:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

I returned to our cozy little neighborhood this afternoon with the relief and gratitude of someone who had just escaped a zombie apocalypse. I didn’t exactly escape a brush with death, but I did face the one thing that Americans hate almost as much missing American Idol: the inconvenience of the suburbs.

While my wife worked on her final papers for grad school, I took over shopping duties and ran about thirty seven errands in the suburban strip. I had to leave my comfortable little bubble in town, venturing to the edge of civilization where engine exhaust makes baby bunnies nested outside condos weep.

It didn’t take long to get angry at people.

There was the lady who didn’t look until after she almost backed her car into me. Some guy in a sporty SUV wouldn’t let me merge onto the highway and then tailed me before roaring around me close enough that I could have lit a cigarette for his passenger.

There was traffic jammed in the parking lots. Lines in every story. People who jumped in front of me in line. People who went back to for one more thing when they should have been paying!

The chicken in the cooler started to warm up. My car started to overheat. The freckle-faced kid at Rita’s told me they didn’t have root beer water ice. The world was out to get me. Inconvenience!!!

When I travel out to the suburbs for these rare shopping trips, it’s like I’ve gone to a different nation where I don’t fit in because my car is over 10 years old and has rust. The hustle and hurry grabs me and I dutifully go along with it, as if I don’t have a choice. As people become obstacles in my way or take risks that put me in danger, I begin to seethe at them. We’re SO different…

Shifting gears from suburban shopper to urban gardener when I returned home, I set to work with clumps of dirt, compost, garden borders, and a few blackberry bushes. When I had a chance to feel like myself, I began to ask, “What just happened to me?”

We could say a lot of things about the suburban shopping experience and what we each bring to it, but today I saw that I’d been looking for reasons to separate myself from people. It’s like I craved conflict. I wanted to be in the right, and in order to tap into that, I had to direct my aggression at the people who crossed me in any way.

By dividing myself from others, I was trying to build myself up or to give myself fulfillment in some twisted way.

Conflict can be a good thing that drives a story forward. However, the right kind of conflict brings liberation and fulfillment—as in that moment at church today when our prayer ministers prayed for those going through tough times. Conflict can be misused to tear people down and it leaves neither us nor anyone else better off. All we get is a conflict buzz from fighting someone a little bit.

The Gospel restores and heals relationships. It accepts that lady in the parking lot who was careless for a moment but who may be the most caring person in her family. That guy in the SUV who almost hit me may live in fear of stopping or of facing who he truly is. So he drives a sporty SUV as fast as legally possible and never stops to ask why he’s taking sleeping pills to fall asleep each night.

The Gospel welcomes these people and many more into our Christian communities—even into my own where I secretly hope aggressive and negligent drivers aren’t allowed. There’s no place for these frivolous divisions in God’s Kingdom.

Even more so, the Gospel welcomes big government liberals and small government conservatives. The Gospel reaches people who like country, alternative rock, and maybe even jazz (does anyone “like” jazz for real?). The Gospel belongs to the hip, the straight-laced, the disheveled.

If it works right, the Gospel should ruin our neat little divisions we create, trashing every us vs. them narrative. Even my suburban angst narrative needs to go.

Rather than permitting me to perpetuate my little farce where I’m the hero who overcomes conflict to get what I want, the Gospel turns God into the hero who wants everyone and who is even willing to overcome conflict with a grumpy urban gardener to reach the people he loves.

I used to hide my theology books and guitar upstairs. I didn’t want people I met to know I’d been to seminary or lead worship.

Writing that now sounds a bit strange. It made so much sense at the time. I’d connected serving in the church with being over-worked and exploited. For years belonging in church had been associated with “getting involved.” Sometimes “getting involved” became a higher priority for some than simply learning my name.

“Did you say your name is Fred? Hey Fred, you should join our men’s group. They’re going to set up a huge church event next Saturday. You should serve with them!”

I know many have had conversations like this. If these people had learned I had a seminary degree, they would have handcuffed me to the pulpit.

“You can preach and lead worship and we don’t have to pay you???”

I’d grown so weary of those types of conversations where desperate volunteers just tried to plug another body into a struggling church ministry. There were so many things that needed to be discussed, but I wasn’t the guy to bring it all up. When I started to return to church, I just wanted to be left alone for a season. I wanted to maintain a happy anonymity while I sorted out my place.

Since those days of hiding books and musical instruments, I’ve stopped defining myself and my place in the church by what I do in my community. I belong based on my relationships, and I serve because those relationships define my place in my church communities.

