When I was eight years old my parents called a family meeting to announce that my dad was quitting his job as a stockbroker and my parents were going into fulltime ministry.
As an eight year old, I was really supportive of this new plan, yet I had no clue how much our entire family life was about to change. All of the sudden my dad was home a lot more, and we started hosting weekly “house meetings” in our living room, where people would stay into late hours of the night worshipping and hearing from the Lord. In fact, people were always over, and before long, privacy was a thing of the past, and our finances drained.
As different as my parent’s new job made us from every other family, I loved this time. I loved watching my parent’s minister to others. There were some really tough times, and it would’ve been way easier for my parents to give up and return to the “American dream” lifestyle we were used to. People abandoned the ministry, money was tight and my parents didn’t always know what direction the ministry was going in (it was years into this journey before my parents actually called it a church).
But more than anything, my parents taught me what true faithfulness looks like. Throughout every season, every hardship and every moment when they could’ve left the ministry, they remained faithful. Not only did they remain faithful to God and His vision, they were also always faithful to their people. Even when people left without a word, or worse, in a dramatic (and in my opinion pointless) rage, abused their authority or deliberately acted against the counsel they asked for, my parents were always faithful to them, and they always always always loved them.
I saw the Lord work through my parents in amazing ways simply because they were willing. They weren’t spiritual prodigies or even Bible scholars, but when the Lord called, they said yes. Their “yes” resulted in lives changed in unexplainable ways.
I viewed church as a place people could come for love, healing and acceptance, because that’s what my parent’s church gave them. Church was a place where people were protected and encouraged as they grew in their walk and transformed to be more like Christ. In middle and high school, church was home. It was extremely comfortable, and as the pastor’s daughter, I was loved and supported by everyone.
Church became a struggle when I moved away to college, though, so I became a professional church hopper. All of the sudden I didn’t know everyone, and people weren’t as interested in me as they were back home. When you’re the pastor’s daughter, getting involved in church takes no effort at all. You are immediately on the inside track, and you get more hugs in ten minutes than some people get in ten years. But when you’re new in town, getting involved in a church actually takes effort, and I was not used to that.
I got involved in a church once in my freshman year, but left because instead of protection I found pressure. After that, I hopped around from church to church without ever finding one that was “good enough” for me.
It was a hard lesson when I finally learned that church does not have to be about me. In fact, it’s a lesson I’m still learning, but I’m taken back to the biggest lesson I learned from my parents: faithfulness. Like any other commitment, it should take some effort for me to get involved in a church. It should also take some acceptance and love on my end because no church could ever be perfect, but it doesn’t have to be for me to be faithful.
I’ve learned that it isn’t from a specific church that I will find my love, healing and acceptance; it’s from the Lord. I’m still struggling to figure out what I want out of church and what I can/should give to it, but maybe this revelation will make getting involved in a new church easier than it has been in the past. Maybe I won’t give up when it isn’t an easy fit or I don’t get as much attention as I’m used to.
My journey has taught me that church, like life, can be messy. But when approached with a pure heart, it can also be a beautiful place to freely worship and find community. My parents unending faithfulness to the church, and God’s unending faithfulness to me (despite my self-centeredness and church-hopping habit) makes me believe that the church should be a place that doesn’t give up on people, even when people give up on the church.
Read more from Caroline on her blog, the College Cosmopolitan (such a great blog name!) or Twitter.
