Worship Standards

Roughly ten years ago I fell in love with Jesus. As anyone who is married will tell you; when you fall in love with someone you also have to accept their family as your own. With Jesus, the family is the Church (not exclusively meaning those that attend a physical assembly, of course). The church I found myself in was Pentecostal, specifically Church of God. One of the things I heard the most often (and that pisses me off) is that we should praise God even when we don't feel it.

Here's the thing: I think God actually gives a damn about how we feel. I think our emotional health means something to our creator. Don't get me wrong, I do think we should worship God. The thing is when they say "praise God when you don't feel it" they mean do what we see as acceptable worship to God. So lift your hands when you feel as though your insides are dying. Sing loud, even though you throat hurts so badly from holding back tears that you can barely get the words out. The worst part it that by "feel it" they often mean emotional hype (aka glorified group think). Just do it so that we don't have to deal with you. Do it, because your problems are nothing in the big picture. (This is in direct contrast to another teaching which says God cares so deeply about us that He wants to hear it all.)

The problem I've found most aggravating lately is that everyone has "acceptable praise." There are just certain things you don't do in mixed company. There are also some things you MUST do if you are "true blue" saved and sanctified. So these people say silent prayers. This congregation sings contemporary Christian music, claps their hands and raises them high. This group gets through about one song before peeps are running up and down isles, casting out devils and charging hell with water pistols and spirit fire. It's very rare to find a place that really means it when they say "worship God in the way you feel led."

Final lesson? Just love him and love people (even when they're assholes, as best you can). When it all comes down to it, God does care about us and how we feel and yes, He is pretty fantastic so we should praise Him but maybe somedays praise just means getting on your knees and whispering a prayer with what strength you've got left, but maybe on another day it means dancing your ass off either way.

The fact is that our worship is never meant to live up to organized religion or mans' standards.

Just Another Tuesday...

First I need to confess this post is going to be very different from my previous posts. It's much less of a sermon blog and more of a personal, honest, vulnerable confession post. 

Five months ago I left my home church as many of you know. 

I've experienced more emotions over these past few months than I had in quite some time. I've felt them to an extent that I haven't known since high school when everything was poignant and I wasn't so guarded. 

I didn't realize it then, but when I left the building I lost more than a service every Sunday. I lost a community I had grown up in. I lost teenagers I had known since they were toddlers. These same teenagers I had been a youth pastor and friend to for a short time. I lost most of them. I lost friendships and mentors, sisters and brothers, people who were my second family. I lost children I had known since they were born. These children and teenagers I loved and still love as my own children or little brothers and sisters. 

In a true community of faith relationships go deeper than "it's good to see you again" and transcend into a sacred place that cannot be explained but only felt. I spent hours with my community. I cried with them, celebrated with them, learned with them and they with me. Before the merger and the severe changes that ultimately caused us to leave my church was the one people that hated church loved. People who didn't go to church saw the community we had and said "that's not so bad." 

One of the deepest emotions I've felt is anger. This anger stems from pain and fear. Pain in what's been lost and the fear that I won't find community like this again. I still feel this. Everyday. I struggle with my thoughts on the church. I've realized in the past few weeks that the mark of true community is being able to be vulnerable with one another without fear of judgment. When we're not given the chance we need to be fully vulnerable to a small community there is something that's lost in our personal lives. Something I've been lacking. Something I still don't feel I have the strength to seek out again. 

The reason this post is more therapeutic and less sermon is because I know not the preach from a wound. All of this is still, admittedly, a wound for me. I am too broken to be vulnerable. I have to put on a shield just to walk into any church now. As much as I love the church I found and the "feel" of it, I am terrified of trying to become close to it. I am terrified of community. Sweet Jesus, help me. 

Fools Rush In

When we consider foolishness and the idea of being a fool it can be hard to define. My goal in this blog is to firstly attempt to come to a definition and then figure out what exactly a season of foolishness is and how the hell to get out of it. 

I've spent the past month trying to determine exactly what Psalm 107:17-18 is talking about when it says: "Some became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities. They loathed all food and drew near the gates of death." What season is it in our lives that brings us to the point where we may be considered "fools"? What exactly does that look like?

Dictionary.com defines a fool as "a person who acts unwisely or imprudently; a silly person." At some point in our lives, often at multiple points, we all act unwisely. We do something or make a decision that could be considered "foolish".  

I believe the key to foolishness is that we know better. We are a fool when we know what is right but we CHOOSE wrong. We rebel. The crazy part is that for a time foolishness is fun. After all for a time it is great to be a silly person. Being "bad" feels good for a little while, but then it turns against us. 