I used to feel a lot of pressure to get involved in church. If I didn’t serve, I was just a lazy drain on the church. I didn’t want to be a “consumer Christian.”

My pastor often speaks of seasons in life. We go through seasons in our communities, in our families, and in our personal lives. I passed through a season of healing and reorienting to church community. During that season, it would have been foolish for me to serve. I didn’t need to just get involved. I needed to be healed and to learn how to thrive in the church again without becoming a critical voice.

Now that I have that perspective, I feel better able to get involved and to manage my church involvement. I don’t need to serve just like everyone else. We may be in different seasons.

In two months we’ll have a baby. That’s going to change a lot of stuff for a season. My wife being in graduate school has already changed how we think of our time for this season. My helter skelter writing life imposes limits on us for a season as well.

I want to always give something to my community, but sometimes the push to get involved in a bunch of stuff just wears us out. The guilt can be crushing. And that’s the hard part about belonging to a community. We’re sometimes trapped in between two overcorrections.

We’re either consumer Christians or we base our sense of community on how much we serve.

Sometimes we need to stop all of the work just to get the basics right. If a church can’t accept us as a family, then there’s something terribly wrong. If our church doesn’t treat us like a family, they’ll fail us at one time or in one way or another. That’s not a pleasant thing to write, but it’s true.

If your family is only based on whether you pitch in and help, you’re going to have a lot of hurt former family members. Think of teenagers who just want to slump and play video games or text or whatever teenagers do these days. They may check out from family activities for a season, but they are still members of the family.

When you can belong to a church family without conditions or strings, then you can serve with that family free from guilt or obligation. You will be free to serve others with a joy that can weather the bleakest of storms. Joyfully serving others happens when you know you belong.

I don’t like sermons. I blame Sesame Street and video games for my short attention span. I blame hockey for teaching me to love speed and action. I blame my parents who gave me the genetic trait that resists stationary, sequential learning—like Math.

If a sermon was a practical, 10 minute exposition of scripture, I’d be happy. In fact, the homily, which is sermon-lite for Catholics and Episcopals, was the part of the liturgy that I used to enjoy the most. The reverend at this Episcopal church in Vermont that we visited a few Sundays wandered up and down the aisle like a lost puppy, sharing a few things that he must have jammed onto a sticky note the night before. If he only had better content, it would have been perfect.

The first time I attended a Baptist church where the people really belted out the hymns, I stood in wonder at the beauty of their joy and energy. When the pastor hit the 45 minute mark of his sermon, I slumped in boredom. That has not changed for me—though today I bring “toys” to church, as in, my journal.

I honestly think I went to seminary, in part, because I realized that if the sermon had to be 45 minutes, I should be the guy walking around a bit and doing something. Who wants to listen to 45 minutes of information and anecdotes? Not me. If Jesus wanted a 45 minute lecture, I wanted to be the guy sharing it.

For all of my talk about disliking sermons, I can also point to a few sermons that were particularly life-changing. I don’t doubt the power of biblical teaching among God’s people. And I don’t begrudge it to those who feel the need for it in certain contexts.

I think the problem with sermons is the way they’ve become so standardized and laden with expectations we attach to them. I suspect the nature of the sermon will also change depending on what kind of church we attend.

People expect a sermon to teach biblical truth. Many pastors preach that way. However, I think that’s too narrow a goal for a sermon. We can accomplish these ends much more efficiently and completely by picking up a commentary. Sermons that only teach, whether for 15 or 45 minutes, are missing a golden opportunity.

Sermons are a chance for pastors to bring their people on the same page, to rally them around the things God is speaking to their community through scripture. Communicating a message like that could take 10 minutes or 60 minutes.

I see pastors straining themselves, taking hours to write sermons. I’ve heard lots of sermons in many, many churches, and let’s face it: we’ve probably heard more average to below average sermons than we’ve heard good to excellent ones. We place a ton of pressure on our pastors to knock it out of the park each Sunday, and that is a burden no one woman or man should bear.

I’m not so much opposed to the sermon as I’m opposed to its narrow role in the church and the way it strains many pastors. I know some pastors who specialize in sermons, and for them, it makes sense to emphasize the role of a sermon. However, even in that case, does the pastor draw a crowd more for the sermon than for the community? Is that even healthy?

As for the pastors who don’t specialize in writing sermons, what will we do with them? Are they able to lead according to their gifts without preaching? Will we accept them in our communities?

