When did I become such a boring blob?
Seriously, I know I’m 30 now and I’m supposed to be all grown up, but I feel like all I do is work, sleep, eat and veg out. Then when I do get a day off, I spend it in an uneasy stupor – worried that I’m going to waste the day and not achieve anything, but too apathetic to do anything about it. Is this the life that people work for? If so, it’s rather underwhelming, to be honest.
“Ahh,” a sage, Godly mentor, fresh from a neatly structured Daily Bread-guided quiet time may remark, “You need to get back to basics. Get on your knees before the Lord. If you’re too busy for God, then you’re too busy. You need to give it over to Him. He deserves your first-fruits, not the dregs left over. The very least he requires…”
“No shit,” I would interrupt sarcastically. “Believe me, there’s nothing I would love more right now than a little Godly guidance. But I just can’t do it by myself, and as far as I know, the Godly Guidance franchise hasn’t set up a shop in Launceston yet. Fuck knows I’ve looked for it.”
“Ahh,” the all-knowing, been-there-done-that-bought-the-t-shirt sinner-turned-prayer-warrior might reply, “The church is the people, not the building. And people aren’t perfect. That’s why you’ll never find a perfect church. And if you do, then as soon as you join, it won’t be perfect any more. If we were perfect, then Christ wouldn’t have had to…”
“Look, Captain Cliché, if I’d wanted your opinion, then I’d have asked for it, okay? Shouldn’t you be off somewhere writing your sermon for this Sunday? I don’t want a perfect church. I just want somewhere I can go and connect with God. Is that really too much to ask? Isn’t that what church is supposed to be about, after all? I don’t give a toss if there’s a hip-happening music team, or a funky Powerpoint display to go along with the bite-sized easily digestible dot point sermon, or if the pastor has a trendy jacket and ‘goes the extra mile’ for his flock. I just want pure, undiluted God. I need him to renovate my heart before it crusts over any more than it already has.”
“Ahh…”
“If you say ‘ahh’ one more time, I’m gonna go all dentist on your ass and rip your teeth out.”
So yeah, I’d love to find somewhere where I could regularly meet with God and hear what he has to say to me, but I seriously doubt such a place exists. And when I go looking for it, I end up having conversations like that one and unintentionally offending people. Or intentionally offending them, if they’re super annoying. I have to amuse myself somehow, you know.
Connecting with God is so hit-and-miss. Sometimes, when I’m not looking for it, it smacks me in the face. And other times, when I’ve especially set aside time with a cup of tea in a comfortable spot, ready for the long haul, then all that comes into my head is shit – like what I watched on TV last night, or a conversation I had with someone, or what pointless activity I’m going to attempt on my day off. There is no formula. Which is a good thing – I don’t want to be able to control it.
Or maybe I do. I dunno. Maybe that’s the problem.
Showing posts with label Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Church. Show all posts
Friday, October 02, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Doug Brown
A few months ago now, right at the start of my 100 churches experiment, I went along to a church that up until now, I’d forgotten to mention.
Feeling a bit overwhelmed knowing that I had nearly one hundred to choose from, I opted for the tried and true method of opening Saturday’s paper, closing my eyes and praying for guidance while my finger hovered indecisively over the page. Pause for effect, then BANG! Bring it down emphatically, confident that whatever I landed on would be the Lord’s will for me that day. Tentatively opening one eye, I discovered that I would be attending… “Sea Breeze Holiday Cabins. Self Cont. family accom. Best $ value. Enq. about our special 4 day package.”
I eventually decided to attend The Baptist Church in the Same Suburb As My Favourite Thai Restaurant (“you like Thai?” “Sure! You like shirt?”) For a while I was enjoying feeling rather independent and aloof at the thought of marching into a strange church alone – so I pretended not to feel relief when I receive a text from R, wondering if I would be starting my pointless spiritual expedition that Sunday, and if so, could she come too? With an hour to kill before the service started, I managed to ply another friend, C, over Facebook chat with promises of fun and fellowship. And chocolate. And when that didn’t work, I teased her about a guy at her church who was preaching that night, who is just a little bit in love with her, and would most likely be scanning the audience for her supportive, reassuring, ‘could-be-my-future-wife-if-it’s-the-Lord’s-will’ face. That one did the trick.
Taking our places in the customary Second From The Back Pew For Uncertain Visitors Who May Wish To Make A Quick Getaway But Don’t Want To Appear Too Reluctant By Sitting In The Very Back Row, R announced that she had brought a book along “in case it got boring”. What a great idea! (Note to self: next time, take a book.) After much nervous a-hemming, the 30-something male worship leader joyfully informed us that this was the contemporary service, and in the contemporary service, almost anything could happen. It was a bit unpredictable like that. A bit zany. A little bit wacky. So hold onto your seats, people – it could be a wild ride! I glanced over at pretty much the only other people there – some tartan-clad elderly folk perched in the front row. Were they prepared for this uncertainty? I hoped they’d be okay.
First there was an item – an earnest “Jesus Is My Boyfriend” type ballad by the aforementioned leader. You could see that his heart was in the right place. Unfortunately, you could hear that his pitch… wasn’t. I glanced across at R. She had opened her book already. We’d been seated for a whole five minutes. C glanced at me, leaned over and whispered, “So what was that you said about chocolate earlier?”
After the usual bunch of Hillsong ballads followed by the ten minute guilt trip that we’ve all come to know and love as “taking up the tithes and offerings”, we were told that there was a special guest speaker tonight, Mr Doug Brown. He was introduced as an “itinerant speaker from Launceston” – surely a contradiction in terms. Oh well, I thought, there’s gotta be at least one good speaker in Launceston, right? And surely if this guy is farming himself out to various churches, he must be kind of in demand, which means he might just know what he’s talking about… right? Right?
Wrong. The guy was a tool. Not so much in the clap trap he was spouting (it was all same-old, same-old really), but in the way he delivered it. He was just oozing this vibe: “I am very wise and learned. You minions could do well to listen to the precious pearls flowing forth from my golden gob. I am the Lord’s anointed vessel. Pay heed! Turn ye, and repent! Forsooth!” He gave me the creeps. Seriously. I could not WAIT to leave. My skin was crawling.
The second the service finished, at the first available moment, all three of us leapt to our feet and made for the exit. To our surprise, the pastor, who had been up the front about three seconds earlier, was somehow waiting at the door to shake our hand. I swear there’s some sort of wormhole that pastors use between the front of the church and the main exit – “quick! They’re getting awaaaay!” Anyway, the pastor seemed harmless enough. I was just glad to be out of there. Glad that I’d never have to hear Doug Brown, Itinerant Speaker, ever again.
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So, anyhoo, (anyhoo? What am I, fifty?) I was at Thump Plate a few weeks after that, just before I buggered off for good. I was there because I had said I would play piano. With the first half of my duties over, there was only the last ‘wake us up before we go-go’ song left to play after the sermon. Good. Only half an hour to wait. That’s not so bad, I thought. I’ll just sit up the back in the sun, and listen to this visiting speaker, Mr… Mr…
Mr Doug Brown.
Hmm. The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t figure out where I knew it from. It wasn’t until he started his spiel that I suddenly remembered. AAARGH! THIS GUY AGAIN! NOOOOOoooooooo…
So, completely against my will, I sat through another round of Doug Brown’s utter tripe. I couldn’t go anywhere, because I could be called upon to play piano at any point. I wanted to punch him by the end of the ordeal. He was, if possible, even more smarmy and self-righteous than the first time I’d had the misfortune to hear him. When he finally shut the hell up, I felt unclean. I couldn’t believe I’d had to go through all that again. Thank goodness it was over.
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Last Sunday, even though I’d all but given up on my experiment out of frustration and boredom, a couple of friends of mine who are currently looking for a church to join decided it was high time I had another dose too. Fair enough then, I thought – surely it couldn’t hurt. After all, it had been a while.
So off I went, this time to The Church Across from Chickenfeed. As I drove along the road to find a parking spot, I noticed about fifteen people milling around outside Chickenfeed’s front doors, hunched over with their coats over their heads for warmth, looking downcast. The sight puzzled me at first. But it soon became obvious why they were there when an efficient-looking girl in a sensible red shirt brusquely opened the sliding doors to the store, and they all shuffled in like sheep to the shearing shed. I was highly amused. I mean, I’d heard of people lining up for concerts and such, but to join a queue on a Sunday morning so that you wouldn’t miss out on a two dollar packet of wooden pegs, or an 80s B-side compilation CD was just ridiculous. What amused me even more was that Ms Efficient didn’t even seem surprised. Was this a regular occurrence on a Sunday morning? Or any other morning for that matter? Ha ha.
