It’s “MY” Church don’t screw it up!

For the past 15 years my wife and I have been attending the same church and have so many friends and people there that we love.  We’ve sat on committees, boards, taught classes, and even led entire ministries, but for the past two years we’ve been wrestling with God about a call we feel he’s placed on our lives.  It’s not been easy wrestling with God, because we’ve know the whole time what he’s calling us to do, but we became so attached to our local gathering place it caused us to be reluctant to give it up and make a change.

As of a few months ago, we finally submitted to what God was calling us to do and have decided to become missionaries and that’s when the internal battle began.  It’s not an internal battle within our hearts, but an internal battle within the church we’ve been attending for the past 15 years.  People are upset, mad, and confused as to why we’d ever leave “their church.”  There has been gossiping, phone calls to the leadership, complaints that what we are doing is causing people to leave the church and all of it has left our family feeling a little alienated by they very people we’ve loved so much and who were part of the reason we took so long to make our decision.

The funny part about all of this is, if my wife and I had announced before the church we were being called to Africa to be missionaries, they would have taken a special offering, prayed over us, and had a special commissioning service where they sent us out.  But since we feel we’ve been called to become missionaries in our own neighborhood, territorial lines have been drawn and the very people we’ve loved for 15 years now feel threatened that their church is going to shrink and be hurt by our leaving.  For some reason the ministry and work that we want to do in our local neighborhood becomes a battle between us and them.  I can’t understand why Christians have to be so selfish, feel so threatened, and are so quick to draw territorial lines when it comes to “their church.”  Didn’t Jesus come so that we would be “the church?”

It seems to me that we’ve made church into something “we” control and when God decides he wants to do something different, something new, something exciting with His church, we question it, fight it, and rationalize God right out of it.  If we don’t stop worshiping at the alter of “me” then there is little hope for the Christian church in America.  These are the kind of attitudes that have caused the need for missionaries to be sent into American suburbs, because “we” the church, have driven people away from our churches and retreating to their own neighborhoods.

I for one am excited about life, about people, and about what God is doing in my life.  I’m anxious to be the church on Sunday mornings and I’m excited that it doesn’t look the same for me each week.  I’m glad I can serve others, love outcasts, marginalized, and oppressed people each and every day of the week and that is church for me.  I’m glad church isn’t defined as a specific time and location on Sunday morning anymore and I’m glad that God is teaching me what it means to “be the church” no matter where I’m at or what day of the week it is.  I’m glad I have a renewed hope in what it means to deeply love people and be in relationships that matter, that aren’t superficial, and have kingdom value.  I’m glad I’m building relationships with people who love me so much they are willing to get in my face and ask me about  my prayer life, my Bible time, and how my spiritual life is going instead of just the occasional “hey how ya doing” followed by a hand shake, and then moving on to greet the next casual friend on their Sunday morning list.  For me, church is supposed to be something deeper then that and it’s finally starting to feel like it truly is.

For once in my Christian life I’m starting to feel like my relationship with God has kingdom value and the things I do and the way I live my life are starting to fall in rhythm with what God is trying to do in this world.  For once I’m feeling like a disciple and follower of Christ instead of a weekly pew dweller and if that has a few people stirred up then good.  It’s high time God’s people understand there can be another way to “do church!”