If a congregation is relying on a pastor to draw a crowd with her sermon or to open the Bible for them with his Bible-knowledge-rich sermon, are we possibly relying too much on one person for 45 minutes each week? It’s my role as a member of the congregation to invite people to our community. It’s my role as a follower of Jesus to study the scriptures. More than anything else, I need a pastor to point me in the right direction, to help me see the big picture of the Kingdom and our church’s role.

Pastors are often placed under way too much pressure each Sunday. The sermon is treated as the climax of the entire service, and if the sermon isn’t amazing, everyone goes home wondering why the pastor can’t be more like Charles Stanley or Rob Bell or T. D. Jakes.

This is where our liturgical friends have something to teach free-wheeling evangelicals like myself who make up our worship services on Friday afternoon, rather than following a tradition passed down for nearly 2,000 years that places communion at the end of each and every worship gathering.

I want my pastors to know they can preach for 10 or 60 minutes. I want my pastors to know they don’t have to attract a crowd or take on the burden of teaching me everything I need to know about the Bible. They just need to hear what God wants them to say, say it, and then point us to the body and blood of Jesus as we celebrate communion together.

Our pastors can’t always heal us with their words. That’s not a fault or a problem. That’s just a reality. The source of our healing talked about bread and wine, the symbols of a life broken and bled in order to conquer sin and death.

Sermons can be long or short. That doesn’t really matter. What matters is where we’re looking for our life. Sunday morning does not have to always rise and fall on the power of the sermon. No person should have that kind of burden. No Christian should rely on so flimsy a form. Nothing we can say can ever trump the power of these words, “This is my body, broken for you.” “This is my blood… poured out for you.”

That is a sermon we need to hear every Sunday.

I’ve been collecting guest posts for Thursdays, and today I’m happy to have Lisa Colón DeLay. She’s a spiritual director with a sharp sense of humor. This week she’s launching a new spirituality project for creators that is a fast and free download and is well worth your time. Without further ado, here’ssssss Lisa:

“There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere.”

- Donald Miller

We’re inclined to think that life is like Jazz: Random, but somehow, making strange and beautiful music. However, so much of life doesn’t jive. The harmony is lacking and the beat is off. We imagine God somewhere up beyond outer space, holding the earth–and all things–in his hands, and letting the jazz of the universe play on. What are we to do with all that jazz?

Discordant. That’s Jazz. If you hear a snippet of Jazz it may seem all jumbled and crazy. Is it music, or an imbroglio of sound stumbling to find its way? Scat is even stranger. Perfected by Ella Fitzgerald, Scat is improvisational sounds sung in syllables to the rhythm, but meaning nothing. The vocalizing comes in sync melodically but it communicates only instrumentally.

100 years ago when this uniquely American genre broke out as a viable offshoot from Ragtime music, most classically trained musicians thought all hell had broken loose. It smacked them as vile and unsophisticated. With insolence Jazz broke all the rules. To add to the madness, improvisation was key to Jazz. It seemed rebellious and uncouth. Every trained musician is supposed to behave and stay with the sheet music. Jazz might be best understood as an adjective. It describes what’s going on.

And then, there’s the Blue notes. Sometimes called a “worried note” it pipes out at a slightly lower pitch than a major scale. Discrepant, it pops apart from the expected texture. Then, mesh some of these notes with a string of shuffle note patterns and you’ve landed on syncopation.

Off beat–An interruption of normal, anticipated. Rhythm. Notes come in unequal durations. Punch. in. Punch. out. and…polyrhythms develop in layers. Long-short-long. Long-short-long. Melodic swing phrasing, cocky and bright. Trombonist J.J. Johnson puts it this way, "Jazz is restless. It won’t stay put and it never will."

Through the sins of oppression and the redemption at the source of inner emancipation the seeds of Jazz were implanted. Borne as a mash up of slave owners’ music and the musical interpretation and rhythms influenced by African percussion, the European 12-tone scale fused with tribal rhythms and made a wholly new creature. From it came Blues, Gospel, and the Spirituals, all sung on Sundays at festivals or at church. Later, came Jazz as freed slaves made a living as musical entertainers in marching bands, dance halls, and vaudeville shows.

Jazz is not a mess. It’s deliberately random. Disarray with parameters. A musician riffs his own interpretation away from, but near to, the written notes. It seems to me, Jazz is closer to Reality than we might realize, but not for the same reasons Donald Miller speculates.