I made it into my seat without being sullied by any handsy old men or women – bonus points. I liked the place already. The seats were a little too ‘economy class’ for my liking though – I practically had a mouthful of my own knees, so I dread to think what it was like for the 6 foot 7 guy next to me. I glanced around. Things looked pretty normal. Enthusiastic congregation of various ages and races – check. Vibrant music team, comprising of at least one woman with a Darlene Zschech outfit and matching haircut – check. Involving the ‘yoof’ in something minor enough that it doesn’t matter if they bugger it up (in this case, auxiliary percussion) – check. Drummer who does not possess the ability to play in a six-eight time signature – check. (Or a four-four time signature for that matter. Someone get that guy off the cross-beat before I go insane).
About halfway through the first song, a man rushed from the back of the room, pushing urgently past some bopping punters, clutching a giant bouquet of flowers above his head for fear of them being crushed in the throng. Dashing towards a table at the front of the room, he placed the flowers carefully in an awaiting vase, stood back to view his handiwork, and relaxed his shoulders in relief. I couldn’t help laughing. Double points for effort, flower guy! He obviously took his arm of the ministry very seriously. You could almost sense him hoping that he wouldn’t be marked down for tardiness. Who knows, a giant, gaudy bunch of flowers could be the difference between salvation or otherwise for someone there that morning. That someone, however, was not me. Flowers, schmowers.
After standing for what I felt was a socially acceptable length of time, I hunched back into my seat and locked myself in the shampoo position to read the newsletter. It was your usual border-art-ridden affair, but something in particular caught my eye. On the back page was the usual hall of fame that you find on the back of most church newsletters – a regular ‘who’s who’ of the congregation. Right there, listed as one of the church’s elders, was none other than – you guessed it – Mr Doug Brown.
My eyes widened. I looked up to the front row of the church, where the leadership always sit. There he was, looking smug. I flipped to the front page of the newsletter. And there, in black and white: “speaking today: Mr Doug Brown”.
I could not get out of there fast enough.
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What is WITH this guy?! I just can’t seem to shake him! I’m starting to wonder if I’m being punished for some unforgivable sin. Hell = me, in a car full of rattles and wasps, being preached at by Doug Brown. Forever. I feel like grabbing the people who have been inviting this guy to preach, shaking them and saying, “What are you DOING? Have you even HEARD this guy?”
Argh. I don’t think I can continue with my experiment. It’s really getting me down. Not just because the church community seems to have been taken over by Mr Unctuous, either. I just can’t take any of them seriously any more. I darken the door of a church, and suddenly the most cynical, negative parts of me take it as their signal to come out and play. I find myself either thinking or saying rude things to perfectly nice people. I can’t help analysing everything around me. Every service is like my own private Groundhog Day. And I don’t think it’s hurting my relationship with God, but I doubt it’s doing it any favours either.
I give up.
Feeling a bit overwhelmed knowing that I had nearly one hundred to choose from, I opted for the tried and true method of opening Saturday’s paper, closing my eyes and praying for guidance while my finger hovered indecisively over the page. Pause for effect, then BANG! Bring it down emphatically, confident that whatever I landed on would be the Lord’s will for me that day. Tentatively opening one eye, I discovered that I would be attending… “Sea Breeze Holiday Cabins. Self Cont. family accom. Best $ value. Enq. about our special 4 day package.”
I eventually decided to attend The Baptist Church in the Same Suburb As My Favourite Thai Restaurant (“you like Thai?” “Sure! You like shirt?”) For a while I was enjoying feeling rather independent and aloof at the thought of marching into a strange church alone – so I pretended not to feel relief when I receive a text from R, wondering if I would be starting my pointless spiritual expedition that Sunday, and if so, could she come too? With an hour to kill before the service started, I managed to ply another friend, C, over Facebook chat with promises of fun and fellowship. And chocolate. And when that didn’t work, I teased her about a guy at her church who was preaching that night, who is just a little bit in love with her, and would most likely be scanning the audience for her supportive, reassuring, ‘could-be-my-future-wife-if-it’s-the-Lord’s-will’ face. That one did the trick.
Taking our places in the customary Second From The Back Pew For Uncertain Visitors Who May Wish To Make A Quick Getaway But Don’t Want To Appear Too Reluctant By Sitting In The Very Back Row, R announced that she had brought a book along “in case it got boring”. What a great idea! (Note to self: next time, take a book.) After much nervous a-hemming, the 30-something male worship leader joyfully informed us that this was the contemporary service, and in the contemporary service, almost anything could happen. It was a bit unpredictable like that. A bit zany. A little bit wacky. So hold onto your seats, people – it could be a wild ride! I glanced over at pretty much the only other people there – some tartan-clad elderly folk perched in the front row. Were they prepared for this uncertainty? I hoped they’d be okay.
First there was an item – an earnest “Jesus Is My Boyfriend” type ballad by the aforementioned leader. You could see that his heart was in the right place. Unfortunately, you could hear that his pitch… wasn’t. I glanced across at R. She had opened her book already. We’d been seated for a whole five minutes. C glanced at me, leaned over and whispered, “So what was that you said about chocolate earlier?”
After the usual bunch of Hillsong ballads followed by the ten minute guilt trip that we’ve all come to know and love as “taking up the tithes and offerings”, we were told that there was a special guest speaker tonight, Mr Doug Brown. He was introduced as an “itinerant speaker from Launceston” – surely a contradiction in terms. Oh well, I thought, there’s gotta be at least one good speaker in Launceston, right? And surely if this guy is farming himself out to various churches, he must be kind of in demand, which means he might just know what he’s talking about… right? Right?
Wrong. The guy was a tool. Not so much in the clap trap he was spouting (it was all same-old, same-old really), but in the way he delivered it. He was just oozing this vibe: “I am very wise and learned. You minions could do well to listen to the precious pearls flowing forth from my golden gob. I am the Lord’s anointed vessel. Pay heed! Turn ye, and repent! Forsooth!” He gave me the creeps. Seriously. I could not WAIT to leave. My skin was crawling.
The second the service finished, at the first available moment, all three of us leapt to our feet and made for the exit. To our surprise, the pastor, who had been up the front about three seconds earlier, was somehow waiting at the door to shake our hand. I swear there’s some sort of wormhole that pastors use between the front of the church and the main exit – “quick! They’re getting awaaaay!” Anyway, the pastor seemed harmless enough. I was just glad to be out of there. Glad that I’d never have to hear Doug Brown, Itinerant Speaker, ever again.
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So, anyhoo, (anyhoo? What am I, fifty?) I was at Thump Plate a few weeks after that, just before I buggered off for good. I was there because I had said I would play piano. With the first half of my duties over, there was only the last ‘wake us up before we go-go’ song left to play after the sermon. Good. Only half an hour to wait. That’s not so bad, I thought. I’ll just sit up the back in the sun, and listen to this visiting speaker, Mr… Mr…
Mr Doug Brown.
Hmm. The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t figure out where I knew it from. It wasn’t until he started his spiel that I suddenly remembered. AAARGH! THIS GUY AGAIN! NOOOOOoooooooo…
So, completely against my will, I sat through another round of Doug Brown’s utter tripe. I couldn’t go anywhere, because I could be called upon to play piano at any point. I wanted to punch him by the end of the ordeal. He was, if possible, even more smarmy and self-righteous than the first time I’d had the misfortune to hear him. When he finally shut the hell up, I felt unclean. I couldn’t believe I’d had to go through all that again. Thank goodness it was over.
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Last Sunday, even though I’d all but given up on my experiment out of frustration and boredom, a couple of friends of mine who are currently looking for a church to join decided it was high time I had another dose too. Fair enough then, I thought – surely it couldn’t hurt. After all, it had been a while.
So off I went, this time to The Church Across from Chickenfeed. As I drove along the road to find a parking spot, I noticed about fifteen people milling around outside Chickenfeed’s front doors, hunched over with their coats over their heads for warmth, looking downcast. The sight puzzled me at first. But it soon became obvious why they were there when an efficient-looking girl in a sensible red shirt brusquely opened the sliding doors to the store, and they all shuffled in like sheep to the shearing shed. I was highly amused. I mean, I’d heard of people lining up for concerts and such, but to join a queue on a Sunday morning so that you wouldn’t miss out on a two dollar packet of wooden pegs, or an 80s B-side compilation CD was just ridiculous. What amused me even more was that Ms Efficient didn’t even seem surprised. Was this a regular occurrence on a Sunday morning? Or any other morning for that matter? Ha ha.
I made it into my seat without being sullied by any handsy old men or women – bonus points. I liked the place already. The seats were a little too ‘economy class’ for my liking though – I practically had a mouthful of my own knees, so I dread to think what it was like for the 6 foot 7 guy next to me. I glanced around. Things looked pretty normal. Enthusiastic congregation of various ages and races – check. Vibrant music team, comprising of at least one woman with a Darlene Zschech outfit and matching haircut – check. Involving the ‘yoof’ in something minor enough that it doesn’t matter if they bugger it up (in this case, auxiliary percussion) – check. Drummer who does not possess the ability to play in a six-eight time signature – check. (Or a four-four time signature for that matter. Someone get that guy off the cross-beat before I go insane).
