So, after much thought and prayer for mine and my families lives, we felt that it was the best thing for us to leave our current church. We were falling into disagreement with them over issues of finance, leadership and hearts. Yes, hearts. There seemed to be heart issues at the bottom of myself and some of the leadership that have not been addressed. This raises concern for me and my family, because we feel that these things should be addressed. Again, being so far removed from the rest of the church body, we had no community, and the community group we were supposed to be in ceased to exist after a couple months of meeting. Our group leader just stopped meeting and then they decided to go to another group without letting us know. So many issues of what went wrong that it is hard to pin point the exact moment where we felt that we were in the wrong place. I could go on an on about the negative things, but after much thought about it, me and my wife realized that God had brought us there to learn more about 'US'. We needed to be there. We needed to learn. And boy did we learn. We learned that I don't need to be in church leadership. It puts too much strain on my relationships. I feel as though God was showing me that He doesn't need me to be a church planter or pastor. These were things that I desired or thought that God was desiring for me. And when I started to see all that went into it, I knew that I could not do that. I could not put my family through that.
We also learned that we had been hurt pretty bad from the previous church, and with the help of the leadership from the new church, we were able to move past the hurt to a place of forgiveness. This was a huge source of healing in our lives, and then opened up more areas for God to penetrate. We have dealt with a lot over the past year and just needed a place to be comforted and loved on. When we first arrived at the new church, that was what happened, but through the course of the year, that welcome was worn out. My wife was not included with the other ladies, and for some reason they excluded her on several occasions where they were hanging out. This does not sit well with me, and being the leader of my family I realized that we need to be at a place where the whole family feels welcome. We need a place where the children are well taken care of in the nursery and not under staffed. We need a church that is a place of community, healing, conviction, redemption and love. We needed to move. And move we did.
Once we left, we felt this huge weight off of our shoulders. We expected to get phone calls from the leaders or text messages or even emails. But to our suprise, we got nothing. No communication from anyone other than the lead pastor in regards to not letting anyone talk bad about us. I have no issue with that because we had done nothing to warrant anyone talking bad about us or slandering our name, and if they did, then that would be on them. All I wanted was some communication about them missing us. Instead, what was communicated was that they all agreed that we needed to find a church closer to our home. That makes me mad because until I started challenging things within the leadership, they loved us being a part of the church no matter how far we were driving. Anyways, I could go on for hours but that is not the point. The point is that God is writing the next chapter in our lives and we are hanging on every word.
It is exciting and scary all at the same time, which is exciting and scary. We have said it time and time again that we want to live open handed with God and that we want our lives to be tranparent to what God is doing in them. Tranparency can be such a hard word to swallow, and most of the time the reason for that is because people don't want others to see what is going on, on the inside. We want our lives to be visible from the inside out, not the other way. So I will end this post with this last bit of information. We are taking every day with an open hand. We are living by faith with the understanding that God is going to provide. We are going to operate our lives in accordance with what the scriptures teach and we will raise our children along the same path. We are living lives that are inside out. This next chapter is sure to be an interesting one...
We also learned that we had been hurt pretty bad from the previous church, and with the help of the leadership from the new church, we were able to move past the hurt to a place of forgiveness. This was a huge source of healing in our lives, and then opened up more areas for God to penetrate. We have dealt with a lot over the past year and just needed a place to be comforted and loved on. When we first arrived at the new church, that was what happened, but through the course of the year, that welcome was worn out. My wife was not included with the other ladies, and for some reason they excluded her on several occasions where they were hanging out. This does not sit well with me, and being the leader of my family I realized that we need to be at a place where the whole family feels welcome. We need a place where the children are well taken care of in the nursery and not under staffed. We need a church that is a place of community, healing, conviction, redemption and love. We needed to move. And move we did.
Once we left, we felt this huge weight off of our shoulders. We expected to get phone calls from the leaders or text messages or even emails. But to our suprise, we got nothing. No communication from anyone other than the lead pastor in regards to not letting anyone talk bad about us. I have no issue with that because we had done nothing to warrant anyone talking bad about us or slandering our name, and if they did, then that would be on them. All I wanted was some communication about them missing us. Instead, what was communicated was that they all agreed that we needed to find a church closer to our home. That makes me mad because until I started challenging things within the leadership, they loved us being a part of the church no matter how far we were driving. Anyways, I could go on for hours but that is not the point. The point is that God is writing the next chapter in our lives and we are hanging on every word.
It is exciting and scary all at the same time, which is exciting and scary. We have said it time and time again that we want to live open handed with God and that we want our lives to be tranparent to what God is doing in them. Tranparency can be such a hard word to swallow, and most of the time the reason for that is because people don't want others to see what is going on, on the inside. We want our lives to be visible from the inside out, not the other way. So I will end this post with this last bit of information. We are taking every day with an open hand. We are living by faith with the understanding that God is going to provide. We are going to operate our lives in accordance with what the scriptures teach and we will raise our children along the same path. We are living lives that are inside out. This next chapter is sure to be an interesting one...