As I’ve been preparing resources to help Creators and Communicators it’s become clear to me that God let’s us ad lib from the sheet music he’s written. It’s not that God has made the universe like Jazz. Instead,we are Jazz. We get to interpret and riff from the sheet music. It’s said that Jazz music finds it’s particularity in its special relationship to time and timing. Aren’t we are the same way? During our time here, and to our unique beat, we get to be Jazz and do the Jazz.

Have you seen life working this way? Where have you riffed from the sheet music God has written?

Lisa Colón DeLay is a long-time blogger with a visual arts and design background and a Master of Arts in Religion, with a Spiritual Formation concentration. She’s found a niche encouraging, inspiring, and amusing Creators and Communicators and is now launching a whole new wave of free resources for kindred spirits.

When I first imagined what this series could be, I hoped that I would be able to share stories like the one we have today from Rev. Meg Jenista. This is the kind of story that every Christian needs to read.

In 1963, Betty Friedan wrote, “There was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform, the image that I came to call the feminine mystique.” Friedan’s revolutionary research was the underpinning of the 1960s and 70s feminist movement, the aims of which have, in many ways, supplanted the so-called feminine mystique as the operational norm of gender stereotypes and feminine self-understanding in broader culture.

Reading Friedan’s work 40 years later within the context of church culture, I heard my own life experience explained to me. There is still an operational feminine mystique guiding our churches today, a one-size-fits-all mentality of Christian womanhood. I submit into evidence the "Women’s Interest" section of your local Family Christian bookstore. . .and the defense rests.

There is a dominant story in our Christian churches about what it means to be a woman. In reality, there are a lucky few women who naturally fit into this story. Other women subconsciously adopt this narrative, pretending it is their own, amputating the parts of themselves that don’t quite fit between the covers of the storybook.

Most women I know are partial-resisters of the story, timidly struggling against but ultimately bowing to the societal hand-slap that comes along with trying to tell the pieces of your truth that don’t comfortably fit the plotline of the dominant narrative. There are some women out there who just flat out resist the story. I would like to meet these women.

As an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church, you might suppose I am one of those no-holds-barred resisters. I remember a more conservative time in my life when I assumed that women preachers were all New-Age goddess-worshippers who cut up Scripture to their own liking. But that caricature of women ministers assumes we are “in your face” simply because we exist. Instead I offer the story of my timid struggle to own my identity, as a child of God first and a Minister of Word and Sacrament second.

In my first preaching class at seminary, I prayed that I would suck. I did. I prayed that God would relent, that it would be manifestly obvious that this was NOT God’s gifting. Then I would be free to return to my regularly scheduled life – a life that did not include rocking the boat. I didn’t have a radical agenda. I wasn’t looking to prove anything. That’s not quite true. I was looking to prove that I didn’t have a radical agenda.

Even as I prayed, though, I kind of knew that this was going to be one of those unsatisfactorily answered prayers. And, frankly, I was mad at God. Again. I was mad because God made me in such a way that God’s people didn’t know what to do with me. 
So I preached. I preached well, as it turns out, and I loved it.

Even after resigning myself to this difficult gifting, I was also deeply ashamed of it. Once, preaching in front of my mentor, she stopped me and asked, “Why are you standing there with one leg wrapped around the other? You look like you’re nervous or that you’re trying not to take up too much room. What’s that about?” Without pre-meditation, I blurted out: “It’s okay if I preach but if I’m too good or confident, it’ll make the boys feel bad.” Tears in my eyes, hand over my mouth, we both stood there. “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”

Since then, seminary education, various internships and four years of ordained ministry have confirmed that I was made for this, that God is calling me to this. But I still find it difficult to feel the entirety of God’s delight because I know that this calling comes with the mixed reviews of God’s church. When the assumptions about my character come at me, as they do yet on occasion, I remember my own shame-filled truth: “Don’t be too good. Don’t be too confident. Don’t make the boys feel bad.” I remember that resisting the church’s dominant narrative is still a hand-slappable offense. I remember how it felt to secretly suspect God made me wrong.

Being the person God has called me to be is so much more complicated than the tidy little story God’s people have offered me. Some days I would give anything to be one of those lucky few women who naturally fit into the story of the Christian feminine mystique.

Then I remember that complicated is real. And real is better easy. Thanks be to God.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

The Reverend Meg Jenista is a graduate of Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  She was ordained at Third Christian Reformed Church in 2008, where she continues to serve as the Minister of Community Life and Witness.  She eagerly awaits the day when Tina Fey decides to write a sit-com based on the lives of young clergywomen. You can listen to her sermons here. She tweets as @RevGirlKazoo.