About halfway through the first song, a man rushed from the back of the room, pushing urgently past some bopping punters, clutching a giant bouquet of flowers above his head for fear of them being crushed in the throng. Dashing towards a table at the front of the room, he placed the flowers carefully in an awaiting vase, stood back to view his handiwork, and relaxed his shoulders in relief. I couldn’t help laughing. Double points for effort, flower guy! He obviously took his arm of the ministry very seriously. You could almost sense him hoping that he wouldn’t be marked down for tardiness. Who knows, a giant, gaudy bunch of flowers could be the difference between salvation or otherwise for someone there that morning. That someone, however, was not me. Flowers, schmowers.
After standing for what I felt was a socially acceptable length of time, I hunched back into my seat and locked myself in the shampoo position to read the newsletter. It was your usual border-art-ridden affair, but something in particular caught my eye. On the back page was the usual hall of fame that you find on the back of most church newsletters – a regular ‘who’s who’ of the congregation. Right there, listed as one of the church’s elders, was none other than – you guessed it – Mr Doug Brown.
My eyes widened. I looked up to the front row of the church, where the leadership always sit. There he was, looking smug. I flipped to the front page of the newsletter. And there, in black and white: “speaking today: Mr Doug Brown”.
I could not get out of there fast enough.
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What is WITH this guy?! I just can’t seem to shake him! I’m starting to wonder if I’m being punished for some unforgivable sin. Hell = me, in a car full of rattles and wasps, being preached at by Doug Brown. Forever. I feel like grabbing the people who have been inviting this guy to preach, shaking them and saying, “What are you DOING? Have you even HEARD this guy?”
Argh. I don’t think I can continue with my experiment. It’s really getting me down. Not just because the church community seems to have been taken over by Mr Unctuous, either. I just can’t take any of them seriously any more. I darken the door of a church, and suddenly the most cynical, negative parts of me take it as their signal to come out and play. I find myself either thinking or saying rude things to perfectly nice people. I can’t help analysing everything around me. Every service is like my own private Groundhog Day. And I don’t think it’s hurting my relationship with God, but I doubt it’s doing it any favours either.
I give up.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Rhema
Warning: very long blog ahead. You might want to go and get a coffee, then make yourself comfortable. If you’re just popping in because you have a couple of minutes to spare, you might want to come back later. Or not. It’s totally up to you. I don’t mind either way. I probably wouldn’t want to read my crap either.
My friend Nick has a blog that I read fairly regularly. The topics he chooses to write about are interesting and varied, and sometimes he poses questions to his readers and asks for comments. Here is a question that he asked recently:
“I am very keen to hear what you think about God's voice. Have you ever had an experience of God speaking personally to you? How does He do it? What did He say? Have you ever heard people say ridiculous things in the name of God? What did they say and what did it make you think?”
Yes, I have had an experience of God speaking personally to me. A few, actually. I value those experiences a lot, and I hope I never forget a single one. Nick’s question is a good opportunity for me to reflect on some of those experiences, so I thought I may as well jot a few of them down while I was at it. Here they are, as best as I can remember, in rough chronological order.
I was seventeen years old, living in a total dive in Aileen Crescent, Burnie. Anyone who knows Burnie at all will know the flats I’m talking about – on the corner of Mount Street and Aileen Crescent – not the ones that have been painted white, but the ones with the vacant block of land in front of it. It looks like a block of apartments, and perhaps it is now, but when I lived there back in 1996 it was a bunch of smelly one-room bedsits with shared toilets, showers and laundry facilities, inhabited mainly by middle-aged alcoholic men. And me. I was the only girl. I’d recently dropped out of college so that I could work at McDonalds full time. I couldn’t survive on Austudy, and I was too young to have a license, so I couldn’t get to college anyway. Even when I turned 17, I didn’t have a car or anyone to teach me to drive. Working full time at McDonalds paid $160 a week. My bedsit cost $55 per week to rent.
The guy in the room next to mine was nice enough during the day when I passed him in the hallway, but of a night he would usually get drunk and watch western movies. I know this because the wall that my bed was against was the same wall that his TV was against on the other side. He would watch these movies until at least midnight. I’d be trying to sleep, and all I could hear was “POW-POW! Gallop-gallop-gallop-gallop… POW! POW-POW-POW!” Sometimes, if it was really loud, I’d knock on the wall. To begin with, he’d turn it down a bit. But after a while, he must’ve been tired of me ruining his fun, because he stopped caring. He wouldn’t turn it down. Instead, he’d yell “FUCK YOU!” back through the wall at me.
One night, it was pretty bad. I had to start work at 5:30 the next morning for an open shift. This meant getting up at around 4:30, because I had to factor in the half an hour that it took to walk to work. The guy’s TV was turned up louder than ever, and I’d already knocked and pleaded through the wall at him, to no avail. I had been a Christian for only a few weeks. I remember crying, and praying with all my heart that the guy would turn off his TV so that I could get some sleep. Suddenly, God spoke back to me. Audibly. I heard a loud voice speaking urgently in my ear – “GO!”
Confused, I replied, “What?” The voice spoke again, with even more urgency. “GO!!”
I wasn’t really sure what it meant, but obediently I got out of bed and went to my door. At exactly the same time, the guy in the next room got up and went to his door too. We met in the hallway. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but all sorts of words tearfully poured out as I explained to him that I had to work in a few hours, and I was sorry to ruin his fun, and I knew we all had to live in close proximity, but could he please turn his TV down so that I could get some sleep. He looked at me, stunned. “I am so sorry,” he replied, looking ashamed, “I had no idea. I’ll turn it down straight away. I’m really sorry”. He walked back into his room, and turned it down so low I couldn’t even hear it. For the remainder of my time there, I never had to ask him to turn it down again.
I had never heard God’s voice audibly before that night, and I don’t recall hearing that clearly since.
“He’s a Pharisee”
I was attending a church in Burnie, and I’d just become (rather forcibly) involved in the music team. I was at a practice one night, and I was watching the worship leader sing. Something about him rang alarm bells. He just didn’t seem genuine. At all. I really felt that the guy was hiding something, that he wasn’t being totally honest. I remember trying to shake the feeling, thinking “what would I know? I’m only a new Christian, and this guy is an elder in the church!” I told God I was sorry for thinking things like that about such an upstanding member of his kingdom.
“Why on earth would I be thinking things like that about this guy, God?” I asked.
“He’s a Pharisee!” he replied.
I was stunned! This wasn’t an audible voice like before, but rather a strong, resounding thought in my head. I knew it was God for two reasons. Firstly, it definitely wasn’t a thought I would have had myself. Secondly, it would not go away. It rang around and around in my mind, like the reverberation of a gong. I couldn’t make sense of the information. A Pharisee? What did he mean? Why would he have told me that? I didn’t know. But I knew it was true. The guy was a Pharisee. He was putting on an outward appearance to hide something. The inside of his heart did not match his actions.
About a week later, the guy in question got up in front of the congregation and admitted that he’d been having a six-month long affair with the wife of a friend of his, who also attended the church. He stepped down from eldership, and no longer sang on the music team. His marriage was eventually repaired, but the marriage of the other couple was completely ruined.
I’m still not sure why God felt the need to tell me that about him, but I think it was to help me to learn to trust my instincts, no matter how unlikely they might seem. It was definitely a skill that I’d need for the future.
“YES!”
Since leaving home in 1995, I hadn’t had much success with accommodation. I lived with a friend for six months, until she asked me to leave because she felt I was invading her space. Then I lived with my grandparents, but for various reasons that hadn’t worked out either. Then I lived in the bedsit on Aileen Crescent until I moved into a slightly nicer place with my cousin. My brand new shiny ‘full-on-for-the-Lord’ lifestyle (which I cringe about now, thanks for asking) was in constant conflict with her new-found lesbianism. To top it all off, my pregnant 15 year old sister was sleeping on a camp mattress in my bedroom, for lack of anywhere else to live. I guess it was a recipe for disaster, but whatever the reason, my sister got up in the middle of the night to empty her pregnant bladder, and came face to face with my cousin, standing at my bedroom door with a knife, trying to gather up the courage to come in and stab me with it. So I figured it was time to move out of there, even though I knew in my heart I should stay put. I was offered temporary board with a lady I worked with. I moved in, but it soon became obvious that her and her husband were used to their own space, and tension started to build there too.
I was a bit of a broken mess by this time, without a skerrick of self confidence or trust left in me. It was then that I met a couple at the church I went to. They seemed lovely. They not only offered me a place to stay, but they professed to genuinely love and care for me “as a daughter”. I drank it in. Nobody had ever said that sort of stuff to me before. I desperately wanted it to be true, even though all sorts of alarm bells were going off inside me. I moved in, went back to college to finish year 11 and 12, and tried to feel happy and secure.
