Dear Blue,

I am in a small church that is getting smaller every year.  My husband is a deacon here and I am trying to play the piano and do not want to, nor am I really capable and have never been "called" or felt led by the Lord to do so, just preacher called, so to speak.  I do many other things, like teach children's church, church secretary, soloist, make out all the monthly lists such as nursery, cleaning list, etc. and do the church bulletins.  I'm not patting myself on the back here because I have always loved what I did, but not any more.  I am very unhappy at church, and I know a lot of it has to do with me and my getting away from my walk with God.  This isn't something that just happened overnight, it has been weighing on my mind for a long time now.

This is our Pastor's first church, and he has said himself, that when he first started pastoring, about 6 years ago now, he tried to treat his congregation as employees rather than the flock.  About three years ago he had an altercation with my grown daughter, who was also a member at the time, and she left the church in tears never to go back and hasn't been back in church since.  Instead of going to her and getting things right between them, he came to me trying to justify what happened and to make sure my husband and I weren't going to leave the church.  It took him 2 years to go see her and apologize to her.  During all this time she had been out of church, and her husband wants nothing to do with church anymore because of this.  They have 4 children, who were also out of church except the 2 youngest, and I would get them and take them to Sunday School and Children's church with me.  All this time I harbored resentment in my heart towards him
because the Bible says that if you have ought with your brother, that you are to make things right, even if it wasn't your fault, (paraphrasing here), and he is our pastor, so why didn't he see the need to try to get her back in church.  The altercation stemmed from something that was totally innocent on her part and he dealt with it all wrong and totally lost his temper (which he can do often, but not as much so now).

Our church has grown cold.  The congregation has grown hard and uncaring.  I no longer feel love and caring when I walk in the doors, including in my own heart.  I asked my husband the other day how the Lord could be in such a place as this.  I also told him I wish he wasn't a deacon, but that was unfair to him.  I shouldn't influence his feelings.  He seems to be satisfied with where we are going and I know, as his wife, I am suppose to follow his lead and go where he goes.

My question is this....should I stay here, out of obligation to my husband and my duties at the church, should I talk to the pastor about my feelings, should I visit other churches and try to find what I am searching for?  Okay, I know that is more than one question, and I know I am not explaining myself very well so how can I expect your advice when I can't even express my feelings? I just know that I am in a bad way right now spiritually and I
have gotten to the place where I will find any excuse not to go to church. I do watch a certain preacher on the internet that I truly love and if it wasn't for this church, I never would be fed.  And I am so envious of the members of that church, who truly seem happy in serving the Lord.

I'm sorry this is so long, and you probably think I am being foolish, but I so want to love going to church again, and if that means hanging in there for now, I'll do it, but I just need some advice from unbiased eyes, even if you don't grasp the whole picture.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I desire your prayers and words of wisdom, no matter what they may be.  I do want to say that I love the Lord, but lately I have begun to doubt my salvation and that scares me more than anything.  In doing that I am basing my salvation on my feelings and not His Word and His Promise.

Thanks again,

Unhappy In Arizona

Dear Friend,

To start off, I wish there was a way I could simply give you a loving hug from a sister in the Lord who has felt all of the things you described. All of them. Hopefully it will help you at least in some small way to know you are far from alone. I wish there weren't thousands of women out there feeling this same way, but I've heard from too many of them personally.

There are several major areas that need to be addressed in response to your questions (this is a bit like doing several Just Ask Blue columns in one), and I am praying even as I write for God's wisdom to come through and my own to take a back seat to what He wants you to hear.

First, it appears that although you are ministering within your giftings at least to some degree, you are not necessarily ministering within your areas of passion (I'm sure I don't have to tell you there is a difference). While most of us are glad to do things because they need to be done, understandably we are more effective when operating within not only our giftings but also our areas of passion. Think for a moment about how often in Scripture we see references to the way God looks at the heart. If you are ministering in any area where your heart isn't present, are you ministering or going through the motions of a job?

When passion and gifting meet, a symphony of ministry results. The ideal situation obviously is when many parts of the body work in concert with one another, each contributing his/her personal gifts and talents, and each enabled and encouraged to work within their areas of passion as well. This type of arrangement builds purpose rather than resentment and significantly affects the quality of Kingdom work accomplished.