About the Women in Ministry Series

The Women in Ministry Series is a collection of guest posts that aims to:

• Provide an alternative to the women in ministry debates by telling the stories of women in ministry.
• Encourage women to explore their God-given callings.

Contributions Welcome: Contact Ed to pitch your post idea in 2-4 sentences.

You can stay updated on the latest post each week by signing up for the weekly e-mail list. (You also get a free E-book!)

Comment Policy: Everyone is welcome to leave a comment. However, this series takes for granted that women are called by God into every facet of ministry. This is not the place to debate that point and such comments will be removed.Women have been told “no” in far too many places. This is one place that is committed to saying “yes.” For more about the comment policy or submitting your own story, read here.

Next Week’s Blogger: Kathy Escobar

While working on the Taking Root series, I noticed that I was far more pleased with the quality of my posts if I gave my ideas more time to develop. As I started my new series on Belonging in the Church, I wanted to find a way to still give those posts time to take shape so the writing could be sharp, economical, and to the point.

The solution I’ve played with and finally settled on is to take Thursdays off. I’ll either share guest posts or some highlights from blogs I’ve been reading. This gives me a little more breathing room and enables me to recommend my favorite blogs. That’s something I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time now, and I’m glad that I can finally make it happen.

Check out Ray Hollenbach’s post: Jesus, Friend of Pharisees

Ray writes, “The same man who welcomed Matthew the tax collector was also friends with Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.”

Lore Ferguson has a beautiful post about the tension between worship and fear: Kissing Fear

Lore writes, “Worship. Fear. Be in awe. Draw near…”

Sarah Bessey has an eerily similar story to my own about heartbreak and restoration in the church. The difference is that she writes about it with way more passion and poetry than literal ole’ me. This post will make your day: In Which God Has Restored Church to Me

Sarah Writes: “Six years ago, Brian left full-time vocational ministry and, you who have walked this road with us, you know, it’s been a journey. We were so burnt out, so exhausted, so broken hearted and part of me, a big part of me, never wanted to darken the door of a church again. ”

Kristin Tennant wants you to Learn How to Be Bored Again, and I think she’s right on.

Kristin writes, “I’ve been thinking about time not as currency, but rather as space. ”

I hope you enjoy these posts. I’ll be sharing the Women in Ministry Series guest post tomorrow, and then Monday I’ll pick up where we left off with my Belonging in Church series. Thanks for stopping by!

I should have known right away why the church we visited in Connecticut felt like a place I could belong. I just needed to compare it to every other church that felt like a round hole for me, the obviously square peg. However, the thought eluded me.

Rather than wondering why I felt like I belonged, I began to wonder why it didn’t repulse me.

For years I’d sat in services micro-analyzing everything. I’d grown so attached to my opinions on what the church should be and look like, that I found it hard to accept anything. I used to obsess over the ways everyone wanted me to meet with God, rather than just letting go.

Something had changed in me. God taught me to go to church and listen for him with his people. Sometimes he took me in a very different direction than the actual service. Sometimes I didn’t sing along to the songs that made no sense—like that one really popular song that mashes together a bunch of biblical ideas from the second coming to a revival in a way that I could never sort out.

I just closed my eyes and meditated on God as my savior rather than fighting the song. This was a small step for me.

I stopped trying to shape the church into my own image. I don’t know how I arrived at that point. Honestly, I think seven years outside of the church was the only cure for me. God had to strip all of my desires to control away from me.

While outside of the church I knew two things for sure:

1. I wanted to be in Christian community more than anything else.

2. I was a toxic threat to Christian community as I tried to let go of my preconceived notions for the church.

While God certainly changed me, there was something else that happened when I started going to that church in Connecticut: I found people who were asking the same questions and worshipping in ways that made more sense to me.

Just thinking superficially, our sanctuary felt more like a “cozy” café than the “bright, generic conference center feel” of the churches built by my parents’ generation. I put my cultural opinions in quotes there. It’s not like one is right or wrong. They both reflect the styles, habits, and values of cultures.

These values permeated everything from the questions people asked to the season of life for our friends. We were a church that consisted primarily of generations X and Y, and I had no idea how dramatically this impacted me until a friend pointed it out.

We certainly had some diversity of generations, but our church clearly reflected the values of my own generation. There was something so familiar and life-giving in discovering people who had the same struggles, questions, and ways of meeting God. They created the kind of sacred space that I longed for in my spirit.

