I wrote this series of posts a couple of months ago. Now things are settled we want to share them, as an encouragement to others who may face similar experiences.
Life is journey, so they say. We often look back at our journey, with context and hindsight from what has happened. We analyse our experiences in the light of history.
I think the danger of waiting until time and future events vindicate and elucidate an experience is that sometimes you can get a more and more detached view.
The seminar on “singleness” at the conference is led by a man married for 35 years.
A father of 4.
A grandfather of 6.
Sure, they have insight, yes they have experience, of course their walk with God and discipleship has born fruit and they are worth listening to. But what it actually feels like, that empathy, the ability to actually reach out and touch what it feels like for someone in that situation, seems a bit distant. A lot of water has passed under the bridge, and it loses its rawness.
The book on Church planting is written by the pastor with a Church of 10,000 and massive international ministry. Of course it is a good story and God has used them and that is great but what if my Church doesn’t break the 10,000 barrier? What if it is more like 10, and one of them is me and I want to leave? Who writes that story? Who publishes that book?
Who sits there in the dark days, without growth and success and people and profile to make them worth listening to and just spills their guts about who they are and how they met with God in the darkness? I know some have, and this another attempt.
This is for people who don’t have it altogether. For those walking a stage in their journey which is difficult and who are clinging onto God by their finger nails. You see, we are not through it yet. I cannot point you to 25 years of post event happiness and an international ministry that proves I dealt with it well.
We are still in the darkness. That is why I want to share this now.
So it is here, in the evening gloom, bruised but not broken, hurting yet hoping, that we reach out for God.
2 comments:
I'm in a situation helping someone work through sexuality issues. I am very aware that it is easy for me, as a married heterosexual, to give the church 'party line' about how orientation is one thing, but acting on it is another.
It's easy for me because I don't have to potentially live my whole life without the closeness of a sexual relationship.
Like the seminar on singleness or the successful church planter, maybe if I'm not feeling the pain I should just shut up.
Thanks for this post - the strongest positions are places of vulnerability.
I am not saying we should "shut up" in such a stark sense, but rather, just to take into account where all the other factors of our lives leave us.
I think we need to step aside from those things and allow ourselves to feel the pain and genuinely empathise.
I remember at a UCCF forum a woman in her late twenties stood up and talked about the issue of there not being many men in her Church, or the Church generally. As she shared she got quite emotional, ending up very tearful because it meant it was really hard for christian women like her to find christian men.
Her story, and plea to young christian men to both stop mucking about with their faith and also to evangelise other men has never left me.
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