Family Matters
I have been reading “Blue Like Jazz” by Donald Miller for ages and tonight, this was the paragraph I stumbled upon:
So one of the things I had to do after God provided a church for me was too let go of any bad attitude I had against the other churches I’d gone too. In the end, I was just different … It wasn’t that they were bad, they just didn’t do it for me. I read though the book of Ephesians four times in one night … and it seemed that Paul did not want Christians to fight with one another. He seemed to care a great deal about this, so in my mind, I had to tell my heart to love the people at the churches I used to go to, the people who were different from me. This is entirely freeing because, when I told my heart to do this, my heart did it, and now I think very fondly of those wacko … fundamentalists, and I know that they love me too, and I know that we will eat together, we will break bread together in heaven, and that we will love each other so purely because we are a family in Christ.
Miller suggests praying for a church filled with people who share your interests and values; go to the church that God shows you and not to hold grudges against other churches as God loves those churches as much as He loves yours.
All of the above is fine if the differences are about detail, but I’m not sure how that’s going to work if the attitude is caused by the fact that you believe that the actions are so wrong-headed - and contrary to basic Christian teaching - that you’re not sure that reconciliation is possible. Or that they’re actually a church in the accepted sense.
Mr T went to his first regional Ministers meeting this week. (I did ask, and it sounds like the Ministers hang out, drink tea and coffee and eat biscuits and chew the fat).
The church where Mr T is doing his training had interviewed another person for the job a year or so ago. For various reasons, they’d turned it down and they’d taken a placement elsewhere. After a year, the college had withdrawn them from this church as the relationship between them and the congregation had completely broken down. This is very unusual. The college and the Regional Minister are looking after the various people involved. It’s a horrible start to Ministry and a tremendous upheaval in practical terms as it involves moving, pulling children out of schools etc. It's also terrible for the congregation.
We don’t know anything else, but Mr T said that many of the churches who take part time placement students haven’t had a minister for a while. And people get used to doing things in specific ways and holding certain responsibilities - things that would often be decided and done by the Minister. It can take a while for everyone to adjust to the new status quo. With varying degrees of success.
I’m not sure that Miller’s comments would apply in this kind of situation either. Or at least not at first. Anger and hurt etc need to be acknowledged and addressed before the process of forgiveness can start. And often, the journey starts with a desire to forgive (or a desire to want to forgive) and involves a lot of work before you get to the point where you can say you have forgiven. (Well, it did for me). The length of time this takes depends on what sort of person you are; the enormity of what happened etc. (It took me years!) Forgiveness is also about you, not them. In some cases, it may not be appropriate to express it and it may not be wanted. And it has its limits. At a previous church, there was a woman whose sister had been murdered by her violent partner. She said that although she was able to forgive him for the pain he’d caused her, she couldn’t forgive him for what he’d done. The only person who could do that had gone.
[And I promise faithfully that the next entry will not be Deep and Meaningful. It’s time to Lighten Up! I so feel the need to talk about totty!]