It gradually became evident that the couple I was living with could be fairly manipulative and controlling. They would have ‘talks’ to me about "my behaviour" whenever I showed any sort of emotion other than forced happiness. They drew up a list of chores around the house to "keep it fair" – my workload didn’t seem entirely fair to me, but I did it all, for fear of the consequences. They generally treated me like I was a lot younger than I actually was – they even insisted on hiring a babysitter to look after me when they went away for a couple of weeks. By this stage I was nineteen, and I had lived out of home long enough to look after myself, thanks very much, but they paid no heed to my protests. Both of them were constantly unwell, and their health seemed to rule everything they did. None of my friends liked visiting, because the atmosphere in the house was so strange.
Then things just got weird. The guy started spending a lot of time chatting to me, even massaging me, and it was getting a bit too close for comfort. Then the woman stopped talking to me. She wouldn’t tell me why, only that “I should know”. Of course, looking back, as an older and wiser version of me, I’m guessing that the two were connected, but at the time I was completely oblivious. One day they went out to the paddock next door (where I couldn’t hear them) and had a screaming argument. After that, the guy wouldn’t talk to me either, sticking with the “you should know” explanation whenever I asked what I had done wrong. I was completely confused, and totally miserable. There was more tension in the household than in any other I had experienced. I’d walk into a room, and she would walk straight out of it, slamming the door behind her. She stopped cooking meals for me. I wrote her a letter, imploring her to tell me what I’d done wrong, and I found it balled up in her room when I went in there to vacuum. I felt like I was going insane. I really did. I felt like I was missing something completely obvious. But even in the middle of it all, I was still terrified at the thought of losing this new ‘family’, the only ones who I thought had ever really cared about me. Even though in my mind I knew it was ridiculous, the things they said and did made me feel like I could never survive on my own again. They had this crazy hold over me.
In the middle of all this confusion, I went into my room one day and prayed. It had been quite a while since I’d allowed myself to talk to God with a totally open heart and mind, because I was terrified that he would tell me I should move on. But I knew I had to hear the truth.
“God, please tell me what I should do. Should I move out?” I asked, screwing my eyes up in anticipation of what he might say.
“YES!” came the resounding reply.
I opened my eyes. All of a sudden, I felt at peace. For the first time in months, I felt like me again. I knew he was right. I had to leave this insane environment. I knew I was strong enough. I’d done it before, and I could do it again.
I went and told the couple that I was moving out. They were ecstatic. A week before, this would have devastated me. Now, I didn’t care. Predictably, they insisted on orchestrating the whole thing, finding me a flat, helping move my furniture, etc. I agreed, more to keep the peace than anything. They were going away for a couple of weeks, and they decided that when they returned, we would all go looking at flats together.
While they were on holiday, I decided that I was perfectly capable of going to look at places myself, so off I went. The very first flat I looked at was perfect. I signed the lease the next day, and got some friends together to help me move all my stuff. I thought the couple would be proud of me for organising things without the need for their help. I was wrong. They weren’t happy at all. It was like if they couldn’t do it their way, then they wanted no part of it. Fortunately, I no longer cared what they thought. I was free!
A couple of weeks after I moved out, I was handed a letter at church by a small child, from the couple. They wouldn’t even give it to me in person. I read the letter, and nearly fell apart again. It accused me of purposely introducing a virus to their computer while they’d been away, short changing them for board, and for not paying them back some money they’d lent me about six months earlier. All up, including repairs to their computer, they calculated that I owed them around five hundred dollars. The letter stated that they knew full well how much I earned, and they wouldn’t be taking repayment in measly instalments, thank you. They figured I could afford ten repayments of $50 per fortnight until this debt was repaid in full.
I was floored. I showed the letter to a friend, who happened to be an elder in the church. He took the letter away from me and said that he’d deal with it. I later found out that there was quite a file of these sorts of letters from this couple to various people, and that they’d been spoken to before about the same sort of thing. My elder friend told me that this couple were very money focused, and that they wouldn’t let the issue rest until they’d been repaid, even though I knew full well I didn’t owe them anything. The elder and the pastor ended up paying the couple the five hundred dollars out of their own money, just to shut them up.
I still can’t believe it came to that. I wish I still had a copy of the letter, just to remind myself how bloody ridiculous it was. I have barely spoken to them since, which suits me just fine. I can’t believed how sucked in I was, and I’m very grateful to God for getting me the hell out of there.
“K”
It was 1999. I was halfway through Year 12. I was lying in bed one night, thinking about where I’d been, and where I was going. I felt like I had come a long way from the empty shell I was a few years earlier. I was still a bit of an emotional cripple, but for the first time in my life, I felt that I could perhaps give something of myself to someone else. Perhaps I could actually have a functional relationship. It was a novel concept, maybe even absurd. Nevertheless, those were my thoughts that night.
“God, I think I want to get married. Who should I marry?” I asked, a bit tongue-in-cheek.
“K” came the unmistakeable voice, echoing over and over again in my mind.
“WHAT!?” I mentally screeched back at him, “you’ve got to be JOKING! You are joking, right? K is the LAST guy on EARTH I would want to marry! Please tell me you’re joking. Please don’t make me marry K. PLEASE!”
Silence.
Man. I was freaked out. K was this annoying desperado who had been chasing me for a couple of years. I had never been interested in him in that way. Besides, he was at bible college in Adelaide, supposedly having the time of his life. It seemed unlikely that he’d move back to Tasmania. Even if he did, I knew for sure that I didn’t want to marry him. I convinced myself that I’d heard incorrectly. It can’t have been God. He wouldn’t want me to marry someone I didn’t love. There is no way it was him. It couldn’t have been. I pushed down my nagging doubts, and stuck to my ‘I must have misheard’ theory.
Well, to cut a long story short, K came to stay about six months later during his Christmas break. He was a different guy. Completely different. Confident, sure of himself, funny, caring. He didn’t seem to mind what I thought of him, he was just happy being him. I liked that. We hung out together every day. He asked me to marry him when we were at the beach one day, just after Christmas. I freaked out, and told him to ask me in a couple of years, because I wasn’t ready. But then I remembered what God had said to me a few months earlier. It all started to make sense. I realised I didn’t want to lose K from my life. I had no idea whether or not I loved him, but I knew that marrying him was the right thing to do. So I said yes.
I wouldn’t recommend our courtship methods to everyone, but it worked for us. Marrying him was the best thing I ever did. He’s exactly the sort of person I want to share my life with, and I love him with all my heart.
The Odometer Vision
I’d been involved in the aforementioned church for a number of years, and some of the stuff that went on there was starting to take its toll. K and I had been running the youth group for nearly five years, and we were burned out. As a solution, the leadership of the church appointed someone else, and told us we were no longer required. We were very hurt. All we’d wanted was a break of a few weeks, and perhaps some frigging support – not too much to ask, surely? Apparently it was. I turned up at a youth leadership meeting, and was made to feel like a leper. I walked out, and cried the whole way home.
Around the same time, the music team that had been so desperate to have me as a fresh-faced 17 year old told me that they no longer felt I was suitable for the role. According to the elder in charge of music, I had “issues”. I needed to resolve these “issues” before I would be welcome to sing in church again. I asked what the “issues” were, and he was unable to come up with a concrete answer. It was the vibe, really. Just… you know… the vibe. Apparently, I wasn’t worshipping properly. Other singers shut their eyes and raised their hands, and I didn’t do that. Why not? What was wrong with me? I told him it felt fake, like I was putting on a show. He shook his head despairingly.
“Well then Rebecca, why do you come to church?” he asked.
“To see people. To hang out with other Christians. Not necessarily to sing, or talk to God. I can do that anywhere,” I replied.
“Well you see, that’s the very reason why you can’t be on the music team any more!” he earnestly explained, telling me that he put the church before everything, even before his family. Oh. My. Goodness. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the slightest bit biblical. But what the fuck would I know? He was the elder, not me. From then on, I was relegated to overhead projectionist.
Turning up for my shift on projection one Sunday morning, I was feeling pretty low. I was sick to death of the whole thing. I’d seen so much behind-the-scenes bullshit that I was pretty much convinced that the church as I knew it had the totally wrong end of the stick. Surely this wasn’t what God was like? I’d heard he was accepting, not judgmental. Was I supposed to pretend I was in some sort of perfect place while I got my shit together? Here was me thinking that I’d be accepted, warts and all, wherever I happened to be in life. Silly me. For the first time since I’d become a Christian, I started to entertain the idea that I might not actually be in the wrong for once. That it might be them, not me. The very notion shocked me, but didn’t seem at all implausible. In fact, it made perfect sense.
So, I asked God what he thought. During one of the scheduled-yet-spontaneous patches of waffling on where the projector was not required, I shut my eyes and asked him, “What am I DOING here? Is this all just a pile of crap? Where are you in all of this?”
A vision popped up behind my closed eyelids. It was a car odometer. I watched with interest as the numbers on the odometer clicked over rapidly, getting to a few hundred, then it would reset itself to zero. This happened over and over. The numbers never reached more than a couple of thousand before the reset button would be pushed and the odometer would read zero again.
“What does this mean?” I asked him, slightly amused.
