Come In and Go Out.

So more people leave our church. I have a gift. It’s obvious. I can’t hold people in a community. Sometimes I feel it is my fault. Sometimes I actually wonder if I should throw in the towel and let the church get a real pastor. Then, sometimes, when I’m feeling less insecure, I realize that when people gather on their own volition there are no guarantees about stability. Just today I was talking with one of our community. She was wondering if there’s some kind of spirit in our church that’s been here ever since the split back in 1997… that somehow our body got a spirit of division, like HIV… always there waiting to manifest itself when the body is weak. These “spirits” we talk about, in my opinion, can be chalked up to character issues in our own hearts and minds.

I realize too that I don’t help matters. I mean if I were had a charismatic personality, was a motivational speaker, kept the ship running tightly, was orthodox, held to traditional morality and adhered to the middle road of evangelical conservativism… you know: like a regular pastor, then we’d probably hold our ground and even grow.

But… I was called an anomaly again just yesterday. Because I’m unwilling to pretend to be something I’m not. Thing is, I respect this same sentiment in others. Now THAT’S a huge problem. But doesn’t this have something to do with love… the love I live in and am given, and the love I give? I can’t see it any other way. We are free to come and go. We are free to go in and come out and find pasture. But I miss every one of them that go.

Anybody contributions to my blog today (through paypal or “buy me a beer” at the bottom of this post) are going toward me getting a FLIP video recorder. I would like to start posting the odd video on my blog in the near future. So far I’m about a third of the way there. Thanks!