This is going to be a tough one. I have been wrestling with what to write for months. I thought that having my own space after so long would prove to be just what I needed to get my creative writing “juices” flowing and I would churn these blogs out frequently and with ease. I was wrong. I have had writer’s block for months until now. I have written a couple of “fluff” pieces about how I was feeling at the time, but none of them felt like the blog I was supposed to be writing. This is the one. I didn’t know that the frustration I have been feeling in regard to practiced faith, church sermons, and Christianity overall would lead me to a place where I would be writing this.
Disclaimer: I suggest you read this with an open mind, with compassion, with your heart and not your hurt. Use every level of you understanding of basic human decency and KNOW that I am NOT trying to lead anyone away from the church. I am simply stating a truth that belongs to many. I want to be a voice for those who have given up on trying to express the sentiment I am about to share.
Over the coming days, I will step through what God has laid on my heart. Over the course of my time here on earth, I have endured some things that allow me to offer a unique perspective on faith, and what it means to have it. I offer it to you in pieces because there is a lot to share and so much to take in. If you will walk through this series with me, I promise my intent is for you to offer you a side of God that is not exclusive to the well-educated. I want to help myself and others to redefine ministry. I want to encourage you to lean on God for your understanding and not the ministers that came before you. My intent is to let you know that leaving a church, meaning the building and the people in it, is okay, as long you don’t leave God. I want you to know that I understand what its like to be hurt by well-meaning Christians who don’t know any better, but I encourage you to take that hurt straight to God.
I think it is time that we as the body of Christ redefine ministry. We have all gotten buried in the tradition of Christianity, that we have forgotten the greatest example of Christian Ministry ever provided. Christ, Himself. Some of us have decided that everything that is good, feels good, and remotely seems good is of God and the things that are the slightest bit uncomfortable or inconvenient are a lie of the enemy. We call everything a spirit or a demon. There are people out there, in the name of God, that have declared that God has called them to heal and save a group of people, but have never walked in their shoes. We have ministers preaching at marriage conferences that cheat on their spouses. There are preachers preaching prosperity that haven’t paid their taxes. You can’t say that you are called to save/ win souls and then turn your nose up at the lost souls that He sends your way. The souls that God is calling us to save aren’t always going to be compliant, quiet, beautiful, or stable. How do you handle the rebellious child of God? Do you put your foot in her chest, or do you sit with her in the dark and quiet because that is where she is.
Can you meet me where I am? Even when its flea infested and you might have to come back a few times. Are you committed to staying with me until I am ready to go with you? Can you minister to me in the darkness and not share your good works in the light?
There are people in the church that are dying. There are people inside the ranks of leadership within the church that are sending them to the slaughter. As I prayed about my own call, not be a minister, but to minister to at least a subset of God’s people, God revealed to me that so many of us so-called Christians are much like the extreme Islamist groups who send suicide bombers to their deaths in the name of Allah. The concept of “praying it away” is basically this: Prove your faith to be strong enough by disregarding the science known to heal you. We often disrupt a person’s train of thought, devotion time, or just their day overall with “God told me to tell you…”. We make assumptions about what people need based on our own experiences instead of just asking them. I mean they might know a little more than you about themselves.
The message I’d like to get across over the course of the next few blogs is that we have to do better and bringing people to God, not just the church. I hope to encourage a new type of ministry that focuses more on sharing the Power and Love of God, rather than the death and destruction Satan thrives in. Can we look at the number of souls we’ve lost and figure out how we could have won them? Can we stop ranking the children of God and deeming some worthy or unworthy based on how we relate to them? We have to do better. We must do better. The church will die without change. God’s people will die without change. We will continue to eat ourselves alive if we don’t change.