“Every time you come back to this place,” he replied, “I have to reset your odometer to zero.”
I opened my eyes. I knew I had to leave that church. And not go back.
So I did. And I’ve never regretted it. I discarded everything I’d been taught there, figuring that if it was true, then it would show itself to be true without it being drummed repeatedly into my psyche. I’ve learned more about God, more about myself, more about people, and more about life in general than I ever did while I was doing the ‘normal’ Christian church thing. I still find it amusing that God would tell someone to leave a church in order to have a better relationship with him. But I’m very glad he did.
“It’s just a job”
This one still hurts a lot, so I’ll be brief. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it before anyway. In 2007, I had a very stressful job that I loved and stupidly gave my whole self to. The company went under, and I asked God where my future lay with them – should I go, or should I stay?
“It’s just a job. Remember that.” he said.
So I went into work, repeating his words over and over in an attempt to detach myself from caring so much. The next day I got fired.
I know I should listen to what he said, but I just can’t seem to stop it hurting. He was right. It was just a job. I’ll just keep telling myself that, and maybe one day it won’t hurt any more.
“You have let yourself go”
This was in around August last year. I was lying in bed one night, and I asked him to tell me something I needed to hear.
“You have let yourself go” came his familiar voice, resonating in my mind.
Immediately, I began to wholeheartedly agree with him – he is God after all, and he’s been right all those other times. But then I realised I had no idea what he actually meant by that. Was he referring to my blubbery physique? To my gradually developing indifference to pretty much everything? I have thought about this comment often since then, but I still have no idea. Of course, I probed him for more information, but nothing. Nada. Ideas and suggestions are most welcome.
“Which way is home?”
After an unrelated rant to him one night late last year (again, while lying in bed), my mind was swiftly transported to a place on the Bass Highway just outside of Elizabeth Town, kind of near the big apple orchard. I somehow knew that this was the halfway point between Burnie and Launceston. It was so random, and it had nothing to do with whatever I was whingeing to him about at the time. So I asked him, “What am I doing here?”
He replied with a question of his own. “Which way is home?”
I was stumped. I looked towards Burnie, and then towards Launceston. Which way was home? Suddenly it was obvious how much I had been holding on to my ‘old’ life on the coast. I had not fully moved on. I realised I had to commit to one or the other. I said to him, “This better not be some not-so-subtle way of saying I should move back to Burnie, because that is NOT something I want to do”. I sensed that it wasn’t. Just that I had to decide to fully move on.
So I did. Driving back to Launnie after the Burnie carols, for the first time I felt like I was driving home. I knew I’d have to give up my involvement in things like the carols, because it was holding on to that old life, and I wouldn’t be able to completely move on while I was doing that. But I just couldn’t bring myself to tell them. As it turns out, I didn’t have to. I was sent a ‘thank you’ card from the organiser, informing me in a very chummy ‘no hard feelings’ kind of way that the carols was changing, and that they would be “giving me a rest this year”. Haha. I guess if I wasn’t going to do it, then someone else would do it for me. You’d think I’d have learned to listen by now, eh.
Now that I look back over it, there’s a bit of a pattern in all of that. More often than not, he seems to speak to me during times of change in my life. I’m not sure whether to be pleased, or scared about what he’ll say next.
Getting back to Nick’s original question, of course I have heard people say ridiculous things in the name of God. Many, many times. It’s the main reason why I’m where I’m at as far as church goes. I reckon there’ll be a lot of people with a shitload of explaining to do when the time comes. No doubt I’ll be one of them.
There’s not much I can do about that now, though. All I can do is to continue to try and be genuine in all I say and do.
My friend Nick has a blog that I read fairly regularly. The topics he chooses to write about are interesting and varied, and sometimes he poses questions to his readers and asks for comments. Here is a question that he asked recently:
“I am very keen to hear what you think about God's voice. Have you ever had an experience of God speaking personally to you? How does He do it? What did He say? Have you ever heard people say ridiculous things in the name of God? What did they say and what did it make you think?”
Yes, I have had an experience of God speaking personally to me. A few, actually. I value those experiences a lot, and I hope I never forget a single one. Nick’s question is a good opportunity for me to reflect on some of those experiences, so I thought I may as well jot a few of them down while I was at it. Here they are, as best as I can remember, in rough chronological order.
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“GO!”I was seventeen years old, living in a total dive in Aileen Crescent, Burnie. Anyone who knows Burnie at all will know the flats I’m talking about – on the corner of Mount Street and Aileen Crescent – not the ones that have been painted white, but the ones with the vacant block of land in front of it. It looks like a block of apartments, and perhaps it is now, but when I lived there back in 1996 it was a bunch of smelly one-room bedsits with shared toilets, showers and laundry facilities, inhabited mainly by middle-aged alcoholic men. And me. I was the only girl. I’d recently dropped out of college so that I could work at McDonalds full time. I couldn’t survive on Austudy, and I was too young to have a license, so I couldn’t get to college anyway. Even when I turned 17, I didn’t have a car or anyone to teach me to drive. Working full time at McDonalds paid $160 a week. My bedsit cost $55 per week to rent.
The guy in the room next to mine was nice enough during the day when I passed him in the hallway, but of a night he would usually get drunk and watch western movies. I know this because the wall that my bed was against was the same wall that his TV was against on the other side. He would watch these movies until at least midnight. I’d be trying to sleep, and all I could hear was “POW-POW! Gallop-gallop-gallop-gallop… POW! POW-POW-POW!” Sometimes, if it was really loud, I’d knock on the wall. To begin with, he’d turn it down a bit. But after a while, he must’ve been tired of me ruining his fun, because he stopped caring. He wouldn’t turn it down. Instead, he’d yell “FUCK YOU!” back through the wall at me.
One night, it was pretty bad. I had to start work at 5:30 the next morning for an open shift. This meant getting up at around 4:30, because I had to factor in the half an hour that it took to walk to work. The guy’s TV was turned up louder than ever, and I’d already knocked and pleaded through the wall at him, to no avail. I had been a Christian for only a few weeks. I remember crying, and praying with all my heart that the guy would turn off his TV so that I could get some sleep. Suddenly, God spoke back to me. Audibly. I heard a loud voice speaking urgently in my ear – “GO!”
Confused, I replied, “What?” The voice spoke again, with even more urgency. “GO!!”
I wasn’t really sure what it meant, but obediently I got out of bed and went to my door. At exactly the same time, the guy in the next room got up and went to his door too. We met in the hallway. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but all sorts of words tearfully poured out as I explained to him that I had to work in a few hours, and I was sorry to ruin his fun, and I knew we all had to live in close proximity, but could he please turn his TV down so that I could get some sleep. He looked at me, stunned. “I am so sorry,” he replied, looking ashamed, “I had no idea. I’ll turn it down straight away. I’m really sorry”. He walked back into his room, and turned it down so low I couldn’t even hear it. For the remainder of my time there, I never had to ask him to turn it down again.
I had never heard God’s voice audibly before that night, and I don’t recall hearing that clearly since.
“He’s a Pharisee”
I was attending a church in Burnie, and I’d just become (rather forcibly) involved in the music team. I was at a practice one night, and I was watching the worship leader sing. Something about him rang alarm bells. He just didn’t seem genuine. At all. I really felt that the guy was hiding something, that he wasn’t being totally honest. I remember trying to shake the feeling, thinking “what would I know? I’m only a new Christian, and this guy is an elder in the church!” I told God I was sorry for thinking things like that about such an upstanding member of his kingdom.
“Why on earth would I be thinking things like that about this guy, God?” I asked.
“He’s a Pharisee!” he replied.
I was stunned! This wasn’t an audible voice like before, but rather a strong, resounding thought in my head. I knew it was God for two reasons. Firstly, it definitely wasn’t a thought I would have had myself. Secondly, it would not go away. It rang around and around in my mind, like the reverberation of a gong. I couldn’t make sense of the information. A Pharisee? What did he mean? Why would he have told me that? I didn’t know. But I knew it was true. The guy was a Pharisee. He was putting on an outward appearance to hide something. The inside of his heart did not match his actions.
About a week later, the guy in question got up in front of the congregation and admitted that he’d been having a six-month long affair with the wife of a friend of his, who also attended the church. He stepped down from eldership, and no longer sang on the music team. His marriage was eventually repaired, but the marriage of the other couple was completely ruined.
I’m still not sure why God felt the need to tell me that about him, but I think it was to help me to learn to trust my instincts, no matter how unlikely they might seem. It was definitely a skill that I’d need for the future.
“YES!”
