When Church Hurts

Today I’m sharing another post from the archives. I’m speaking at a ladies retreat this weekend, and want to focus on preparing for the sessions I’ll be teaching.

I’ve re-posted readers’ favorites before, but those are not necessarily my personal favorites – the ones that came from the deepest part of me, and seemed to bring some kind of healing and truth to my life as I wrote them. I hope you enjoy them, the second time around!

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It seems as though there are many people who grow up believing that Church is supposed to be a safe place, filled with kind, loving people who love Jesus and never make mistakes.

Church is supposed to be a place where everyone is welcome, where there is always someone ready to lend a helping hand, and where we are safe to be ourselves.

That sounds fantastic. Really. But I keep hearing about situations where Church has not been those things for people. I just talked with somebody a few weeks ago who said he had “given up on church”. And that makes me so sad.

When Church is working well, it is a beautiful thing. But when it’s not working well, it is a heartbreaking mess.

What do we do with that? Church is full of people. Therefore, there will always be a bit of a mess involved. People make mistakes, and hurt others out of their own hurt, and do things in Jesus’ name that have nothing to do with Jesus.

And then people give up on “Church”, because Church is supposed to be safe and loving and the Bride of Christ. But sometimes the Bride gets nasty.

I used to be angry with Church. I loved Jesus, but the whole idea of “membership” seemed very ridiculous to me. Why would I want to be part of it? I saw a bit too much of the painful side of Church, the side that can destroy lives. I kept attending Church, but I had pretty low expectations. Church hurt me, too.

But there’s a song we used to sing when I was in Bible school. There’s a line in it that says, “Stand up Church with broken wings. Fill this place with songs again…”

Whenever I hear that someone has been hurt by the Church, that line pops into my head, and I have a picture of the beautiful Church, wounded. She was meant to fly, but she lies there broken.

When we see Church as needing to be the perfect place, filled with perfect people, who always meet our expectations in the perfect way, and always know what to say or do, and never make mistakes, or hurt us, or disappoint us, we have made it into something that it’s not.

We will always be disappointed by people, but we will never be disappointed by Christ. When we look for Christ in people, we will have love for them. When we look for Christ in the Church, we will find Him. He’s there, amidst the imperfection and pain. He hurts, too, along with the Church and with us.

When we look to Christ to meet our needs, rather than people or Church, we will be satisfied.

I heard a message by John Maxwell once in which he talked about happiness in marriage. He said that if we look to our spouse to make us happy, it will never happen. But if we look to Jesus to make us happy, our spouse will add to that happiness in infinite ways.

That’s like the Church. If my life is full of Jesus, it makes me so happy to meet with other Christians at Church. But if I’m expecting the people in the Church to meet all of my needs and demands so that I can then find Jesus, I am in danger of being very disappointed.

I believe that there is a place in the Church for people who can’t find Jesus on their own, and they need some help along the way. But true help will only come from being pointed in the right direction.

But let’s be realistic here – with thousands of years of hurt and bitterness involving the Church, a few little words typed out here is really not going to solve the problem. And that makes me very sad. I have a feeling that “the Church with broken wings” will remain that way until Jesus comes back. He will restore His Bride on that day.

And she will be beautiful, the way she was meant to be. Don’t give up on her!

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Have you ever been hurt by the church when you were expecting comfort and safety?

What I’ve Learned From Living at Camp

It’s hard to sum up five years of life, but I wanted to try. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting, and tying up of mental loose ends. I love that quote from the movie “Hitch” when he says, “You can’t really know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.”

To get off to a good new start, I feel like I need to be intentional about figuring out what’s changed, what’s important, and what we’ve learned from our camp experience.

Here goes:

1) When things don’t go according to my plan, it means God is doing things according to His plan (which is always better!).

When Ben and I moved to Red Rock Bible Camp five years ago, we came with big dreams.

It was a time of feeling so alive, and anticipating the future with great expectation. We felt so ready for new challenges, and we had all these ideas of what we hoped would come out of our time at camp.

And then life happened.

Lots and lots of life!

As I sit here reflecting on the last five years, I can see that our time out here has been very different than what I expected, and that’s not a bad thing.

Although we’ve been blessed to see exciting things happening at camp, it has often felt as though God was teaching us a whole lot more than we were teaching anyone else.

Once, during a struggle we were facing here at camp, I said to Ben, “I was so sure God led us here because camp needed us.”

And Ben said, “Maybe God brought us here because we needed it.”

The lessons we have learned are huge, and we are different people than when we first came here. I don’t know how much it shows on the outside, but I feel different on the inside.

I needed this experience. And if we were able to do any good along the way, that’s awesome.

But at the very least, we were changed. We have seen God, and He has been good.

2) We were created for community.

