I'm going to open this post with an apology: Sometimes, when I blog, I get scattered. I delve deep, and open so many threads that it will be pages and hours later before the thing is resolved. So I save a draft, which is the worst possible thing to do at that moment. I am a person of momentary perspective; if I leave it alone for a few hours I will come back to it with a plethora of new angles and thoughts-on-the-matter, and will have abandoned the former(s) with shallow disinterest. As a result, posts that are the product of multiple writing sessions are often hopelessly scattered, with thoughts running off to thousands of inaccessable corners, threads that will likely never be recovered or laid to rest respectably. This, I admit, is one such post. And I'm far too lazy to attempt to right all the injustices I've done to it... I'm already turning it into a saga series, since I'm sure you didn't link here to read my first novel in one painful sitting. In this post, you're going to get a lot of background info, and very little of imminence. In Part 2, I plan on coming back to the current events that sparked this whole rant in the first place. If you see any glaring inconsistencies, let me know, and I'll muster up an edit, but otherwise, sit tight... and hang on for the exciting conclusion. Thanks for bearing with me!~Kelly~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Lord works in mysterious ways... so I've always been told. Either that or He really enjoys plot twists.
My life of late has become great fodder for this debate, as several conversations and random events have led me to the brink of something I never thought I'd ever be considering - church membership.
The story behind my membership misgivings is a long one; is, in fact, a legacy passed down to me by my parents. My dear parents, whom I love, who have convictions of their own, have shaped my life and my opinions by the way that they've acted out of these convictions; it's a story I barely remember but that has been retold to me enough times that I now regurgitate it myself as proof.
When I was in grade 3, my family moved. No, no, none of that "say goodbye to your friends" crap... we moved about 4 miles up the road, and officially into the hamlet of Silverton, which is so small that it's usually not even worth mentioning, for those of you who have at some point recieved the
short answer to the question, "where are you from?".... "Russell."
Silverton
is, however, of note in this story, as it was the location of the small United Church that my parents and I attended, along with our grandparents, aunt, uncles, and cousins, and maybe 2 dozen (if we're being generous) others from the area who have known my dad and the Cochrane clan since the beginning of time. When we moved 4 miles up the road (or
down the road, as it was 4 miles south and I'm sure one of my stickler sisters will correct me on that if I don't clarify - nerdy farm kids...), we suddenly found ourselves within walking distance of the Silverton United Church, as well as our entire extended family, the Silverton Hall, and several other things that sound cooler than they really are.
Then, I remember that, for some inexplicable reason, we stopped attending Silverton United Church, and soon found ourselves attending Russell Alliance Church, a change which I at first resisted for childish, grade-3-like reasons. I remember accusing, whining at my mom that "why are we switching churches
now, when we can
finally walk to the United Church?" I think I whole-heartedly believed that proximity was equivalent to God-ordained destiny, or something ridiculous like that. I was an idealistic child.
(The move to Russell Alliance Church, ironically, may very well
have been God-ordained destiny, as it would become the church where my spiritual life and faith would flourish, where I would make some of the best and closest friends of my school years and, dare I say, my life.)
The reasons for our United Church exodus were always a blank in my mind, filled in by others, usually my older sister. She's told me the story many times of the strong, conviction-filled sermon that Sarah Bezan's father preached, and how the Kaminskis, the Bezans, and we Cochranes all left the United Church at the same time in search of a new home (I think this all happened in the Russell branch of the United Church...) The issues? The United Church had started to falter out in terms of conviction and sticking to their guns and were making all sorts of convenient and wishy-washy concessions, such as approving and
ordaining women and eventually even homosexual pastors.
(Hey ladies: no burn on you intended. I am a woman who loves my fellow womankind and ministry both. It is difficult, however, to make a solid case theologically for ordaining women as pastors, as many of us have discovered as we've perused our Bibles in bewilderment. Many churches share this bewilderment, and have come to a variety of conclusions about the matter. However, the type of church that can convince itself that there is
no controversy or objection to be found in making a case for women pastors often becomes the type of church that will find it easy to make the Bible say
whatever it wishes to read, as the United Church so aptly demonstrates.)