Since leaving home in 1995, I hadn’t had much success with accommodation. I lived with a friend for six months, until she asked me to leave because she felt I was invading her space. Then I lived with my grandparents, but for various reasons that hadn’t worked out either. Then I lived in the bedsit on Aileen Crescent until I moved into a slightly nicer place with my cousin. My brand new shiny ‘full-on-for-the-Lord’ lifestyle (which I cringe about now, thanks for asking) was in constant conflict with her new-found lesbianism. To top it all off, my pregnant 15 year old sister was sleeping on a camp mattress in my bedroom, for lack of anywhere else to live. I guess it was a recipe for disaster, but whatever the reason, my sister got up in the middle of the night to empty her pregnant bladder, and came face to face with my cousin, standing at my bedroom door with a knife, trying to gather up the courage to come in and stab me with it. So I figured it was time to move out of there, even though I knew in my heart I should stay put. I was offered temporary board with a lady I worked with. I moved in, but it soon became obvious that her and her husband were used to their own space, and tension started to build there too.
I was a bit of a broken mess by this time, without a skerrick of self confidence or trust left in me. It was then that I met a couple at the church I went to. They seemed lovely. They not only offered me a place to stay, but they professed to genuinely love and care for me “as a daughter”. I drank it in. Nobody had ever said that sort of stuff to me before. I desperately wanted it to be true, even though all sorts of alarm bells were going off inside me. I moved in, went back to college to finish year 11 and 12, and tried to feel happy and secure.
It gradually became evident that the couple I was living with could be fairly manipulative and controlling. They would have ‘talks’ to me about "my behaviour" whenever I showed any sort of emotion other than forced happiness. They drew up a list of chores around the house to "keep it fair" – my workload didn’t seem entirely fair to me, but I did it all, for fear of the consequences. They generally treated me like I was a lot younger than I actually was – they even insisted on hiring a babysitter to look after me when they went away for a couple of weeks. By this stage I was nineteen, and I had lived out of home long enough to look after myself, thanks very much, but they paid no heed to my protests. Both of them were constantly unwell, and their health seemed to rule everything they did. None of my friends liked visiting, because the atmosphere in the house was so strange.
Then things just got weird. The guy started spending a lot of time chatting to me, even massaging me, and it was getting a bit too close for comfort. Then the woman stopped talking to me. She wouldn’t tell me why, only that “I should know”. Of course, looking back, as an older and wiser version of me, I’m guessing that the two were connected, but at the time I was completely oblivious. One day they went out to the paddock next door (where I couldn’t hear them) and had a screaming argument. After that, the guy wouldn’t talk to me either, sticking with the “you should know” explanation whenever I asked what I had done wrong. I was completely confused, and totally miserable. There was more tension in the household than in any other I had experienced. I’d walk into a room, and she would walk straight out of it, slamming the door behind her. She stopped cooking meals for me. I wrote her a letter, imploring her to tell me what I’d done wrong, and I found it balled up in her room when I went in there to vacuum. I felt like I was going insane. I really did. I felt like I was missing something completely obvious. But even in the middle of it all, I was still terrified at the thought of losing this new ‘family’, the only ones who I thought had ever really cared about me. Even though in my mind I knew it was ridiculous, the things they said and did made me feel like I could never survive on my own again. They had this crazy hold over me.
In the middle of all this confusion, I went into my room one day and prayed. It had been quite a while since I’d allowed myself to talk to God with a totally open heart and mind, because I was terrified that he would tell me I should move on. But I knew I had to hear the truth.
“God, please tell me what I should do. Should I move out?” I asked, screwing my eyes up in anticipation of what he might say.
“YES!” came the resounding reply.
I opened my eyes. All of a sudden, I felt at peace. For the first time in months, I felt like me again. I knew he was right. I had to leave this insane environment. I knew I was strong enough. I’d done it before, and I could do it again.
I went and told the couple that I was moving out. They were ecstatic. A week before, this would have devastated me. Now, I didn’t care. Predictably, they insisted on orchestrating the whole thing, finding me a flat, helping move my furniture, etc. I agreed, more to keep the peace than anything. They were going away for a couple of weeks, and they decided that when they returned, we would all go looking at flats together.
While they were on holiday, I decided that I was perfectly capable of going to look at places myself, so off I went. The very first flat I looked at was perfect. I signed the lease the next day, and got some friends together to help me move all my stuff. I thought the couple would be proud of me for organising things without the need for their help. I was wrong. They weren’t happy at all. It was like if they couldn’t do it their way, then they wanted no part of it. Fortunately, I no longer cared what they thought. I was free!
A couple of weeks after I moved out, I was handed a letter at church by a small child, from the couple. They wouldn’t even give it to me in person. I read the letter, and nearly fell apart again. It accused me of purposely introducing a virus to their computer while they’d been away, short changing them for board, and for not paying them back some money they’d lent me about six months earlier. All up, including repairs to their computer, they calculated that I owed them around five hundred dollars. The letter stated that they knew full well how much I earned, and they wouldn’t be taking repayment in measly instalments, thank you. They figured I could afford ten repayments of $50 per fortnight until this debt was repaid in full.
I was floored. I showed the letter to a friend, who happened to be an elder in the church. He took the letter away from me and said that he’d deal with it. I later found out that there was quite a file of these sorts of letters from this couple to various people, and that they’d been spoken to before about the same sort of thing. My elder friend told me that this couple were very money focused, and that they wouldn’t let the issue rest until they’d been repaid, even though I knew full well I didn’t owe them anything. The elder and the pastor ended up paying the couple the five hundred dollars out of their own money, just to shut them up.
I still can’t believe it came to that. I wish I still had a copy of the letter, just to remind myself how bloody ridiculous it was. I have barely spoken to them since, which suits me just fine. I can’t believed how sucked in I was, and I’m very grateful to God for getting me the hell out of there.
“K”
It was 1999. I was halfway through Year 12. I was lying in bed one night, thinking about where I’d been, and where I was going. I felt like I had come a long way from the empty shell I was a few years earlier. I was still a bit of an emotional cripple, but for the first time in my life, I felt that I could perhaps give something of myself to someone else. Perhaps I could actually have a functional relationship. It was a novel concept, maybe even absurd. Nevertheless, those were my thoughts that night.
“God, I think I want to get married. Who should I marry?” I asked, a bit tongue-in-cheek.
“K” came the unmistakeable voice, echoing over and over again in my mind.
“WHAT!?” I mentally screeched back at him, “you’ve got to be JOKING! You are joking, right? K is the LAST guy on EARTH I would want to marry! Please tell me you’re joking. Please don’t make me marry K. PLEASE!”
Silence.
Man. I was freaked out. K was this annoying desperado who had been chasing me for a couple of years. I had never been interested in him in that way. Besides, he was at bible college in Adelaide, supposedly having the time of his life. It seemed unlikely that he’d move back to Tasmania. Even if he did, I knew for sure that I didn’t want to marry him. I convinced myself that I’d heard incorrectly. It can’t have been God. He wouldn’t want me to marry someone I didn’t love. There is no way it was him. It couldn’t have been. I pushed down my nagging doubts, and stuck to my ‘I must have misheard’ theory.
Well, to cut a long story short, K came to stay about six months later during his Christmas break. He was a different guy. Completely different. Confident, sure of himself, funny, caring. He didn’t seem to mind what I thought of him, he was just happy being him. I liked that. We hung out together every day. He asked me to marry him when we were at the beach one day, just after Christmas. I freaked out, and told him to ask me in a couple of years, because I wasn’t ready. But then I remembered what God had said to me a few months earlier. It all started to make sense. I realised I didn’t want to lose K from my life. I had no idea whether or not I loved him, but I knew that marrying him was the right thing to do. So I said yes.
I wouldn’t recommend our courtship methods to everyone, but it worked for us. Marrying him was the best thing I ever did. He’s exactly the sort of person I want to share my life with, and I love him with all my heart.
The Odometer Vision
I’d been involved in the aforementioned church for a number of years, and some of the stuff that went on there was starting to take its toll. K and I had been running the youth group for nearly five years, and we were burned out. As a solution, the leadership of the church appointed someone else, and told us we were no longer required. We were very hurt. All we’d wanted was a break of a few weeks, and perhaps some frigging support – not too much to ask, surely? Apparently it was. I turned up at a youth leadership meeting, and was made to feel like a leper. I walked out, and cried the whole way home.
Around the same time, the music team that had been so desperate to have me as a fresh-faced 17 year old told me that they no longer felt I was suitable for the role. According to the elder in charge of music, I had “issues”. I needed to resolve these “issues” before I would be welcome to sing in church again. I asked what the “issues” were, and he was unable to come up with a concrete answer. It was the vibe, really. Just… you know… the vibe. Apparently, I wasn’t worshipping properly. Other singers shut their eyes and raised their hands, and I didn’t do that. Why not? What was wrong with me? I told him it felt fake, like I was putting on a show. He shook his head despairingly.
“Well then Rebecca, why do you come to church?” he asked.
“To see people. To hang out with other Christians. Not necessarily to sing, or talk to God. I can do that anywhere,” I replied.
“Well you see, that’s the very reason why you can’t be on the music team any more!” he earnestly explained, telling me that he put the church before everything, even before his family. Oh. My. Goodness. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the slightest bit biblical. But what the fuck would I know? He was the elder, not me. From then on, I was relegated to overhead projectionist.