We need to keep people close, but sometimes that cramps our style. It can be good, and it can be hard, but it is always rich.

I don’t always want to be in community, but I was still made for it.

I need to be in a setting where my rough edges are rubbing against other people, wearing me down. I need to be uncomfortable, I need to be kept from the perfect little world I would form around myself if I never had to deal with people.

There is so much love and growth and grace needed when we live in community.

I have not always appreciated this, but it will be one of the things I miss the most about camp. I will miss how easy it is for people to be part of absolutely everything I do, whether it’s doing the laundry, hanging out in our yard, or eating meals together every day.

The other afternoon, our family wandered into the backyard to find our neighbors doing spring cleaning. The entire contents of their shed were spread out over the yard, the kids were playing, the bonfire was going.

We hadn’t been planning a shed party, but we joined in, spurred on by their motivation, and spent a wonderful afternoon, working side by side. More camp families wandered over, and we ended the whole thing with a wiener roast.

And I sat there thinking, “I am going to miss this.”

3) It is all about discipleship.

We came to camp thinking we were passionate about discipleship. We leave camp knowing that we are. It’s what we want to do for the rest of our lives – we want to be mentored, and we want to mentor others.

We want to be part of deep, intense, honest relationships which challenge us to the point of discomfort, and cause us to learn and grow in the most unpredictable ways.

We have loved every relationship we could be a part of here at camp that reached this level, and we are so thankful for every staff member who went there with us.

4) God loves people more than trees.

I can hardly stand the thought of living my life away from the lake and the trees. It is so beautiful here, sometimes I think we’re completely crazy for leaving.

But we didn’t come here for the trees, and we can’t stay here for the trees, and it was always about the people, anyway. We have loved the people here at camp, but we are so looking forward to having relationships that are less “binge and purge” style – with people every second of the day in the summer, and isolated in the winter.

I have loved living in a never-ending vacation. Even taking out the garbage gives me a glimpse of the lake, and there you go: instantly on vacation.

photo credit: Victoria James

But seeing as it’s not about the lake or the trees, we will embrace whatever view comes next.

5) God, Family, Ministry.

Very early on in our marriage and our involvement with full-time ministry, we realized we would need to set some pretty serious boundaries in order to keep life somewhat balanced.

When we came to camp, it was our goal to continue on with those boundaries to protect our family time. Being here has helped me to see, more than ever, how important this is. Living where Ben works has brought a lot of challenges, but I am so, so thankful that as we leave camp, I get to take all my favorite people with me, and we love each other just as much as ever.

Our family relationships are healthy, and I don’t feel as though our family has suffered from this adventure. This last winter was very tough, with Ben’s involvement in the discipleship program and the traveling involved – we could not continue at that pace, but we’re leaving at a good time, family intact.

photo credit: Morgan Braun

God has blessed us in so many ways during these past five years, and I am very thankful for the experience we’ve been able to have. Looking back on everything, I would have to call it a success!

Up next on my list for mental processing: What makes me most nervous about moving back to civilization. I’ll write it, and see if it’s fit for the public or not! 😉

Reasons Why I Need to Live in Community

People ask me all the time about what it is like to live in a close community of people at camp.

I never know how to answer that question. Are they wanting the short or long answer? And how honest can I be? Even if I hated it, I could never actually say that. I don’t hate it, but it’s my life, and life tends to go up and down. I’m human and I struggle with stuff, and in my life, “stuff” is sometimes….living in community.

But some of the very best moments of my life happen because we live in community. And some of the hardest, most rewarding lessons of my life have been learned because we live in community.

So here are my reasons for why it is good for me to live in community:

1. Growing a flexible, loving, and unselfish attitude.

I think God looked down from heaven and saw my lovely, structured, controlled little life in Niverville, and decided to shake things up a bit. He knew I needed a constant reminder to include people in my day. In those personality test things, I tend to come out as being very task-oriented. That’s great for getting check marks on my to-do list, but not so great for putting people first in my life. Especially in spontaneous ways. I really do love spending time with people, but being spontaneous has always stressed me out.

But guess what. Here at camp, my little plan is continually challenged. I am always being reminded that the selfish tendencies must be destroyed. I have to lay down my desires, or I will live a very grumpy life. It’s taken me a long time to figure that out.

In his book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller writes a chapter about living in community. He writes about how hard it can be to adjust to community life:

When you live on your own for years, you begin to think the world belongs to you. You begin to think all space is your space and all time is your time.

The whole chapter is pretty fantastic, but I especially loved this part:

One morning, before anybody woke up, Bill and I were drinking coffee at the dining room table. I told him I lived with five guys and that it was very difficult for me because I liked my space and needed my privacy. I asked him how he kept such a good attitude all of the time with so many people abusing his kindness. Bill set down his coffee and looked me in the eye. “Don,” he said. “If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus.”

