Well the church split and we should have just had the good sense to go somewhere else altogether, but hoping for an opportunity to step up into ministry in the forming of a new church body, I foolishly followed the pastor who had not committed the financial impropriety.
Little did I realize that he held a big grudge against me for something that had happened a few years before and he had been working against me ever since. After we had returned to California and finding no opportunities for ministry in the church I was attending and not finding any elsewhere any time soon, I decided to start holding a bible study in my home.
My Bible study had been slow going, to star, but after football season ended, Friday nights at my house became the place to be. Every Friday night my house was packed out with teenagers, eager to dig deeper into the scripture from several different parts of town, and they were from a couple of different churches than the one that I attended.
About a month into when things were really going good and I was having about fifty kids evert Friday night, I got a phone call from the youth pastor from my church ordering me to cease holding my bible studies. He did not have any reason other that it wasn't his plan and he hadn't sanctioned it. I asked him if he had heard that I was teaching some errant doctrine or something like that, he said he had heard nothing about what was being taught there. I invited him to attend, as a guest, and even offered to let him have advanced copies of my lessons, so he could set his mind at ease, if this was his concern. He just insisted that I had to stop holding my Bible studies and that he had the complete authority to do so. I told him that I respectfully disagreed with him, that if he found error with my teaching, then he had the authority to lovingly correct me, rebuke me if I refused correction and then worn those entrusted to him to stay away, but I still didn't see where he had the authority to stop me from teaching the word of God to anyone.
He didn't like the fact that I wouldn't stop and he called the pastor, who saw him as his favored son. This pastor had hired him right out of Bible college on the high recommendation of some professors and pastors he trusted. Let's just say this youth pastor was very special to him. Well he called him up and told a bunch of lies. According to what eventually came back to me when I went to the pastor to talk to him about it was that I had initiated the phone call and that I was rubbing his nose in the fact that I could get more kids to show up at my house on a Friday night than he could at church on a Sunday morning or Wednesday night, that I was going to get him fired, that I was going to have his job and that there was no way I was going to give up this Bible study because that was how I was going to do it.
I was in shock. There was nothing in my character that even remotely came close to something, let alone someone, that could do those kinds of things, even said it should have been needless to defend myself against such charges, this man had known me for a lot longer. But there I was defending myself against something that was so contrary to my character but was exactly familiar to the fantasies of this youth pastor's insecurities.
Yet, I pressed on. I was faced with great adversity and I was determined to stick it out and try and see it through to the other side. I didn't want to just jump into the rut again. I also really didn't feel like I had anywhere to go to. I thought things got smoothed over, but in the end I think all that really happened was that they just settled down enough to be able to get along together.
Here we were in this new church venture together and I had certain talents and skills that this pastor had now had need of, by the way his favored son youth pastor took off for an even cushier position were less was probably expected of him and he would be thought even more highly of by the next boss, his father-in-law, so as long as I was willing to stay in that box, everything was cool.
I tried to assert myself for ministry consideration, but he wasn't interested. He was really trying to groom his son to follow in his footsteps and his son really didn't want to and didn't believe he had ever had a calling. I even had one real good opportunity to move away to a ministry position in a bi-lingual community. Everything looked great, the church was established and I would have been moving into a position I would have been developing rather than attempting to create anew. But, as quickly as they seemed to fall in love with my wife and I the opportunity evaporated. When I contacted the church to see if they had made a decision, they informed me that my pastor had warned them away from me.
Needless to say I was utterly devastated. It knocked me out completely. This time, instead of jumping back into the rut I just completely jumped out. I left God's people behind, I couldn't trust them.
It was a little more than two years before I even entered a church again and then it was because a customer of mine at Office Depot had tried to evangelize this very good man she had met that just couldn't stand to see go to Hell. I was taken aback by that. I hadn't turned my back on God. I was still a Christian. I just was so hurt by God's generals I didn't know if I had it within me to stand in the ranks any longer.
I decided to take a chance. I decided that if this woman was going to be so bold as to try and witness to me, I would be bold enough to tell her the truth and if she didn't run away screaming I just might give her church a chance. That was an awful lot to place on one individual. And I was really afraid she was going to regret opening that can of worms, but she didn't. She just listened and loved and we found a church home to heal in for the next three years.
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Location:Carver Dr,Roswell,United States
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