I still don’t know what to think about all of this.

I don’t like the idea of letting one culture’s values shape our church culture so radically for each generation. What will my own kids think of a church shaped by Generation Y? It will no doubt appear to be extremely dull to them.

As I returned each Sunday and began to attend small group, I gave in to the allure of joining with my own tribe. I’d been in the wilderness for seven years. I couldn’t afford to hold myself to some kind of high standard where I waited for the perfect church that somehow transcended generational boundaries and provided the perfect mix of race, gender, and affluence.

Does such a church even exist?

Sometimes you need to just work within the limitations of our world, and even within limitations and flaws you can create something beautiful.

And besides, whether you attend a Roman Catholic Church or a staunchly fundamentalist Bible church, you’re experiencing a version of church from a particular time and place. It’s not like I’m doing anything different by attending my Generation X-Y church.

Our problems start when one church starts to declare it has tapped into the only biblical way to worship God. After my friend pointed this out to me, I realized that sitting in the round in a sanctuary graced by earth tones and a rocking worship band was tapping into the familiar.

For that season, I needed something familiar.

I needed to belong. I needed to know I wasn’t the only person like me trying to find God. It was the beginning of a long journey out of the wilderness. Sometimes you need to find your own people in order to figure out the path home.

Today I’m beginning a new series called: Belonging. I hope to provide a series of stories and reflections on what it means to belong in Christian community as well as some hopeful and practical suggestions. Deep down we all crave to be known and to share our struggles with Christians who can empathize with us, pray for us, and benefit from the support we provide as well.

I begin this series with a hint of hesitancy. I’ll be discussing situations that I’m sure some friends will recognize, offering my own opinions, etc. As a general rule, I will change details, names, etc. in order to respect privacy, and the focus throughout will be on my own struggles to belong in Christian community rather than offering a critique of anyone else. My goal here is to walk through a particularly difficult season in my life when I lost Christian community, journeyed without it, and then tried to find it again. The ending is happy, but the process was anything but that.

When Belonging in Church Feels Impossible

Stepping into the car one Sunday morning three years ago, I had no desire to go to church. It was the last place I wanted to go in fact.

To my mind, back then, church was where you went to be ignored. And if you weren’t ignored, you’d be worked to death, made to jump through hoops called “discipleship,” and discarded when you failed prove yourself useful or willing to play the game.

If you don’t know what “the game” of church is, you need to keep reading.

If you do know, I promise that something better than a rant about the failings of the church follows.

Before my falling out with church, I used to be that guy who volunteered for everything—well, everything except children’s ministry. I mopped, taught, facilitated, strummed, drove, listened, trained, and typed season after season at church. I knew what it was like to give and give and give.

When I’d had enough and the system stopped making sense, I only heard condemnation for bailing on the people of God. I didn’t really want to leave, but I also didn’t see how I could be a healthy person in the church.

I didn’t see how all of my input paid off. I just felt hurt and frustrated, when I was promised hope, community, and salvation. I had no choice but to walk out, since staying just made the pain worse. Those seven years outside of the church meant a lot of griping, but they also sparked healing—just enough that I could start thinking of going back to church when we moved to Connecticut.

I didn’t know what I wanted from the church that Sunday. I knew what I didn’t want. I knew what I feared: I expected it to be a big production lacking authentic human interaction and a meaningful connection with God.

What would a positive Sunday morning experience look like? I couldn’t even say for sure that such a thing was possible back then. Perhaps I longed for some experience of God among people who cared enough about me to learn my name.

I think that’s the problem with finding Christian community sometimes: it’s so hard to put your finger on what you really need or what it will take to silence that nagging voice in your head telling you that something isn’t quite right. There’s always someone accusing you of being a picky consumer Christian, when maybe, just maybe, there’s something to that hunch.

In the past, I’d belonged to some wonderful churches. In many ways they were healthy and strong. They did so many things right. God used them to teach me from scripture, to introduce prayer and fasting, and to provide glimpses of heaven on earth.

And yet, they also failed me in some ways. Perhaps I failed them as well.

Regardless of who shoulders the most blame, I felt like a square peg surrounded by round holes. I just couldn’t make church work. I wasn’t cut off completely from Christian friends or even prayer meetings with Christians, but my Sunday mornings were complicated to say the least.

