Reflections on Church

Strange.  I became a Christian when I was 19 years old, a Junior at the University, and a generally 'moral and ethical' pagan.  Not anti-Chrstian.  But not raised in the church and very ignorant of this whole "Christianity" thing.  A bit over a year later I believed God was calling me to attend seminary to learn about this faith, so after graduation I went to Berkeley, CA, and worked my way through to a Bachelor of Divnity degree.  A couple of months before graduation I felt God telling me to accept the call to a small church (22 people attending) in northeastern Washington.

Strange.  I worked, I pastored, I became part of the community, I taught, I drank coffee with people, and never got it.

Then I was called to a university town to take a church that wanted to reach out to students.  I felt God leading and spent eighteen and a half years there, pastoring, teaching, drinking coffee with students, walking the floor with people overdosing on drugs and booze, meeting town drunks at 2:00 a.m. when the bars were closing, caring.  I never got it.

Then I felt "right" about accepting the pastorate of a suburban church that wanted to grow without adding new members.  After two and a half years of "doing church" I moved into the IT field and tried to figure out how to be God's person in institutions and businesses.

Strange.  I still didn't get it.

Recently I received a warm letter from friends back in that University town.  They shared that they attend another church but how neat it is that people who were kids born while I was pastor there are active in that church.  That church has left our denomination, has become very right wing, with an emphasis on narrowness and hostility towards others, and. . . I get it.  I think.

This article begins a series of reflections on what I "get".  How this will affect me is hard to say.  We'll have to see.

Read on.