The Christian-Church Conundrum

     Yesterday I had an interesting thing happen to me.  I found myself trying to explain my "situation" to people who were completely unchurched.  Now, they understood the idea of me being in ministry and even the idea of me helping start a new church, but I could tell they didn't fully understand the concept of "professional/career Christian" or all the intricacies of church politics that could result in the termination of said professional/career Christian without any provocation or simply on personal proclivities.  Let me back up a little bit.  A couple of weeks ago I was clicking around on Craig's List when I came across an ad for a guy wanting someone to do some graphic design for cheap.  He is a man in Lakeland who is writing a book and needs someone to design his book cover.  He doesn't have much to pay, but I don't have much of anything coming in, so I answered the ad.  He liked my work and even the quick proof I did for him so he "hired" me for the gig.  Yesterday we met at The Pub to sign a contract, pay me a deposit, and just get to know each other.  He spent a while telling me his story, the idea behind the book (it's a health "how-to" for 40+ adults), and some ideas for marketing.  He then asked me about my family, and his friend (who came along) asked me about ministry.  She wondered about whether it was a "career choice" or a calling.  I explained that it was definitely a calling, and that anyone who made it a "career choice" would eventually burn out or have a serious moral failure.  She looked a bit puzzled, but seemed to accept what I was saying.  Further investigation led to the situation of my termination.  

     Now, I will admit that there is still a great deal of anger and bitterness that I harbor about the whole situation.  I am not fully over it, and it does shape my disposition towards most established churches and the systems that create these churches.  I battle it daily, and covet your prayers as I do so.  Anyway, I did not want to exhibit my anger and bitterness to these people, but I also desired to 

be honest and transparent with them.  What I found myself doing was having to explain the intricacies of church polity to people who had absolutely no knowledge or understanding of church culture.  I might as well have been reading them a technical manual on Cellular Array Processors (I don't know, don't ask).  Anyway, in the middle of my "explanation"  it occurred to me that the very thing that has taken up 1/3 of my life holds little to no significance or consequence to the world outside of Christian culture (the "real" world as some have called it).  I found myself wondering how something could hold such sway over my emotions and destroy families, but not even register on the radar of importance for the rest of society.

     This conversation has caused me to seriously ponder what we do inside our churches.  I have always found much of what we do under the name of "The Lord's work" to be suspect, but trying to explain the inner workings of church without painting a very, very bad picture became an extremely difficult thing to do.  Here we had people who were genuinely good people (read: "nice") who have a pre-conceived notion about churches.  Why?  Because we have spent so much time making sure the people inside the church are happy and entertained, that we don't really even try to maintain any form of connection or even relevance to the very world to which we are called to minister.  I lament that I might have made their picture of churches a bit worse, but hopefully their view of Christ-followers is a little better as is their understanding of what it means to live as God intended.  I'm sure it will take a while to fully help them understand the difference between Christians (people who give themselves that moniker) and followers of Christ (people who are called Christians by others because they are diligently trying to live like Jesus Christ did), but I am glad to have the opportunity.