That very folly we enjoyed and even reveled in becomes a poison to our very being. It rots our innards and destroys our surroundings when we stay too long. 

So yes, first and foremost the season of foolishness is marked by rebellion. We rebel against God, authority figures and the choice we know to be wise. The reason foolishness is so difficult a season to reckon with is because we don't want to talk about our own rebellion. We don't want to admit that our grudges, our unforgiving natures even are a form of rebellion in and of themselves. 

"Unfortunately, some of our greatest tribulations are the result of our own foolishness and weakness and occur because of our own carelessness or transgression." -James E. Faust

Sometimes rebellion/foolishness doesn't look like what we think. Notice I mentioned unforgiving natures in that last paragraph. When someone does us wrong, I mean really betrays our trust, it feels good to hold a grudge. It feels RIGHT even. However, holding a grudge is just plain wrong. It sounds cliche, but anytime we don't forgive someone it doesn't really hurt them so much, it hurts us. It causes bitterness. 

And I know bitterness. I fight it everyday. If we're honest with ourselves, we all do. Why? Because forgiveness is hard. It's hard to receive and give it, but that's the Gospel. Receiving and giving forgiveness even when it's not deserved. 

So how do we get out of the cycle of foolishness? 

We find the answer in the rest of the verses from Psalms 107:

"Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He sent out his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave. Let them give thank to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind. Let them sacrifice thank offerings and tell of his works with songs of joy."

Did you catch it? 

Surrender. 

All that anger, all the pain, our need for approval, our disappointment and any other reason for our rebellion...We have to surrender it. Lay it down and cry out for help. 

Is it hard? Hells yes it is. But that's what makes it surrender. That's what make genuine Christian living hard: We have to choose to lay ourselves down. 

Blessings, peace, grace and mercy to each of you
Barbara

The Long Ride Home

Three years ago if you had asked me what my dream was I would have said it was to some day have my own parish and serve as lead pastor. 

Today I realize exactly why it is so vital to trust God's plans over ours. 

Surrender has always been difficult for me. Although I believe in a God that moves mountains the size of continents just cause He can, I find it challenging to let go of my need for control. Yes, I am a self-diagnosed control freak. I am also an obsessive planner. I had my whole life planned at fifteen. (That was not a joke or an over exaggeration.) 

So when God says, "Lay your cares on me" I have learned to listen. 

Today I realize that God knew, better than I, that to be an indentured servant of a dysfunctional system would break my spirit and leave me emptied and bitter. 

I pondered all of this on my drive home from work today. 

I thought of how my radical Jesus came to a time where oppression was the norm and legalism had reached new heights. He came to a time where holiness was reached by being perfect on the outside and performing all the right deeds precisely as directed. 

My crazy, beautiful Jesus came to a cookie cutter religion and blew it out of the water. 

I could count on one hand the number of times its recording in the New Testament that Jesus taught within the synagogue walls. 

He showed that relationship with God very rarely happens within the walls of a designated place. More often we encounter God at the dinner table, the graveyard, the hillside or while we walk down the road. 

Not only this, but He looked at Peter (a fisherman with a tendency to put his foot in his mouth when he spoke turned disciple who still had a slight tendency to not be so tactful) and said to him "On this rock, I will build my church." (Matthew 16:18) 

He looked at a synagogue (the church of that day) and prophesied that it would be destroyed. (Which it was.)

Fast forward approximately 2,000 years. 

Now we have tried to shove Him back in a building. We've declared church is not church unless it takes place in the walls. 

And worse: We've declared that Christian is not Christian unless within the walls each Sunday morning and Wednesday evening. 

We've lost sight of the crazy, beautiful heart of Jesus. That wild One who was wholly God and wholly man who ate with thieves, made disciples out of fisherman and tax collectors and showed that God loves prostitutes where others would judge them. 

This is not me attacking the Church. 

This is me attacking the lie that the Church has bought into.

The lie that everything has to be done exactly as we say or it's wrong and ungodly. Sound familiar? We've made ourselves beautiful Pharisees and given up our true beauty as the reflection of a loving, powerful, redeeming God. 

The hardest true is this: before we can lift up the true image we're meant to bear, we first must break down the lies that have corrupted it. 

How?

I haven't the slightest. But I know it starts with surrendering our need for perfection and control so that we can be remade into the the true Ekklesia. 

The Redefining : My Extended Sabbath

I have spent the last few months on an extended Sabbath, or sabbatical as some may call it.

Before leaving my home church, for quite some time, I had been in a place where I went to church out of obligation, not enjoyment. I was burnt out. It was something I held close to my heart, hiding from the people I loved and served.