By the time we pulled into the parking lot at our new church in Connecticut, worst case scenarios passed through my mind. Would anyone talk to us? Would the worship feel forced, poppy, or too self-centered? Would the sermon lambast liberals and the godless people outside the church? Would the sermon be a laborious exercise in rigorous biblical interpretation?

The service passed, and I survived it. However, we hadn’t yet spoken with anyone, and I realized that, more than anything, I wanted to connect with someone, anyone at this church.

Everyone had a friend to chat with at the end of the service, and standing in place, unsure of whether to stick my hands in my pockets or by my sides, I caught a glimpse of what I wanted from the church: I wanted to belong.

I ached for community, for people who were going through the same things. For people who could say, “I know what you mean, I’ve gone through that too.”

Our awkward waiting paid off. I made myself a beacon of loneliness and someone noticed it. Another young couple walked over to us and introduced themselves.

In the years that followed, we didn’t become particularly close to them, though I wish we had. Rather, they offered us a faint glimmer of hope that we could belong there. We could worship God with them. We could experience community with them.

Of all the things God had taught me over the past seven years, I kept returning to the idea that people matter most. As this couple reached out to us, something shifted in my heart. Perhaps I could deal with my other church issues if I could at least find a place to belong—a safe haven to work them out. The impossible act of going to church became a possibility once again.

During Thanksgiving, my wife’s parents gave us a Christmas cactus. It’s not more than a foot tall in its small pot, and when it first arrived in our home, it became a dark green, unassuming centerpiece in our dining room.

Every day, I’d sit down for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the table, never noticing the cactus. Who notices a cactus anyway?

A cactus is part of the scenery… like in a western.

One morning I walked down the steps, and something pink on the table caught my eye. In fact, it wasn’t just one pink thing. It was several pink flowers in full bloom on the cactus. In fact, some had already wilted. How could I have missed those flowers when they were blooming right in front of me for the past few days?

I think we all have a moment like that at one time or another. There is something beautiful and perfect right in front of us, but we miss it. After a busy season, we realize we’ve drifted from a spouse, from a friend, from a child, or even from ourselves—forgetting what brings us joy and defines who we are.

When we were newly married, I spoke with an older couple in our church during a retreat who seemed like they had their act together. However, when I asked them how they were, she sighed and very frankly said it had been a tough month. They both had been so busy that they had drifted from one another.

I kept my mouth shut, but I thought to myself, “But you guys are amazing together! How could you ever drift from each other?”

Apparently, we can miss out on the obvious all the time. If someone had asked me how I felt about flowering plants, I would say without hesitation, “I love flowers. We grow tons of them at our home.” Then an episode like my neglected cactus would throw my statements into doubt.

It’s so easy to miss the obvious, to neglect what’s supposed to be important, and to avoid things that are well within our power.

Though God has asked me to stop and pray regularly, you’d think he’d asked me to run a marathon each morning. The path for a disciple is so simple and obvious—stick to Jesus. And yet, I sometimes act like it’s this big mystery I can’t figure out.

We all have an invitation from Jesus to look and listen. He’s looking for people with functioning ears and eyes—which is another way of saying: people who can think a little.

If Lent has been a struggle for you, keep this in mind: God doesn’t necessarily want you to be stuck. Sure, there are some seasons that will be more difficult than others, but we have scriptures, prayers, songs, and Christian meditation practices that have been handed down to us. If one thing doesn’t work for you right now, try another.

God wants you to enter into his rest today, to experience his love, and to know his presence. You may be stuck in a sense, but he wants you to spend that time with him. That may require some time and effort on our parts, but we have been given all that we need in his indwelling Spirit. Our Christian community has provided the tools we can use.

God has given us something beautiful. He doesn’t want it to be hard to find. The hard part is just slowing down long enough to look at it.

The Greenhouse

Take some a minute to meditate on this verse from 1 Peter 1:3, NIV:

“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”

As you pray today, ask God whether you’ve been neglecting anything in your life.

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

People who complain that Christians don’t tackle enough real world issues aren’t reading Joy Bennett’s blog, Joy in This Journey. When she writes about joy, that’s joy in spite of the most trying circumstances a person can face. Joy and her husband Scott are a great team, and I’m always grateful for Joy’s honesty and courage in tackling the tough topics of our faith.

I have a secret identity. You could say I do undercover work, but I just call it ministry—serving where God placed me. Some people may not see it that way, but that doesn’t really matter to my partner in crime, also known as my husband, the church elder.