When we came to the Alliance Church, we began to flourish, each in our own right, as followers of Christ. We were raised in
Awana, which is where I first learned to absorb and regurgitate Scripture at an alarmingly adaptive rate (let's just say we weren't the type of family who learned our verses as a family, at home, over the week. We were the kids who showed up at Awana 10 minutes late, fresh from the Angusville Skating Rink and our figure-skating lessons, with toque-hair, no uniforms, no books, and no progress made in whatever "homework" our leaders may have, in vain, assigned us. Yeah, sorry, we were
those kids. Explains a lot, doesn't it?)
In junior high, I joined a new program Russell Alliance was piloting, called
Bible Quizzing, which turned out to be one of the best choices I've made so far in life. Besides the wealth of Scripture I now know by heart, word-for-word, and the rich biblical context my quizzing experience of 6 years gave me, quizzing truly allowed me to come alive in my faith. I think it's probably the first community where I ever was given permission to be a full participant in the body of Christ, and not "just a kid". For those of you who have never experienced the context of a CMD Quiz Meet, imagine driving hours to a city center in Saskatchewan to find yourself engulfed for a full, intensive weekend with a church body made up entirely of students, hundreds of them, who wield the Word as a weapon, who are full of that youthful passion and newness of faith that older Christians envy and long for, who come together, despite many differences, to compete and sharpen one another. "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." (Proverbs 27:17) This is the essence of Bible Quizzing.
In high school I was a faithful attendee of our youth group, and served on the youth executive. I sang with the youth worship team, I participated in the school's lunchtime prayer meeting, and our family was very much a part of the life of the Russell Alliance. Yet my parents were unwilling to give their names, their word, in membership. They told me that they did not want to give themselves in membership only revoke it again later, should necessity command it. They fully hoped and expected that Russell Alliance would acknowledge them for who they truly were and all that they gave, and for the most part, it was so. My dad camps out almost weekly in the sound booth, running the boards and such, and my mother's extensive cooking and catering knowledge has pulled off countless critical church functions, including, this very weekend, Russell's home quiz meet at which approximately 450 quizzers, coaches, and officials are attempting eat the good people of Russell out of house and home.
My parents are fantastic people. They love Jesus. They are on a journey. And they are growing. Their attitudes, however, towards church membership served to leave me with an inherited chip on my shoulder, and the sense that perhaps my church could not, should not, be pledged my allegiance, perhaps my church could not, would not, always and forever hold up the gospel, the unadulterated truth, and as such perhaps should not, could not be counted on.
It is a truth, which I have lately come to realize, that the church and I are inextricable. Attempts on my behalf to deny, to subvert that truth, become small rebellions within my soul, and wage war on my relationship with Christ, who loved the mess we call the Church, stood up for it the schoolyard, took a bullet (and a flogging, and a cross, and the excruciating weight of Eternity) for it, loved it so unreservedly, with all its warts, so much that He has married it, for all of eternity, in attempts to make an honest woman of it.
No. My church and
the Church are not the same; one is part of the other. My arm and my body are not the same; one is part of the other. But, as Paul writes, if my quizzer's memory serves:
Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. - 1 Corinthians 12:14-20
If I say, "I am doubtful and mistrustful of the church," I do not for that reason cease to be a member (I am speaking as a Christian here.) We are members. We are members of Christ! When we shun and hold at an arms length the congregations in which we find ourselves, we do the body a disservice. We tell our own mouth, our voice that we do not need it, and the hand we find extended that we'd rather not. And it is such
vain resistance; we're kicking our
own can in the end.
This is
not a command to church membership; church membership is a convention. It is little more than an admission of the incredibly obvious; that we as Christians and church-goers, are members of the body of Christ. This is, however, a wake-up call to the painfully obvious, for those of us who have not thrown our ears away.