Turning up for my shift on projection one Sunday morning, I was feeling pretty low. I was sick to death of the whole thing. I’d seen so much behind-the-scenes bullshit that I was pretty much convinced that the church as I knew it had the totally wrong end of the stick. Surely this wasn’t what God was like? I’d heard he was accepting, not judgmental. Was I supposed to pretend I was in some sort of perfect place while I got my shit together? Here was me thinking that I’d be accepted, warts and all, wherever I happened to be in life. Silly me. For the first time since I’d become a Christian, I started to entertain the idea that I might not actually be in the wrong for once. That it might be them, not me. The very notion shocked me, but didn’t seem at all implausible. In fact, it made perfect sense.
So, I asked God what he thought. During one of the scheduled-yet-spontaneous patches of waffling on where the projector was not required, I shut my eyes and asked him, “What am I DOING here? Is this all just a pile of crap? Where are you in all of this?”
A vision popped up behind my closed eyelids. It was a car odometer. I watched with interest as the numbers on the odometer clicked over rapidly, getting to a few hundred, then it would reset itself to zero. This happened over and over. The numbers never reached more than a couple of thousand before the reset button would be pushed and the odometer would read zero again.
“What does this mean?” I asked him, slightly amused.
“Every time you come back to this place,” he replied, “I have to reset your odometer to zero.”
I opened my eyes. I knew I had to leave that church. And not go back.
So I did. And I’ve never regretted it. I discarded everything I’d been taught there, figuring that if it was true, then it would show itself to be true without it being drummed repeatedly into my psyche. I’ve learned more about God, more about myself, more about people, and more about life in general than I ever did while I was doing the ‘normal’ Christian church thing. I still find it amusing that God would tell someone to leave a church in order to have a better relationship with him. But I’m very glad he did.
“It’s just a job”
This one still hurts a lot, so I’ll be brief. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it before anyway. In 2007, I had a very stressful job that I loved and stupidly gave my whole self to. The company went under, and I asked God where my future lay with them – should I go, or should I stay?
“It’s just a job. Remember that.” he said.
So I went into work, repeating his words over and over in an attempt to detach myself from caring so much. The next day I got fired.
I know I should listen to what he said, but I just can’t seem to stop it hurting. He was right. It was just a job. I’ll just keep telling myself that, and maybe one day it won’t hurt any more.
“You have let yourself go”
This was in around August last year. I was lying in bed one night, and I asked him to tell me something I needed to hear.
“You have let yourself go” came his familiar voice, resonating in my mind.
Immediately, I began to wholeheartedly agree with him – he is God after all, and he’s been right all those other times. But then I realised I had no idea what he actually meant by that. Was he referring to my blubbery physique? To my gradually developing indifference to pretty much everything? I have thought about this comment often since then, but I still have no idea. Of course, I probed him for more information, but nothing. Nada. Ideas and suggestions are most welcome.
“Which way is home?”
After an unrelated rant to him one night late last year (again, while lying in bed), my mind was swiftly transported to a place on the Bass Highway just outside of Elizabeth Town, kind of near the big apple orchard. I somehow knew that this was the halfway point between Burnie and Launceston. It was so random, and it had nothing to do with whatever I was whingeing to him about at the time. So I asked him, “What am I doing here?”
He replied with a question of his own. “Which way is home?”
I was stumped. I looked towards Burnie, and then towards Launceston. Which way was home? Suddenly it was obvious how much I had been holding on to my ‘old’ life on the coast. I had not fully moved on. I realised I had to commit to one or the other. I said to him, “This better not be some not-so-subtle way of saying I should move back to Burnie, because that is NOT something I want to do”. I sensed that it wasn’t. Just that I had to decide to fully move on.
So I did. Driving back to Launnie after the Burnie carols, for the first time I felt like I was driving home. I knew I’d have to give up my involvement in things like the carols, because it was holding on to that old life, and I wouldn’t be able to completely move on while I was doing that. But I just couldn’t bring myself to tell them. As it turns out, I didn’t have to. I was sent a ‘thank you’ card from the organiser, informing me in a very chummy ‘no hard feelings’ kind of way that the carols was changing, and that they would be “giving me a rest this year”. Haha. I guess if I wasn’t going to do it, then someone else would do it for me. You’d think I’d have learned to listen by now, eh.
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Now that I look back over it, there’s a bit of a pattern in all of that. More often than not, he seems to speak to me during times of change in my life. I’m not sure whether to be pleased, or scared about what he’ll say next.
Getting back to Nick’s original question, of course I have heard people say ridiculous things in the name of God. Many, many times. It’s the main reason why I’m where I’m at as far as church goes. I reckon there’ll be a lot of people with a shitload of explaining to do when the time comes. No doubt I’ll be one of them.
There’s not much I can do about that now, though. All I can do is to continue to try and be genuine in all I say and do.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Real Fans
Today’s church was randomly selected because it was the only one in the paper that started at 10:30 that wasn’t named “St Someone-or-other”. I’d had a fairly late night the night before, and wasn’t in the mood to be liturged at. Now that I mention it, the paper is getting a bit thin on choice. Only nine denominations advertised this week. Looks like I might actually have to put in a bit more effort after I’ve exhausted these options. Sux to be me.
The name of the church I’d selected was a bit odd. I mentioned to K where I was going, and he said it sounded like one of those cults where the one sixty-something year old man fathers all the children. Instantly remembered that guy who was on 60 Minutes around 1989, with a face only a mother could love, who looked like he’d eaten all the children rather than fathered them. Whatever happened to that guy? Anyway, I was determined to go today with all the glass-half-fullness I could muster. Of course, it would be a bit too much to expect for the glass to be completely full. Aim low folks, and you won’t be disappointed.
How long can this sort of thing go on? What has the church become?
I’m not sure I can take much more.
The name of the church I’d selected was a bit odd. I mentioned to K where I was going, and he said it sounded like one of those cults where the one sixty-something year old man fathers all the children. Instantly remembered that guy who was on 60 Minutes around 1989, with a face only a mother could love, who looked like he’d eaten all the children rather than fathered them. Whatever happened to that guy? Anyway, I was determined to go today with all the glass-half-fullness I could muster. Of course, it would be a bit too much to expect for the glass to be completely full. Aim low folks, and you won’t be disappointed.
- Turned up in time to see two fluoro orange vested guys with ‘SECURITY’ menacingly printed on the back, herding the last car of about six into the car park. They seemed to take this task very seriously. Didn’t want to complicate things for them, as it seemed the car park could only take six cars, so I parked on the street.
- Sat in my usual spot nearest the exit. In case of a fire, of course. I’m very safety conscious, you know.
- The one-man-Casio-keyboard-band made me smile, for his sheer enthusiasm if nothing else. The kids (who made up roughly 60% of the small congregation) were up the front having a great time dancing along without a care in the world. Someone (presumably these same kids) had decorated the church by fastening tinsel to the walls with large strips of masking tape, and nobody had bothered to take it down yet. Very festive in a slapdash kind of way.
- Inevitably, the dreaded words were uttered: “Go up to someone you haven’t spoken to yet this morning, and tell them, ‘I love you because Jesus lives in me!’” At first, the handful of adults there stuck to who they knew, clapping their mates on the shoulder and robotically repeating the instructed greeting. Then an old lady snuck up on me from behind. “I love you because Jesus lives in me!” she exclaimed, giving my right breast a reassuring squeeze, then ambling off in search of further prey. In her defence, it does tend to reside right next to my arm, which I’m pretty sure is where she was actually aiming for. Felt rather violated nonetheless.
- No sooner had I collected myself again, I was lobbed on by Elderly Man and Linen Leisure Suit Lady. Seems they both decided in the same split second that I looked like I needed some lovin’. Almost breaking into a run, they came at me with arms outstretched from opposite directions – there was no place to run. “I love you because Jesus lives in me!” they both hollered in unison, mussing up my hair and groping me from every available angle. “Err… fabulous” was my incredulous reply, albeit muffled by one of their armpits. Felt highly amused yet incredibly traumatised all at once. Smelled like an op shop for quite some time after that.
- The sermon. Boy, where do I start? We were informed right from the get-go by the sermon giver that he would be drawing a parallel between sports and Jesus, and that the sermon was entitled, “Are you a real fan of Jesus?” Then, he proceeded to shout belittling accusations at everyone for the next half an hour. It seems to be the trend these days to have a number of titled ‘points’ in your sermon, and this one was no different. Great – a guilt trip with structure. Real fans get there early. Real fans don’t care what time they get home. They’ll turn up even in a blizzard, they sit right up the front, and they never miss a game, no matter what. Real fans memorise statistics (bible verses), they pay the cost no matter how high, and they are always vocal. I cannot begin to describe how utterly disgusted I was by all of this. Not so much by the content itself (even though it had no biblical basis whatsoever), but by the accusing manner in which it was delivered. He seemed to be doing his level best to make every single person in the congregation feel like the worst Christian in the world. His strategy in achieving this was fairly simple - 1. State point: "Real fans pay the price". 2. Use his own shiny, spotless life as an example: "My wife and I give hundreds, nay, thousands, to all sorts of charities. We gave X to this person, Y to this person, Z to such and such. And that was only last week! Aren't we wonderful?" 3. Point out that everyone else sitting there was falling way short of his example: "How much did YOU give last week? Bet it wasn't half as much as that!" It really was a total and utter pile of crap. By the time he had reached his final point (“if you’re one of those quiet types that doesn’t call out during sermons, then you’re not a true fan of Jesus”), I walked out. Literally shaking with anger, and absolutely appalled.