2. Learning to live out my faith in the setting of relationships.

I can be extremely holy when I am by myself, praying and reading my Bible. Except that doesn’t count for much. To bask in the holiness of my own devotions is not the point. The point is to get my heart in the right place before God, and then go live that out with all the other people He loves.

God is about relationships. I need to be about relationships. I could do that anywhere, even if I had a nice house on a nice street in a nice town. Except that I have a tendency to forget about my neighbors. At camp, it’s pretty much impossible to forget my neighbors. They eat lunch and supper with me every day. They share my washer and dryer, they come to every social event I am ever part of, they work with my husband, they play with my children. We do church and ministry and life together.

They invade my life in a way that is good for me. Sometimes I can get tired of that, in the same way that a muscle gets sore when it is being exercised and strengthened. It wants to be left alone. But it’s not good for muscles to be left alone. That was never the point.

God touches people’s lives through relationships – with Him, and with other people.

A few weeks ago, a speaker at camp said this:

Individualism is dangerous. It takes us away from the very center of what God is about – He is about community, love, and relationships. Individualism steals the joy of life.

It’s funny, because I think that I will be happier if I can control every aspect of my life, but it’s actually the opposite. Left to my own devices, I can plan every blessing out of my life! I leave no room for God to work, and who is happy under those circumstances? Not me! His ideas are usually unexpected, and a lot better than anything I could come up with on my own.

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This stuff still is not coming easy for me, but we are working on it. When stuff happens that frustrates me, and makes me long for our private, cozy little house in Niverville, I try to thank God for the opportunity to grow. I try to remember that people make life better – even when they don’t do things the way I think they should. I try to thank God that I am forced into a situation where flexibility, love, unselfishness and relationships are not optional. I try to put people ahead of my comfort and my to-do list.

Any other tips out there for how to live happily in community?

3 Things I’m Learning About Getting Along With People

Anytime you live with people, issues will come up that must be dealt with.

Or not. You could just avoid people, ignore the issues, and keep going, but that doesn’t usually seem to work out so well long term. It can seem like the more appealing option sometimes, because dealing with issues is HARD. It takes a lot of courage, and a willingness to go through some pain and discomfort. And yet every time I’ve had enough courage to take the plunge, it has been completely worth it.

Sometimes, “dealing with it” has meant working things out with other people.

Lately, though, it’s meant a make-over for the way that I think about things.

Here are the three things I am trying to think about when I am frustrated with somebody:

1) Ask the question, “Why would a completely sane, reasonable person do something like this?”

Ben took a conflict management class for his Masters program this last year, and this was one of the questions he was taught to ask. And you know what? It makes all the difference in the world.

When someone makes a choice to do something which seems completely unreasonable, annoying, or foolish to me, asking this question produces the same answer every time: They do it because they don’t know. They don’t know how I feel, they don’t know all the facts, they don’t realize that it’s difficult for other people.

And that’s okay! Since when does everybody know everything? Since never. And when I realize this, I start to think about the situation from the other person’s point of view. I start to see how things might look from their perspective, which is always going to be different from my perspective.

“Not knowing” is so much easier to take than “being a jerk”.

2) Assume that everyone is trying their very best.

Why is it so easy to assume that people are being lazy or careless or rude, and if they would just try a little harder, everything would be fine?

Who says they are not trying their very best? Maybe they have some heavy burden to carry that you don’t know about, maybe they’re going through a really tough time, and for whatever reason, this is their best.

When you think about it that way, so much annoyance disappears, and it’s possible to give somebody the benefit of the doubt.

3) That person is God’s favorite.

Jon Acuff wrote an incredible post about how every single person is God’s favorite. And when someone is annoying me, and I think, “_________ is God’s favorite”, it is very hard to stay mad and think evil thoughts.

The same God who loves me loves them. He made me, He made them. I pray for God to get me through a tough time, and they pray to the same God. Who am I to think that I’m better, that I know better, that my choices are better, that I deserve to be more blessed by God?

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If problems are cut off during the thought process, they stay a lot smaller.

And now you know exactly what I’m trying to think when I’m in a difficult situation. I repeat those three thoughts to myself over and over. Sometimes. When I have PMS, I generally seem to ditch the effort and just let ‘er rip, but I’m working on that, too!

What’s your secret for getting along with difficult people?

Learning to Face My Secret Fear

So it turns out that the days my blog is most popular are usually days on which I’ve written about something slightly scandalous or some kind of deep, secret confession. Fortunately, I seem to really enjoy baring my soul on a regular basis, but unfortunately, I don’t live a very scandalous life. But whenever I write about my secrets, it seems to appeal to people.