I spent my entire childhood waiting to become an adult. Now, at 23, married and in full time ministry with a full time job on the side to make ends meet: my only thought was "This is it? This is what I've waited for?"

I think everyone comes to this moment in adulthood.

Please understand that this inner struggle was just that: inner. It was hidden. That is, right up until October. When October came it became clear to me that "this" was definitely not it for me. It became apparent that I was out of place in what had been my home.

When you lose your ministry, your home church and leave your denomination of nine years there are many emotions that come into play during the healing process.

And that's exactly what the first month was: healing, because if we're being honest I was down right broken inside. I had been angry for quite some time. Frustrated. It felt as though nine years and $40,000 in debt for my Bachelor's had come to nothing. I worked for years in the hope of making myself into an acceptable "Preacher Lady" within my denomination.

Only to find there was nothing about me that was acceptable.

I was too unconventional. Too outside of the box. I believed too differently on open handed subjects that were never meant to make the rifts that we allow them to within the Bride of Christ.

The second month was one of letting go.

I let go of the notion that nine years meant loyalty. I let go of a good portion of my anger (and have to pick up forgiveness every day) for the hurt that I've experienced in this process.

Now, in the third month, I realize what all of this has been for: a redefining.

The Spirit is redefining what "church" is to me, I believe in an effort to help me see what it's always been meant to be. Did you know the Greek word used by Jesus and all the New Testament writers when they spoke of The Church is a word that simply means a gathering of believers?

When we look up the word there is no mention whatsoever of a building or a steeple.

Yet when we go to other countries to be missionaries we "build churches"? Instead of teaching them to value themselves and one another as the body and bride of Christ, we teach them: you need a building to be valid.

Awesome.

Now we wonder why people in America don't want to hear what we have to say? Maybe because they recognize the false doctrine in that teaching. They realize when what they're hearing in a lie. Yes, even those not "saved" can recognize truth. To believe otherwise is foolish and ignores the fact that we are made in God's image. Even if a mirror is damaged, we still call it a mirror.

But more importantly, God is redefining my calling.

At 16 when He revealed to me that my calling was to be a pastor I was terrified. Not only did I hate speaking publicly, but I was awfully unpolished. However, as I have come to learn God chooses the unpolished to use. (Moses was a slow speaker, Peter had a habit of putting his foot in his mouth when he spoke, Paul persecuted Christians, many of the disciples had no education besides how to fish.)

Maybe to be a pastor there doesn't have to be a podium. (THANK GOD!)

Maybe it means, like it meant for Peter, to be a fisher of men.

Blessings,
B.

Sing Blessings in Darkness

I have written my salvation story many times. To those who will hear and read it, I pray God was able to use my story to help you in yours.

It is high time for the community of believers to start acting like a community by helping one another out. 

So here is an exert of my life:

I was not raised in church. 

This would probably explain a great deal of my not so traditional quirks. 

I was the last of three children and 8 years younger than my brother who came before me. So as you can imagine as a child I was quite spoiled. My father, who was born right after the depression, grew up poor. He always says, "I want you to have what I never could." 

When I was five years old the fragile damn that held my family together broke. My father (who was a retired marine - 28 years - who was used to no talking back) beat my brother so badly my mother barely recognized him in the morning. 

We left my father's house and spent the next 3 years living on peanut butter sandwiches, Ramon and macaroni and cheese. To say it was a difficult time would be an understatement. Each person in my family responded to the negative events in their own way. 

Being young and completely lost in the new paradigm of my broken family, I developed serious anxious and depression. 

But the worst was yet to come. 

Just when things seems to be restoring themselves (my parents remarried - after much redemptive work on God's part and a miracle) my mental and emotional state broke. I developed PTSD after losing too much too fast and having to grow up too quickly. 

At fourteen I was a depressed, self abusing girl who felt like my soul had fallen into a pit. I felt that no one could reach me. 

I still remember the first time my parents noticed the marks on my arm: they threatened to place me in a mental health facility if the behavior continued. 

I came to know Christ not because of an organization, but because Christ helped me to see and understand how much He loved me. He showed me in a moment sitting, bored out of my mind, in a church pew my mother forced me to sit in, that He loved me where I was. His love had always been there waiting for me to call out of my darkness to Him. 

So when I said in my video blogs this past week or so that I understand a dark night of the soul it was not pomp and circumstance. I know what it is to feel unloved. I know what it is to feel dead inside. To feel unreachable and alone. 

To those of you who have experienced depression or are in the midst of a bout of it: know that you do not walk those dark corridors alone.