When this type of arrangement is not feasible (smaller churches often have the problem of too much work needing to be done and too few people to do it all), often disharmony is the result. The best solution to this problem I have found is to SIMPLIFY. Sounds almost too…well, simple, I realize, but it's amazing what weight can be lifted when simplicity replaces the chaos of trying to do too much. Sometimes we want to do more than we can, and getting back to the basics is really the only answer. The form such simplification takes will vary from one church to another; you will need to prayerfully consider how this would look at your church. I would highly recommend the book Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger.

Regarding the altercation between your pastor and your daughter, there is bound to be resentment hanging around in your heart. One mom to another, I fully understand that when someone harms your child it is far worse than if they had attacked you personally. You are right when you say he should've known better, and that he should have come to her soon afterward to apologize. He is, however, still human, and you are wise to realize that speaking with him personally is the Biblical thing to do. Until you can sit down with him and discuss not only the situation between him and your daughter but also other areas of discontent you are feeling (which will, despite your best efforts to stop it, spill over into other areas), your heart is likely to continue to hurt.

You have stated that your church feels cold and uncaring. I wish I could say this is uncommon. I am consistently amazed at some of the things happening in churches across America , not only in the Body at large but within the leadership! Lately I have spent a lot of time pondering the phenomenon of what I call “spirit killers”—people who seem bent on sucking the life out of others (and the worst part is that they are doing it in the name of Christ!)—and the magnitude of the damage we are witnessing in our churches as resulting casualties. It's like standing in horror watching a spiritual nuclear bomb detonate.

The good news is that I am seeing a trend within the past couple of years that I believe will begin to undo some of the damage being done in cold, dead churches countrywide.

The trend is a move away from the political, micromanaged way-too-businesslike organizations we've watched “church” become, and back to the “Church” Christ established and called us to develop through the Great Commission. A friend recently asked me, “What kind of church do you imagine? Dream it. Imagine it. Then start it.” Sounds almost trite, but something tells me if we all heeded this advice, the Church—and the World—would look much different. Your desire to be “happy again” is not a whine—it is a dream for a better church—the very Church Christ calls us to be. Think about that for a moment. Can we ever have too many churches?

You mentioned that you are more comfortable listening to the TV preacher, which makes sense because it's a one way conversation with a screen between you. It all gets a bit more complicated when you're dealing with real, live, fallible people. Someone once joked, “You know, the Church wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the people!” This is a sad statement, in light of the fact that the people ARE the Church. Your disillusionment naturally affects your desire to attend, to minister, to be a part of something your heart cannot support. But don't be too quick to dismiss discontent as insubordinate behavior that needs to be quelled and brought into quiet (lifeless!) submission. Keep in mind that such “holy discontent” can come from the Holy Spirit to effect positive change in His Church. Can you imagine the result if all the movers and shakers even in your own lifetime had remained silent?

Which brings us to the final area, and that is your relationship with your husband and the communication so desperately needed between you. You didn't mention anything about his feelings in regard to the things concerning you, but I would like to encourage you to share your heart with him. Don't deprive him of the wisdom of your counsel! You are wise to stop short of nagging, as the Word tells us this is not the way a godly wife should behave. But I believe Scripture supports you going to him with your feelings and insights so that you can work through each issue together as one. Be assured that he is already being affected by how you are feeling whether you have spoken with him or not (I speak from personal experience here), so it is much better to communicate and bond together as a team in your search for a workable solution toward a better worship and church experience.

I consider it prudent to caution you here about the Enemy of our souls and how many of his weapons we have uncovered in just this one letter: Self-Doubt, Fear, Disillusionment, Lack of Communication, Resentment, Distraction from Focus, Unresolved Conflict. Make no mistake, Satan wants nothing more than for God's people to let unsavory circumstances within the church sell them the lie that God is far away, even to the point of making them doubt their very salvation. When this happens, don't hesitate to respond to him with God's Word: “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” ( Rom. 8:1).

Finally, dear sister, I commit to praying for you and your family as together you seek the Lord in all these areas. Always remember that your Father is holding you in the palm of His hand and that He will never let you go. Be assured that He will honor your desire to serve Him and His Church with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Keep in mind that the Holy Spirit may very well be working within your heart to effect amazing change for the Kingdom—change that will stretch beyond your own scope and even out beyond your own lifetime. Never underestimate what God can do with a woman who dares to dream of a church He will easily recognize.

And in everything, never stop asking, seeking, and knocking.

Blue