Tell Me a Story, Raggedy Man

Over the past few months, I've been seeing past my simple views and learning more about what the church really is. It hurts.

It really started my freshman year of college, when I spent a year at a megachurch location. We had a strong rivalry with the other Christian university in our area, and with over 50 people in Sunday School, it was hard to connect with anyone.

Anyway, my next year I joined a friend’s church, because she was involved in Awana there. The college Sunday  School was really good, and they even had snacks. Last year, there were some changes in Sunday School, but I get used to it after a while. 

Now, back to my home church. Our youth pastor resigned about a year ago due to some disagreements about where sixth graders be Sundays vs Wednesdays, as well as parental authority.  So they had almost got to looking at candidates when our senior pastor resigned. 

At the moment, we have an interim pastor. And for most of the summer, we had a group Sunday school. We’d take prayer requests, watch a hands-on demonstration, and then send the 1st graders and younger downstairs before watching a section of Randy Alcorn’s Heaven series and discussing it. Now, in case you don’t  know, I’m an introvert. So this was really hard for me. And to top it all off, guess who’s in change of college student ministry at my home church (when we arrive, mostly over breaks)? The pastor’s wife.  

And then the youth pastor comes back as a two-year interim, which is great (especially for my younger brother), but still, it’s just all wibbly and not in a fun way.

Now that I’m back at college, I’m really looking forward to my college group at church here…but then they decided we are just going to have a lot of activities and no Sunday school.  I mean, I do get to sleep in later, but I was fine with no extra sleep if it meant I got a good small group time…

I guess, since I grew up in the same church all my life, I’ve never been able to think about it as a thing. It was just there. And because I was homeschooled for years and my extended family was far away, it was my social life.  I never had to think about how it worked or problems, because I didn’t see them.  And now I am. They’re too big for even me to ignore. 

It’s not that they’re all bad things. Some are just uncomfortable; I know church isn’t supposed to be about me, but some of these things aren’t healthy for others either. And I don’t have an answer yet.