Burn The Ships
It was during the visit of a certain "conference" preacher that did deliverance ministry. Some of you may know him. I've had conversations about this minister with people at NLQ. His big schtick was his portion of the sermon where he would manipulation his fingers into a "W" shape and go "WOW MOM!" to illustrate some long forgotten point. I remember thinking even then that this minister had taken a few too many tackles to his brain during his years playing and coaching local football.
I'd ended up during another visit of this deliverance minister being the one crying crouched behind the trash can. At the time it never dawned on me that these deliverance ministers are two-note Johnnys who routinely manipulate using a handful of standard responses. In a crowd of people amped up, believing that this person has a pipeline to God, flawed and broken themselves seeking answers it is simply too easy to fall for the generic standard replies of these guys.
When I left that church for the biggest mainstream one in six counties that operates under a very methodical way I had hoped that I'd found a better place. A spiritual home without the constant drama that the fundamentalist church seemed steeped in. I knew I was trading the excitement and the emotional atmosphere for something more sedate, calming even.
But after serving under a pile of worship team leaders, seeing ministers come and go, programs and theology fall in and out of favor I realized that I'd just traded one pile of posturing people for another. Once I started to service in administrative ways it was obvious this place and these people had way too much in common with the old place, and evangelists like that football coach deliverance minister. By the time we left and moved to Costa Rica I'd started to really hate it, but was stuck running the counting teams for the offering. A huge undertaking every single weekend, replete with people yelling and complaining and everything else. I spent more hours during the week trying to straight out the count, and it could be six hours on Sunday if I had to fill in and count.
Coming to Costa Rica was so good on the spiritual side. I attended sporadically the local Catholic church in Spanish by a priest from Tanzania. It was good hearing him because his Spanish was slow, as slow as my hearing and I was able to parse out what he was saying. He also spoke English. I attended when I felt the need, at least right up until the church burned to the ground one night. Strange night. The church was next door to the guesthouse we were living in, and Jim and I had to flee the place in the middle of the night with our passports and wallets.
So this happened. A few months later we landed here on the Gold Coast of Costa Rica. Jim started attending a local nondenominational church. I didn't for one really long time. For six months I sat on the sidelines, literally burned out by church. Eventually I started attending with Jim, just to keep the household peace. I no longer was drinking the koolaid, and through the years my belief system has changed, radically so.
And now here we are, three years after our move. I'd settled into the church, and I'm on worship team. I have no problem with anyone on the team. As every other place I've been worship team is it's own weird little family.
But I'm thinking again about chucking church. Why? Well, it's got the same sorts of folks and situations that the big mainstream church and the Quiverfull one I attended years ago. I can feel burnout starting to happen at this early state even if I am only participating in worship team. I don't go to Sunday school, or womens anything. No extra curricular activities at all. I have a few good friends I've made there.
But I've seen what my friend was taking about the other day, those that try to use others seem to be in abundance there. It's a shame, I like the pastor and his wife, but think that the place isn't well served by being nondenominational and by the people going that keep trying to force everything to go their way, and get offended when it doesn't.
I've tried talking to the pastor about it, but he is oblivious. Yet he's puzzled by things like the lack of participation in programs and the ebb and flow of members. It's the users driving most of it. I refuse to get sucked in again. Nothing is worth that. So I'm going to try just to disengage as much as possible.
One thing this COVID time has taught me. I don't miss church. I got to see who on my social media was horribly racist and a laundry list of other things. I've burned that ship and I'm not looking back.
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