We're leaving our church; something I could not have imagined a year ago. We've been there for more than twenty years, but it has stopped feeling like the home we've always considered it.
The reasons, which in my mind, seem very complex can really be reduced and compressed into one very simple truth. I want to worship God, unobstructed and unencumbered by criticism (mine), judgement (mine), and the constant need for diligent discipline of thought and emotion.
Our church has been through a time so difficult, that few of us have been left unscathed. I feel like all my innocence and naivete has been striped away in regards to church and the way church is done. I'm also left feeling a little silly about my lofty expectations. I've lived in the world all my life and am well versed in issues of sin and failure, pride and politics and the need for people to want to visit justice on others while denying the need for it personally as regards the consequences of their own actions.
Ironically (hypocritically? arrogantly?), I recall my advice to a friend some years ago. She was hurt and she was angry about it. She had expected better of the church and the people in it. I reminded her that in spite of our highest intentions, church is made-up of people, inherently imperfect, even sinful, and often very self-centered and unaware of the feelings of others (people, used in the general sense, avoiding specifics, but including myself ). I encouraged her to work through her feelings with the Lord and to address the wrongs done her Biblically, calmly, rationally, lovingly. She listened, she made every effort to take my advice, and in the end, she left our church and found another.
I've spent the last eight months trying to follow my own advice, and still my heart is broken, painful, and unforgiveness springs to the surface at the first instant of undirected attention or relaxed reflection. The tapes in my head play on and on with all the emotion of the original event. I pray all the way to church, all the way through church, and for the rest of the day trying to keep my mind focused on God's Word and how the Holy Spirit would apply it to my heart and my life, and not on the circumstances and people that have caused such pain.
The colloquial "last straw" came about during a recent visit to an out of town friend. I went to church with her on Sunday morning, and there, in the midst of strangers, I felt I had come home. I was able to worship with my whole focus on God, His majesty, His sovereignty, His provision and love for His people. It wasn't the giftedness of the speaker, the profundity of the sermon, or the skill of the worship team, though I thoroughly enjoyed it all. It was my own unencumbered worship! Fellowship with God, a heart poured out before Him with no interference, no replaying of mental videos or rising resentment over recent events; just worship!
I had so many conversations with God, and with myself, debating whether to stay and fight through my feelings, praying for healing and restoration; or to move on and work those things out from a distance, providing a cushion of space to protect wounds that have not yet healed. Because of other circumstances in my life, my need to be in an intimate relationship with my God trumps my desire to avoid change and to try to find the comfort of sameness in a place that has changed so much as to be unrecognizable to me.
The most difficult aspect of leaving the church is the prospect of leaving and missing people we have loved for years, and with whom we have a shared history and a common memory. It will take additional effort to preserve some of those relationships, to be sure; effort I'm committed to investing. For many others, we seemed to lose contact as we withdrew to nurse wounds privately in a desire to keep our dissatisfaction and disappointment from spreading to those who were adjusting much faster than we were. There seems to be nothing about this that's easy. But I'm committed to moving forward and finding a place where I can worship and serve and use my gifts to honor my God.
