and he had been called to the front of the children’s sermon area by the pastor)  I was too shocked and humiliated at that moment to even move from where I was sitting until after church was over.  I just sat there and hugged him when he came back.  That was one of the last times Max went to church as well.  The pastor and I decided to “work things out between us” Which we did.. the solution was that Sam was not allowed to come forward unless either I or one of the older kids was with him to hold him on their lap.  I WAS however, asked later on to teach a 1-3^rd grade Sunday school class because two of the girls in that class had parents who were divorcing and they kept wanting to talk about it in class and the teacher and other parents were upset by that so SURELY I knew (being divorced myself) how to get them to stop talking about their feelings and stresses.  I didn’t make them stop, I just gave them a safe place to do it.

Then a couple of years later, when we had no deacons serving in our church any more and we movers and shakers were concerned about the preacher needing some help, so some of us went to the preacher to see how to solve this problem because we had a number of good solid men ready to step up.  He waited until all the concerned husbands were out of town on various business trips at one time and gave all the wives literature basically explaining how all of us had committed the unforgivable sin of divorce and remarriage and we were all going to hell so that’s why we couldn’t have deacons.  We only had one man other than the pastor who was “qualified” to serve.  I don’t think I stopped crying for 2 solid weeks until Jonathan returned. 

Don’t even ask what happened when one of my daughters went to the hospital by ambulance and was diagnosed as Bi-Polar.  That too was an interesting visit by the deacon and his wife.  So, eventually, we moved to Alamogordo and drove up the mountain as much as possible to go to Our Church and went to either First Assembly from time to time to support my recovering niece who was trying hard to stay clean, or Grace Methodist where Malachi liked the Pomp of the early service.  Until I got the letter in the mail telling me that Jonathan and I had (not the girls, only Jonathan and I) were being taken off the rolls as members because it had come to the attention of the church that we were attending a church of a different faith (GRACE NOT FIRST ASSEMBLY was the problem!!!!!)  I later found out these letters went out to 4 other couples who all eventually landed at Christ Community and wanted to invite us.  That was just before we landed at New Beginnings officially. 

We ended up at New Beginnings with two boys who were extremely excited to serve God.  Sam is a rough-cut diamond who needed to see strength and compassion through the manly arts and with other men inside the church setting.  It can be manly and God centered at the same time.  Two things happened.  Tom Rich went to Sam and talked to me AFTERWARD and told Sam he was not to be seen in the nursery again because it was not appropriate for men and boys to be in the nursery and honestly there was no place for a boy of his age to serve unless his dad was with him.---- and then Fred Died----- We lost Sam, and I couldn’t blame him-that was his last straw but hey, he and one of those two little girls from Cloudcroft are together now, go figure. 

Most of the rest of the New Beginnings stuff you know.  And I don’t think I have ever told anyone but Tom was supposed to be at the cemetery the day we were going to take my dads ashes to the cemetery.  Nothing big just part of the immediate family since we had already done his memorial service.  He never showed, no answer on the phone.. that was when everything was unraveling for him and apparently, I now know.. he was drunk in Ruidoso and forgot. We took care of it all ourselves.

So, instead of why did we stay after things went south with Malachi?  I think maybe the real question is why do we go to church AT ALL?????

After a lot of thought and sole searching the only answer I have found is that I understand how churches and church people work—and I have learned not to put my faith in either.

There really isn’t a lot of LOVE there at all.  Not agape love anyway.  But the Triune God loves me and I love God so I do what I can to over come the lack of love from humanity and corporate programs.  I try to learn all I can in the setting of what scripture says and I try to look and act as much “normal” as I can so that in some way I can be a bridge between “the Haves” and “the Have Nots”  and be a model of  what Jesus REALLY meant about ministering to real people, with real problem starting where they are at.