My husband Scott and I are building a fairly egalitarian relationship. In our nearly 14 years of marriage, we’ve birthed four children, started, transferred, and left jobs, learned to give shots and work i.v. pumps, bought and sold houses, replanted and closed churches, and buried our oldest daughter. To say these years have been intense is an understatement, but through it all — the terror, agonizing decisions, joys, misunderstandings, celebrations, depression, sleep deprivation, selfishness, laughter, sacrifice, and grief — we have become a team. We know we’re better, more complete together than we are apart. In his weakness, he leans on my strengths, and in mine, I lean on his. Rather than feeling threatened or insecure by another’s strengths, we encourage each other to run with our gifts. We continue to work out where our consciences require standing our ground, and where we can compromise and defer to the other.

We work as a team in every aspect of our lives, including church ministry, as far as the confines of the church we are in will allow, anyway. We have always been a package deal. (I will not go into the frustrations of these confines here. Suffice it to say that I’ve spent my life in non-egalitarian churches.)

Seven years ago, Scott took the role of church elder and served there for five years. Before he did so, we talked through how it would change our family. Any volunteer role is a family commitment, but church leadership roles are especially so. The kids and I would lose Scott to meetings and ministry, and we would all be watched closely (I had no idea how closely). This would be especially costly for our family because we were still caring for Elli, our oldest daughter born with congenital heart defects and cerebral palsy (she passed away in 2008). We both knew that we would have to carry his responsibilities together for it to work. His eldership would essentially be mine too, despite the fact that only he had the official title.

Being in leadership can be a head-trip. Looking back, I am thankful for our difficult circumstances. With Elli in and out of the hospital frequently, we couldn’t get big heads or think we were above anyone else. We needed help far more often than we could offer it. There was no denying our place in the dirty life-trenches beside our church family, lending a hand as we could and taking the one lent to us when we needed it.

My husband wasn’t the preaching pastor, but he did preach occasionally. He also taught adult Sunday School classes and led Bible studies. When preparing to preach or teach, Scott would often read me sections and ask me, “Does it make sense? Am I missing something? How can I communicate this better?” We would dig into the nuances of word meanings and how different people (e.g. men, women, single, married, rich, poor) might understand things. We always unearthed something the other hadn’t seen. (We do this with my writing too, and it helps me communicate better too!)

One of the roles I loved most was advocating for the women. I helped my husband see how the teaching and practice of male-headship affects women in church. As a man, he simply couldn’t see the confusion it created about what is and isn’t appropriate. I remember him and the preaching pastor sharing their disappointment with how few women spoke up in mixed groups. I explained that these women dearly love God and want to please him and remain silent out of fear that speaking aloud violates male headship. Some women even refuse to pray aloud in front of men. I learned just how much these men needed my unique insight into the women of our church in order to meet them where they were and support their growth in grace. It was a pleasure and a privilege to be eyes and ears, to convey my sisters’ needs and their perceptions of God and faith and life to the elders, and encourage one another in The Way.

Church ministry is grueling, and we made a lot of mistakes. We left wounded and dry, and we’ve been on quite a faith journey since. The experience showed me how desperately we need to do church better, though I’m still not sure how. I am sure of a few things, though — we need each other, especially people who are different than us, I don’t trust pastors who lead without input from their wives, and I look forward to partnering with my husband in ministry again one day. Maybe next time I’ll have the official role (I know we’ll have to talk about that one).

“If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? If they were all one part, where would the body be?” 1 Corinthians 12:17, 19

About Today’s Blogger

Joy Bennett is a writer, asker of questions, and bereaved parent. She writes, “I’ve blogged since 2005, writing on faith and doubt, raising children with special needs, grief, and depression. My faith is very much still in process. Views expressed are my own and do not reflect those of me yesterday or tomorrow.” [If you hear a blogger howling at the moon, it could be Joy…]

About the Women in Ministry Series

The Women in Ministry Series is a collection of guest posts that aims to:

• Provide an alternative to the women in ministry debates by telling the stories of women in ministry.
• Encourage women to explore their God-given callings.

Contributions Welcome: Contact Ed to pitch your post idea in 2-4 sentences.

You can stay updated on the latest post each week by signing up for the weekly e-mail list. (You also get a free E-book!)

Comment Policy: Everyone is welcome to leave a comment. However, this series takes for granted that women are called by God into every facet of ministry. This is not the place to debate that point and such comments will be removed.Women have been told “no” in far too many places. This is one place that is committed to saying “yes.” For more about the comment policy or submitting your own story, read here.

Next Week’s Blogger: Carol Howard Merritt