Last year was a rough one…
Last summer my church community was fractured by a pastor’s decision to fire half of his staff. His reasoning was not received well, but the damage was done and it was irreparable. Staff dispersed in many different directions- other states, other churches, away- while the congregation experienced a mass exodus. My family attempted to withstand the high tide of the change, but we inevitably parted ways with the church as well.
Moving on
My husband and I decided we did not want to remain without a church and a community, so we decided to try another local church with our preadolescent daughter, who desperately needs spiritual wielding outside of her parents. This church, unfortunately, just did not have what we needed. The church had five facilities on the northside of town, and we instantly drowned in a congregation of over 3,000 people.
What about old friends
For some reason, everyone from my previous community moved on without a trace. No one spoke to me, reached out to me, returned my calls or messages, and I was hurt. Half a decade of friendship- weddings, funerals, family expansion, pain and joy- and not a word from anyone. I was confused about what had happened in those five years that I missed. Were these truly my friends, had I not paid attention to my community?
What I learned
The commonality that I had in my church community was Christ, nothing else. We all knew and loved Jesus, and I assumed that we had friendship depth because of that and we didn’t. I do believe we loved each other and that we were doing a decent job of community, we just had not put forward the intentionality to go deeper than Sunday mornings.
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