One of those posts was written just a few weeks ago, when I confessed to being very uncomfortable in big groups of people. Guess what? It turns out that there’s a whole bunch of you out there who feel exactly the same way! Isn’t it funny to think that we could all be in the same big group of people, all feeling uncomfortable, and we wouldn’t be able to tell that we aren’t alone? People hide their insecurities and weaknesses as far down as they can stuff them, and put on an act. Or else they avoid the situations that makes them feel insecure or inadequate.

So that means we’re all walking around, living life, with our secret, hidden feelings of not measuring up to the perfect standard. That sounds unnecessary and uncomfortable to me.

I shared in my post that I was going to take some steps to change how I act in big groups of people. I wasn’t sure how to do that, so I googled, “How to get over being shy in big groups of people.” And I found some fantastic results! It’s given me lots to think about. You can check out my favorite find here. It has 20 steps to overcoming shyness. (I love numbered steps. Why is that?)

But the most useful thing I learned is that there are three different reasons for feeling shy, and it turns out that mine is “pre-occupation with self.” Doesn’t that sound nasty and self-centered?

But it’s true. I’m not actually shy, like I thought. I love people. I love talking with people. I love talking to large groups of people, as long as I have a mike in my hand, and everybody has to listen to me. The only thing I don’t like is being in a room full of people, on my own, needing to approach somebody to talk to. It’s kind of silly when you think about it.

The article I found describes it like this:

When we’re around other people, we become extremely sensitive to what we’re doing, as if we’ve been put on center stage. This creates anxiety and makes us question our every move. Our focus centers around ourselves and particularly on “what I was doing wrong”. This can cause a downward spiral.

Yup, that pretty much sums it up. I’m extremely comfortable on center stage when I’m speaking publicly, but for some reason, when I’m one of the crowd but all on my own, I think that everyone is watching me in all my awkwardness. I don’t know exactly why this is, but I can think of some pretty scarring experiences from my past when my mistakes were brought to attention in front of a large group of people, so it probably has to do with that.

So now I stand there thinking something like this, “Who can I talk to? I’m standing here all by myself – I need to find someone, quick! People are going to start noticing that I have no one to talk to, and they’re going to think it’s lame that I’m all by myself. No one wants to be with me! Where’s Ben? He’s busy talking with people. Should I go stand by him, just so that I feel safe? I want to go home! My clothes don’t look as cool as everyone else’s. That girl has extremely beautiful hair. I don’t think my hair looks very good right now. I’ll go get a drink of water, because then I’ll look like I have a purpose, and it will disguise the fact that I have no one to talk to. No one else looks as uncomfortable as I feel. Everyone else is having a great time. I’m having a terrible time. Where can I go hide?”

So I go for lots of drinks of water, or I go to the bathroom when I don’t really need to go. Anything to avoid standing there all by myself.

There. All of my silliness, exposed. I’ll regret that tomorrow. I might delete that all later, we’ll see.

Anyway. I’m guessing (…hoping?) that I’m not the only person in the world who feels that stuff and thinks like that.

I don’t enjoy it. And there’s another problem with it. Someday, I really hope to have more opportunities to speak publicly and stuff. And write my book and go on book tours. Things like that.

And chances are that it will be necessary for me to be in large groups of people. Possibly without Ben to save me. And I’m really tired of feeling inadequate and insecure in that setting.

But the biggest problem with it all is that I’m thinking only of myself. I’ve never actually taken the time to think of other people who might be feeling really uncomfortable. And I’ve missed out on potentially fantastic one-on-one conversations because I avoid approaching people.

Enough of that. If it is true that developing a skill gives a person confidence, I want in.

This has been on my mind a lot, and then just this week, Jon Acuff wrote a fantastic post about fear that you can find here. I loved it. Here’s my favorite part:

When we’re afraid of something we often think we should be awesome at it right away. We’d never assume we’d run a great half marathon without training first, but when it comes to public speaking, or asking for a favor, or writing, we assume we’ve got to be great at it right away. That’s not true though. Part of the reason I’m afraid of asking for favors is that I rarely do it. I’m not good at it because I’ve never done it that often. But what if I practiced? What if I gave myself the grace and patience to get better at it? What if I looked at every no I got as one more coin in the “getting better” bucket instead of as an abject failure? I think that would change things. Fear hates practice because it tends to kill it.

So there you have it. I’m going to practice. The good news is that the busy season of camp starts in one month, and I will get plenty of opportunities to practice my large-group-of-people skills. The bad news is that now, whoever reads my blog will know why I keep getting drinks of water, and going to the bathroom! Shoot, my cover is blown.

What’s your secret fear? Are you brave enough to leave a comment and let us know?? 🙂