Getting It Out Of My Head

Well, as I said, there are some emotional things going on in my life. My shoulders feel like they're tethered to my earlobes. My brow has a knot in it - right above the bridge of my nose. I'm not sure if it'll go away. My head is so full that I'm not sleeping well and have become so groggy that I actually went to the store in track pants today. I understand that many of you do this anyway. But I do not. Generally, I do not look like I belong in track pants. I look like I belong in dark jeans and pumps.
These are my typical warning signs. It's time to write about it. I've been avoiding it. It's not pleasant. But it has led to a big decision for Chris and me.
Our church is losing its pastor.
This happens all the time in churches across the country. But our church isn't like others. We're small. We don't have a building. We use air quotes when we say the word "pastor."
This was quite unexpected when it was dropped into our laps two weeks ago. The "leadership" (again with the quotes) was called together for a meeting - that'd be the "pastor," and his wife, Chris and me, and one other couple. The six of us planted this church 4 1/2 years ago. And they just out and said that they're going back to their Catholic roots. Okay. Well. What about the rest of us? They glibly offered that Chris and I could take over as the pastors.
Ha! we thought. We're not really pastor people.
I guess I should back up. This should not have been completely unexpected. There has been a general sense of their withdrawal. I attributed this to the birth of a surprise baby and the adjustments that would likely come along with that. Their kids were older, they forgot how tough it is.....we were sure that, in time, they'd come back and be our friends and mentors and pastors.
Two years ago, we had so many people in one living room that it became necessary to split into two living rooms. After much prayer and consideration, Chris and I decided to take on the second group in our house. Pastors? No. Small group facilitators? Definitely. We had the promise of continued fellowship with our friends and a little guidance along the way, since we've never really trained or practiced the art of pastoring. Make that facilitating.
But that was about the same time the surprise baby came along. The core of our community sort of....spread apart. But community is the central idea of home churches. They don't work without a deep sense of belonging to your community. So, we felt like we were holding the vision for our church in our hands and waiting for our pastor to come back, pick it up, and keep moving ahead. We kept treading water, not really keeping track of how long it'd actually been.
Two years later, Chris and I have found ourselves dry and dead and lacking in vision. Our living room community is strong, but we're not having dinner together outside of church. We're not going out to help people in our neighborhoods. We're not....in deep community with each other. I've been growing restless about our direction and my own spiritual hunger has become overwhelming.
But we still were waiting.
I don't know why we were waiting. I know now that we didn't have direction and vision because we were holding on to someone else's vision.
So, we should have seen this coming. But I think that we were so tired, we just couldn't. Maybe we didn't want to.
So, now, what do we do? Like I said, we have never envisioned ourselves as "pastors." But going to a regular church again? Ugh. But we need to have accountability with other groups - we need spiritual authority over us - we need....the list goes on.
But the more we considered it, the more we didn't want to drop what God has given us to do. Our church has been a home for Christians who don't like church. It's a place of rest for other pastors, and just people too, who have been hurt by The Church and are angry and tired. We love providing that place.
So, we brought the problem to our half of the church on Sunday. We love this. We want to do church this way and we don't want to just give up and join up somewhere else. We know that we can't just sit out here, a lonely and isolated cell of believers, without accountability to other churches or relationships with other pastors. That's how people end up drinking funny Kool-Aid in a compound somewhere.
And they encouraged us. Most of them don't even know the "pastor" of our church. They've been so removed from our fellowship that we've only met a handful of times as a big group. To them, we already are their pastors, they said. They like church this way and want to keep doing it too. I guess we really were pastors anyway, but we were so intimidated by the title that we shied away from claiming it. We are both ordained, I guess, for whatever that's worth(not much)! So, they want to stay with us on this journey of faith. We are going to rearrange our meeting times so Chris and I can go out and intrepidly explore the local world of home churches, with the hope of making some new connections. I know there are others. "Home Church" is pretty trendy right now. Even my Lutheran Pastor uncles are asking us about it. Sometimes, I just want to tell them that we've been doing this for years - why are they only interested now? Anyway, that's beside the point.
So, the emotional side of this is that, we bought into a completely new way of doing church. We committed to it with everything we had. We took considered risks with the upbringing of our children - no Sunday School? How will they ever learn about Jesus? We have had to explain ourselves to family and friends and stand up for why we aren't "in church." We've even had to define ourselves apart from other alternative churches who often are bound together by just bitching about the traditional church and how they disagree with everything it does. It's been a hard road and it was really scary to look at giving it all up. Does that mean we failed? Does that mean we messed it up, or was it wrong to begin with? We thought we were comfortable with someone else's answers to those issues.
But now, we have to own it. We are no longer following someone else's crazy ideas about church. I haven't faced anything more grave and frightening than the prospect of pastoral responsibility. But we're going to keep doing it.
Where are we going? I have no idea. But it's nice to be supported and encouraged and to know that you have friends that are walking with you into the Spiritual Unknown that is life outside of the American Church.

DAILY BLISS: Peep-toe shoes and reading Runny Babbit to Emma. That's a book that simply must be read out loud. I highly recommend it for particularly bad days.