How long can this sort of thing go on? What has the church become?
I’m not sure I can take much more.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Superchurch Dot Org
My 100 churches experiment hasn’t really gotten underway yet, due to my aforementioned obligatory piano playing. However, I’ve managed to tick another church off my list, without even having to get off my vast acreage and go anywhere. “How could this be possible?” I hear you gasp in awe. Quite simple, really. I remembered another one I’ve already attended. Superchurch Dot Org.
I went there with a friend a few weeks ago, but not for the first time. After the last time, I didn’t think I’d be going again. I kind of likened it to one of those Chickenfeed Christmas crackers you get. They look pretty spiffy, all wrapped up in pretty paper with gold dangly bits on them. But then you pull on them, and they don’t go “bang”. So you have to get the strip of “bang” paper out, and practically burn your fingers off trying to get it to go. Then you look inside and realise there’s no toy. Or if there is a toy, it’s one of those little hoppy frogs, or a keyring token, or something just as gay. You put the hat on (if there is a hat), and it falls down around your neck. And the jokes (if there are any jokes) are the lamest dad-jokes you’ve ever heard. But that’s all Christmas crackers, really. Where the hell was I going with this analogy? Oh yeah. It had all the appearances of something really great, but when it came down to it, there wasn’t really much substance. Unfortunately, this time was no different.
Actually, come to think of it, I quite like the hoppy frogs in Christmas crackers. They’re kind of cool in an unpredictable sort of way. If I can land a hoppy frog into the drink of an annoying relative next Christmas, it’ll make the whole damn thing worthwhile.
I went there with a friend a few weeks ago, but not for the first time. After the last time, I didn’t think I’d be going again. I kind of likened it to one of those Chickenfeed Christmas crackers you get. They look pretty spiffy, all wrapped up in pretty paper with gold dangly bits on them. But then you pull on them, and they don’t go “bang”. So you have to get the strip of “bang” paper out, and practically burn your fingers off trying to get it to go. Then you look inside and realise there’s no toy. Or if there is a toy, it’s one of those little hoppy frogs, or a keyring token, or something just as gay. You put the hat on (if there is a hat), and it falls down around your neck. And the jokes (if there are any jokes) are the lamest dad-jokes you’ve ever heard. But that’s all Christmas crackers, really. Where the hell was I going with this analogy? Oh yeah. It had all the appearances of something really great, but when it came down to it, there wasn’t really much substance. Unfortunately, this time was no different.
- The service reminded me of television. Before you had time to get bored with one thing, something else was dancing in front of you, commanding your attention. First, there’s an upbeat song to get us all in the mood. Next, a multimedia presentation. Then another song. Then the announcements. Then a drama. Then another song. All in quick succession. I mean, we’d hate for people to actually have five seconds worth of headspace to themselves to contemplate any of the things they’re seeing or hearing. Perhaps they’re catering for the growing population of people who’ve “got that ADHD”. Who knows. What I ‘got out of it’ (it’s about getting, after all) were two distinct impressions: this church values excellence, and they value prosperity. Everything that was done was done to a very professional standard, with little expense spared.
- Of course there was the ubiquitous ‘connection time’ – five painful minutes of either awkward shuffling and forced small talk, or sitting and watching members of the various cliques eagerly catching up with each other. If you were new, you could draw further attention to yourself and wave your arms around to get a voucher for a free coffee at the café after the service. Up until this point, I had ignorantly held the misconception that all coffee was free at church. Boy, was I stupid.
- The sermon was given by a slightly panic-stricken church leader, and the gist of it was something like, “Don’t leave! We’re losing numbers! It’s God’s will for you to keep coming here! Please don’t go!” Of course, those actual words weren’t uttered, but they may as well have been. The guy brought out three chairs – one office chair, one dining room chair, and one that was a smaller version of the ones the audience… err… sorry, congregation were sitting on. The office chair was to represent work, the dining chair home, and the church chair, well, church. A parallel was then drawn between the amount of time the average Christian spent sitting on each chair. Cue forty five minute guilt trip. For fuxake, you think I want to spend the majority of my waking hours at work? Besides being annoyed about that, it was strongly insinuated that the only one of these chairs that would enable you to be with God was the church chair. That really pissed me off, because that’s pretty much the opposite of how I’ve found it to be. Then he said that even being five or ten minutes late for church would make God angry. Damn. I’m totally screwed.
- I was ever so slightly cheered by the announcement that we’d be hearing not one, but three testimonies tonight. I love testimonies. Most likely it’s due to my secret voyeuristic tendencies, but I like to think it’s because they’re real. A well articulated, honest testimony is worth a thousand sermons. So I listened to the testimonies, and they were pretty real at first. But they all ended as soon as the conversion experience was described. “I had this shit life, and all this stuff happened [insert watered-down version of stuff]. Then I came to know God, and I lived happily ever after”. So… that’s it? That’s the sum total of life? And you’re happy with that? What are you going to do with yourself now that your life has reached its zenith at the ripe old age of thirty two? Sit around and wait to be taken up to glory? Meh. I guess I’m the only one who still has shit stuff happen, who still gets depressed, who still wonders what the point of it all is.
Actually, come to think of it, I quite like the hoppy frogs in Christmas crackers. They’re kind of cool in an unpredictable sort of way. If I can land a hoppy frog into the drink of an annoying relative next Christmas, it’ll make the whole damn thing worthwhile.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Heed His Call
Here is something I read in a newsletter at church recently that made me chuckle to myself:
“It is the intention of [this church] to make an advance group booking for next year’s Hillsong Conference. Please pray for the Lord’s leading in your lives, and that He may call upon you to attend the conference in 2009, and that you will heed His call and make this important commitment to the Lord.”
Now, it’s not the conference itself that I’m laughing at – I’m sure they’re just swell. It’s the fact that there’s obviously no doubt in the author’s mind that it is indeed God’s will for, well, pretty much everyone to go to the next conference. It’s just a matter of whether you are in communion with Him enough to recognise this. It’s like one of those questionnaires that asks a yes/no question, then assumes that you’ve answered a particular way by the way it asks the next question:
Q1. Do you like turnips? Yes/No
Q2. Why don’t you like turnips?
I mean, why pray for the Lord’s leading in your lives about the conference when the very next prayer is going to be to ask him that he may call upon you to attend it? And to cap it all off, then you’re going to pray that you will ‘heed his call’? Why not just ‘heed his call’ to begin with, and save the effort of praying about it, if you’re so sure that’s what he’d want? Fer cryin out loud!
Hehe. “Heed His call”. I mean, who talks like that any more? Hehehe.
“It is the intention of [this church] to make an advance group booking for next year’s Hillsong Conference. Please pray for the Lord’s leading in your lives, and that He may call upon you to attend the conference in 2009, and that you will heed His call and make this important commitment to the Lord.”
Now, it’s not the conference itself that I’m laughing at – I’m sure they’re just swell. It’s the fact that there’s obviously no doubt in the author’s mind that it is indeed God’s will for, well, pretty much everyone to go to the next conference. It’s just a matter of whether you are in communion with Him enough to recognise this. It’s like one of those questionnaires that asks a yes/no question, then assumes that you’ve answered a particular way by the way it asks the next question:
Q1. Do you like turnips? Yes/No
Q2. Why don’t you like turnips?
I mean, why pray for the Lord’s leading in your lives about the conference when the very next prayer is going to be to ask him that he may call upon you to attend it? And to cap it all off, then you’re going to pray that you will ‘heed his call’? Why not just ‘heed his call’ to begin with, and save the effort of praying about it, if you’re so sure that’s what he’d want? Fer cryin out loud!
Hehe. “Heed His call”. I mean, who talks like that any more? Hehehe.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Church-A-Palooza
Hmmm. My relationship with church (the institution) has always been one of those love-hate things. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. I don’t love it or hate it. I nothing it. Before we moved to Launceston, I hadn’t been to church for ages, maybe a year or two. And that was damn fine with me. No early Sunday mornings, no wasting a quarter of my precious weekend sitting through services that would inevitably bore me to death, no pressure to join the music team, the prayer team, the morning tea roster, the cleaning roster, the missionary prayer group, the community care constituent, the finance committee, the Croquet for Jesus Club, the Ladies Coathanger-Knitting Guild, to lead the youth group (just because I seem to fit that ