Not Finished Yet - I Am a Work In Progress - Be Patient With Me

This goes in the church leadership disappointment category and I’m sharing this to reflect the unfortunate state of some of today’s churches. Where we instead of gathering together in God’s house to worship and praise we create Sunday Morning Showtime, when the church will do everything possible to impress people in the chairs so they will be back next Sunday too. 

Sunday morning my son, who is 14 and part of the worship team as a bass player, was heading out the door with joy and excitement. Ten minutes later I turn around I see him back home, upset and almost crying. I asked him: “Why are you back?” (He left 45 minutes earlier as they have a practice before the service starts). He looks at me with a sad face and choking voice and whispers: “I have to change. I can’t play in jeans

and I have to wear brown. But Mom, I don’t have anything brown and beige, this was mom the closet I could get to beige and I don’t have any brown.” He puts on his black suit pants and a black shirt and holds back his tears. “I don’t even want to go back” grumbled under his teeth. 

I really didn’t understand what happened. I looked at my hubby and I could tell he just wasn’t happy either.   After my son changed he headed back to church with a really hurt and upset teen. 

When my hubby walked back on the front door after he dropped off my son, I asked what this was all about, what exactly happened. 

So hubby told me, that when they made it to the church the worship leader (who is a good friend of mine) walked over to our car to return something. When she saw my son, she told him: “I would like you to play, but you have to change; it’s brown and beige day today and you can’t be on the stage in jeans. Sorry, you have to change; you just can’t play like this”. And I was like: What??? I broke down in pieces and I was hurt and dissapointed and angry. 

I stopped everything I did and I was wondering: would Jesus send him home to change? Is Church all about this? The message for my son and for us this Sunday was this: If you dress the way we tell you, if you fit in the stage look, then you can serve, if no…sorry, you are not good for us. 

That morning my son left with a good heart and spirit, but he wasn’t good enough…then he came home, put on some black clothes and a face to cover his anger and hurt to “look” good on the stage. I wonder what would have been God’s choice. What kind of heart is the real one? Do we want to teach kids: it’s all about the look, it’s all about putting up a face, and it’s all about fake…but it looks good on stage, it fits the look?     

I heard the pastor preaching over and over how God is only looking for a willing heart, it’s not about what kind of car you drive, what kind of clothes you wear, what kind of education you have, it’s all about your willingness to follow God, to serve him. Really? So then the preaching and the living are far from each other. 

We can say whatever we want from the pulpit, it just won’t matter if we treat people with a bad attitude and forget what really matters ...I really believe Jesus would of never send my son home to change…Jesus said come…just as you are…No Jesus would of never hurt a searching teen, who been hurt quite few times already by leaders. Oh did I mention that the Pastor sometime preaches in jeans? Oh did I mention that the same worship leader in the PM service was wearing jeans? Oh in the afternoon is OK….in the morning is not…Wow, so being 14 how do you know? 

So as I mentioned I was hurt and disappointed in one of our church leaders all over again. Nothing new is it? And this is a time when you have to choose what you do with your feelings, with your hurt, with the anger and unfair emotions running through your blood…what do you do? 

I poured out my heart to God. I told him how I feel, I told him I am angry, but I didn’t want to be bitter, I love that person who hurt my son, she is a really good friend of mine whom I respect dearly. Maybe that’s way I was even more surprised and hurt, because I could of never think of her of being capable to talk with anyone like this. It’s not her style. 

So I prayed for forgiveness, for mercy and grace; to be able to extend forgiveness and to be able to love. I prayed that God would show her if this wasn’t pleasing him and this will not become something harming on my son spiritual life. 

When I went to church an hour later, because I just couldn’t go to Sunday school, I needed time to cry and ask God to help me move on, asked my son if he is ok and he just said: “whatever mom, whatever”. And I knew that this is the last thing I would like to hear. When you’re a teen “whatever” means like: I’m hurt and I don’t want to talk about it. 

Later, that night the worship leader went to my son and apologized telling him that she was sorry and she didn’t have the right to send him home and talk with him like that. 

And I know that in that moment she as a leader grew in my son’s eye. When you as an adult blow it, and we all do it in some ways, and we have the guts and go back and say sorry, that will help kids understand that we all make mistakes. Even leaders are humans and sometimes overreact but just because they are leaders they don’t have the right to talk with others as they wish.  

As I mentioned before, leaders just as everyone else are imperfect, including your pastor and fellow believers. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time. People won't always be the loving, wise, patient persons you would like. If they can humble themselves to realize that they made a mistake and ask for forgiveness, that act can build bridges and show what church should be.  But even if those who wound us do not apologize, God tells us to forgive. Look at the example of Stephen: He forgave the crowd even as they stoned him to death (Acts 7:60).

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you”. ~ Ephesians 4:32. 

Church is God’s special possession where people have to work in unity for God’s kingdom. When Satan knows that there is unity he will find ways to destroy it, but only if we allow him to reign. The enemy has only as much power over us as much we aloud him. When we are hurt we have to take our pain to God because only he can heal broken hearts. If we have to talk with those who hurt us, do so respectfully and lovingly. Be an instrument of reconciliation.  

Hurt people, hurt people. Take the first step in healing by pouring out your heart to God and give him your pain and ask God to deal first with you. Don’t aloud bitterness poison your heart and soul and ask God to shower you with his grace so that you’ll be able to extend that. Once you faced your own feelings and reactions and emotions (which are not pure either, even if you are right and the other person wrong), then and only then you can ask God to change things in the other person heart too. And then trust God. If you still think that needs to be a talk with the other person make sure you bring Jesus with you and ask Jesus how he would handle this situation.    

Work for the unity and do whatever you would like others to do with you, this is the essence of the gospel.Remember that people are imperfect! In our human nature, we take disappointments and wounds personally, and we get upset. Yet God shows us an entirely different way to respond: “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing” ~1 Peter 3:9. 

Ask God to help you feel concern for someone who wounds or disappoints you. Then pray for him or her. Prayer can change things! 

Don’t ever give up on Jesus! Don’t let disappointments in people cause you to be disappointed in Jesus. He loves you and is your best friend.

“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”  ~ Ephesians 3:17-19.