I am not normal. At least, not if so some the Christians I have been reading stuff from and talking to lately are anything to go by… Maybe I am just one of those people who have checked their brain at the door on the way in to church. You tell me…
In my heart I know I do still have a brain, maybe it is just that I am more forgiving than most, or, at least, not the type to hold a grudge, and not the type to let my expectactions on people in leadership get so high that to have them disappointed ruins me for useful ministry or any kind of effective life…
But, I go to one of those crazy looking pentecostal churches where the prosperity gospel is preached , where people get prayed for and then fall down, some genuinely and some not, and where, quite frankly, people do get burned and hurt sometimes, where expectations are sometimes frustrated. Yet I really don’t think it is any more dangerous or risky than any other church where human beings are in charge.
I have been a member in other churches and think it may be different things that hurt, different expectations that are not met… So I go to church where I am now, serve, and love and worship God and I take the knocks when I have received them. In those times I choose to look more closely at God and what he says rather than let the stuff people say or do upset me…
Is that so naive?
I only ask because I had dinner with a good friend tonight who has been disappointed at a lack of support she has felt at church, and I don’t deny that her criticism is genuine but it has been her criticism for the last 12 months so I do have to ask sometimes when it is appropriate to stop waiting for someone to change things for you, and when it is time to get up and take matters into your own hands and start being an agent of change.
Enough Said.
I think yours is the healhiest attitude you can have to church. I read lots of bad stuff about the church. I’ve had to forgive the corporate body of the church. And I’ve had to admit that I played a part in the problem. Just because my expectations aren’t met doesn’t mean it’s the church’s problem. It’s my problem too, and how am I going to work this out together with the people in my church community. It’s hard work. It’s like working at a relationship. Maybe in a big church it’s easier to blame "the church" without remembering that church is a bunch of interconnected people. A whole lot of love, acceptance, love and forgiveness, and love is needed.
Yep. I agree.
Another agree.
P.S. Which photo is you unordered, on that "www.trials.com.au" website? ;-)
well said