Today, I’m just gonna write honest, as if I was rambling with you, with a point, over coffee or tea. Lean in.
Being Molded Through Church Change
You may remember last year’s award-winning series about church. (I jest by the way!) While I don’t know that a lot of people loved it, it did in fact speak to many hearts around these parts of Birmingham, as we’d been going through a church cultural change with a new pastor. I didn’t finish my series as I intended to write about giving and maybe some other things too, but the last post I wrote about shepherding wore me out, and I felt too poured out to continue. I am glad I stopped there, though I may finish it one day.
Jesus is the Shepherd…
Those series of posts have never been so Holy Spirit led, so I trusted the word I’d received, but almost as soon as I wrote that post, God spoke a lesson into my heart in which I’d gone slightly astray, not in my words to you or in that post but in my own thinking. I’d like to see everyone read this post as a follow-up, but I know this one will not be nearly as popular. My error is so tricky and slight that it is hard to notice. I treated the pastor as the Shepherd, and in doing so, I sold him out just as I had written about. I stand behind everything I said, and believe pastors are held to a higher standard, but here’s the thing – Jesus is always the Shepherd, even when the pastor makes a mistake or when you don’t like his method or style. The pastor will never be Jesus – the one we are looking for. Sometimes pastors do treat us like they think they are Jesus. They lead, and Jesus uses them to mold us, but they are men too. They need grace and the Shepherd just like anyone else, probably more so in some ways.
The truth is that we are known by the Good Shepherd, despite a pastor who comes in and upsets the apple cart and turns every established thing upside down, and sometimes we stop trusting the Good Shepherd and call it not trusting the pastor any more.
My new pastor is very different from any pastor we previously had. He’s young, and he makes mistakes, but he’s also smart and God-fearing. I have no idea what he thinks of me – maybe he loves my questioning emails or maybe not. I don’t know why our church culture and all that it was has shifted, but our foundation remains the same – Jesus. I honestly felt like my church wanted a celebrity pastor or someone like a David Platt, who would make our church name great, not our God’s name great. The two are easily confused, but the goal is to make God’s name great.
Our pastor shepherds from a place of intellectualism instead of practicality. I think that makes it hard for some to understand him. This confusion can cause division and misunderstanding. That’s always what happens in confusion. Yet God does not love chaos or division. Indeed, for myself, I love messages that speak to my heart in a more practical manner. I say these things freely because I’ve made it a point to reconcile myself and my concerns with my pastor, so I don’t feel I am stepping out of turn to tell you.
When the Church Environment Changes
Recently, I dreaded going to church because I was desperate for Jesus, and I didn’t know if I would find him in the intellectual sermons we have now, but I prayed for my heart to be one only looking for Jesus. You know what? He began to meet me in dreaded places. In fact, Jesus is changing my heart to better receive the sermons I am fed now. He meets us wherever we look for Him, even if our longing is slightly skewed by our own preference.
I don’t stand behind spiritually abusive churches, and sometimes through change, God does call us to leave, but He will meet you whenever He is what you most want – no matter the environment, place, or pastor. Think about all the men and women who meet Him in jail. You know why? They are broken and desperate for a Savior, a Healer, a Lord, and He meets them in the hollow places. Though my church argues environment is important, nothing shapes us near as much as the environment of our hearts. Are our hearts willing to accept Jesus? Are they soft? are they hard?
To be sure, we’ve thought about leaving our church to find a new one. In all the change, I sometimes still feel disconnected from my church. I’m not in a steady community or small group at this time. But we, as a family are changing a lot, and have decided that where we are is where we need to be for the time. That doesn’t mean we will not change in the future.
When Change Causes Loneliness
While I feel lonely because most of the people are new now, I know that He sets the lonely in families. Sometimes we are lonely (preaching to myself here) because we don’t trust the gift of the family we have. This includes a church family. I will always go to women’s bible study and find home there, even when home has meant mixed up family members and relationships that have pulled apart and changed – some for the better and some for the worse.
For example, my mom is a widow. Whenever she has a problem come up, sometimes she just calls a repair man. She wants a help-meet to help her pick out appliances and such, but she does not acknowledge my husband and I or my sister and her family as her helpers. She tends to see what she is missing instead of what she has.
I do that too with my mom. Our relationship has gone through much stress and strain over the years until I fail to acknowledge that I have a mom I can reach out to, and I carry the weight and burden of things on my own, for fear that she will not be safe. I’ve grown weary of trying to repair. This is not really what Jesus wants – at least in my case. Sometimes, when we are hurting, what Jesus most wants us to do is reach out and trust, and often we build our walls and become lonely inside. This is human nature to do so.
When Change Causes Brokenness
As a former engineer, stress and strain are engineering terms. Strain changes the shape of an object after a force is applied to it. And stress is the internal weight of the strain. Most of the time the shape cannot be returned to its former shape. Sometimes the object will receive so much strain that it will break under the stress. Church change is like that, and some of us react in different ways to the new environment. Remember it is the environment of our heart that matters. Different materials react in differing ways, and since each of us are different, that’s okay.
Being broken is not a bad thing, because then the Master can make us into something new. Sometimes, as in the case of my mom and I, or church relationships and I, change happens. Up to a point, I can decide how I will respond to the Master’s hands molding me as the clay. Will my heart be hard? Then I need to ask the Lord to help my unbelief, because truly the Lord can shape the heart, and if we want to comply, He will help our hearts. Will I be brittle and dry and unmoldable? Then I need the water of the Word to help my pliability. Will be I be pliable and flexible and be willing to be made new? Even then, I will be heated in the fire once completed. Some brokenness is a part of the process of being changed.
Church change can become that place of brokenness. Church change can become that place of hollowness that leads us home to the only home that matters – Jesus. In fact, it was out of an extreme stress that I wrote the Church series. I had panic attacks when I went into the church because I felt so strongly that something was wrong. There was a fellowship of suffering that happened between me and my Savior during those weeks of stress and writing. I was broken in a very unusual way. I wish every piece was as poured out, because it was what ministered the most of anything I’ve written, but it was at a high cost. It is no small thing to become like Christ and join in the fellowship of suffering. Are you at your wit’s end today? Tired of suffering? Christ may be doing some mighty work in you indeed.
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