My Stormy Love Affair with the Church

Dear Friends,
My father was a minister. My uncle is a minister. So are (big breath) my cousin and his wife, my brother and his ex-wife, my other brother's wife, my former father-in-law, my ex-husband, and now me. Two of my nieces who are in college now also plan to be ministers. You'd think going to seminary and becoming a minister would have brought me to the inside track of my family, but it hasn't worked out that way. I'll return to this in another post.

I grew up going to church. Duh. Along the way I developed a "personal relationship with Jesus" and even visited traditions different from ours in which people raised their hands while singing worship music. I loved that. There have been periods in my life in which I have prayed in tongues, held daily devotionals, even seen visions and felt God's specific answer to my prayers. When I was a teenager my brother called me a nerd-hippy-jock-Jesus-freak. Yep. That was me.

But growing up in a minister's family taught me something else, as well. There is a dark side to ministry and the church can be a very un-holy place, indeed. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that my dad was a sincere, hard working, smart, dedicated man who loved the Lord and his church with every fiber of his being. So, how could factions rise up from within the church he was giving his life to, and accuse him of things and try to get him fired? It happened more than once. My own youth minister sat behind me in an all-church meeting once and whispered loudly to the person next to him about how ridiculous I looked in the dress I was wearing and how glad he'd be when we were forced out and moved on. I wondered why that meeting was held in the meeting room of a building the church owned, but not in the sanctuary. I soon found out. They (some small group of people within the church) wanted to be out of sacred space to spew their venom at my father.

I don't remember what anybody said to him, or what the accusations were. They certainly were not questioning his morality. He was not accused of sexual impropriety or embezzling funds or any such thing. They were upset because he had over-hauled the youth department and the group had grown from 12 to 45. So many of the new kids came from the wrong kinds of families and the kids' parents didn't come and so it was too expensive to maintain that kind of growth. The church should be for the people who tithe. That kind of thing. They were offended because new people had positions of power and the old guard had a weakening voice. Anyway, they asked for Dad's resignation and he refused to give it, citing obligations to his wife and four children. If they were going to put his family out on the street, so be it, but he would not be complicit in that. Within three months he had secured a new position elsewhere and our family moved ~ right in the middle of my senior year in high school.

I can't tell you how many times in my life I have heard people tell me that I would be a minister some day. HELL NO! I was not interested in ever being treated like that for giving my life to something. I was very active in church as a lay person (a volunteer) and basked in the recognition I got as such a talented and dedicated young single mother, giving her life to the church when she was so sick and raising those kids on her own. Good for me. So, when the time came for me to go to seminary and to serve a church as their pastor I was very resistant. I still am six years later. I don't want it. Yet, here I am.

My little church is the great blessing of my life. They are incredibly good to me. I am very well paid for doing very little. Yet, they see value in my service. I don't know why. I really don't. I've had the privilege of doing weddings and funerals, grave side services and baptisms. I preach every Sunday, lead congregational singing, and sing solos or special music regularly. But, between you and me, I do less now than I did as a volunteer at my former church. This church is just a sleeply little church of aging folks who only have energy for church and Sunday School on Sunday mornings. I have no evening or mid-week obligations. We have no choir. We have no functional committees. We have nobody griping or complaining. We just gather, worship, and go home. And they pay me very well. So, how can I leave? Why would I?

Yet, I ask myself on a regular basis if I am even a Christian any more. And, if I'm not, am I ethically obligated to resign and leave the profession? When I talked with my professor of Pastoral Care, he was sure I was called to ministry and exhibit "gifts and graces" of ministerial service. He thinks the church and society need people like me to serve those who cannot be served by traditional ministers who spew judgmental morality and alienate those who most need acceptance by a God who's son reached out to the prostitutes and lepers.

How can I abandon those who are dis-enfranchised by the church they desperately want to embrace them? I say, if I were gay/lesbian I'd say the church can go screw itself. Who cares? But that isn't my call. There are same sex couples who long for a church where they can worship the Jesus of the gospels who called the meek and lowly the inheritors of God's blessings. Do I just abandon the church, dust off my hands, and leave those lovely people shut out?

Well, I can't tell my whole story in just a few posts, but this is a brief introduction to my ambiguity about ministry; why I stay and why I want to go.
Be well my friends,
Mary