The best lie that the Empire and the enemy can make us believe is that we are alone. If we are alone, we are easily defeated.

Always remember that where you walk, not only have brothers and sisters in the faith walked before you, but the God of all creation made Himself a man do that He could walk that road as well.

Christ meets us in the midst of our worst seasons of life and breaths life, light and restoration into us. I know that though everything we face Christ stands beside us waiting for us to call out to Him. He does not stand afar off. Scripture teaches us that the Spirit of God (Holy Spirit) is the one who comes along aside us. 

God never leaves us alone in the wilderness. He teaches us that He will sustain us always.

God never leaves us alone in the storm. Instead He given us the peace to withstand it.  

God never leaves us alone in the darkness. He lets us know, He is the light and warmth in our cold loneliness. 

So regardless of what season you may be facing, always remember the God who is with us. The God who meets His people where they are instead of waiting for them to get better. No, He wants us even at our worst. He loves us unconditionally.

"We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life." (‭1 John‬ ‭5‬:‭9-12‬ NIV)

So when the darkness comes, sing blessings. Because as a beautiful soul (Mandisa) said as a concert I attended recently: "When you choose to bless the Lord in the middle of your darkness, the people around you listen." Also, "When we worship in our pain, God doesn't just set us free, He sets others around us free."

Don't just be a worshipper that blesses the Lord: Be a worshipper who does not depend on circumstance to worship, but who worships when it makes no sense and who's worship sets others free.

Because in the end, that's what we all truly desire and need: to love, be loved and experience true freedom.

Blessings,
B. 

The Heart of the Matter: A Call Back to What Matters for the Church

This will be a blog which is not derived from a sermon, but may very well one day become something I preach. Consider it more of a soap box. 

Recent events have helped me to realize why many people reject Jeuss because of what has become of the message of many churches. We have taken the simple doctrine of Christ and gone all Pharisee on it. 

In more intelligent terms: The past few centuries we have devoted our efforts to finding the "perfect" doctrine. In the place of disciple and the true ministry of bringing the love of Christ to the masses we have taken to arguing over who is more "right." 

But wait: the ripple effect gets worse. 

Not only have we wasted a great deal of time which could have used loving people squabbling over low priority items, we have taken it another step too far. We now call shaming people "evangelism." We think we can scare them into the arms of God. We use every verse we can to twist our message to make it sound like truth. 

The fact of the matter is that we find it more important to point out the wrongs of people than to tell them that God loves them. We are afraid to admit the truth that God loves them so deeply that His love is unaffected by our actions. 

When I first became a Christian, the kind of doctrine which I was initially introduced to was very conservative and dogmatic. Please do not misunderstand me, these were beautiful, loving people. To this day I adore them. As a result of this being the circumstance I found myself in as a young Christian, I held to these doctrines.

As I grew closer to God however questions began to rise that I did not dare voice to anyone except God in prayer. (Even then they were often never spoken, only thought in passing.) 

Does God really hate gay people? If so, is that ok?
How does God feel about guns? (I live in the south.)
The cuss words today were not the cuss words of Christ's time, so what makes them so bad? I mean you call someone a cookie in the right tone of voice and it can sound like a curse. 

To be clear: this is NOT an us and them issue. Every single one of us is guilty of getting our rocks off by pointing out the wrong in others. After all, so long as they are more wrong than us we are justified and right. 

The sad truth is that this heresy most certainly began because someone felt the need to be righteous and holy so deeply that they made it their personal campaign to spread that message. So now it is more important to "seem" righteous than to actually be righteous. It is more valued to be justified that to actually be free from the bondage of sin. Righteousness has trumped love. 

We have forgotten that if we do not have love, then we have nothing. 

To bring all of this down to a more personal space. 

During college I worked at a local sports bar called Buffalo Wild Wings. At this place I found so many people I fell in love with. Beautiful souls. Many of them did not hold to my beliefs. But I loved them regardless. 

Some were gay, all drank (many to excess), some did drugs and I loved them dearly.

Before being saved I was bisexual. To this day I cuss. I drink regularly. My bread cabinet is full of prescription drugs. 

For the first time all these questions I had came to have faces. I found my answers in those faces. It's very simple:

Regardless of your social status, opinion on drinking/drugs, and sexuality: God love us. Nothing we ever do will change that. He will always love us as much as He ever has. We are the apple of His eye and His treasure. 

It's not up to the Church to decide what anyone's sexuality/amount they drink/if pot is ok, or not. The Church is meant to let everyone know that Gof loves them and Christ came to prove it and changed the world for it.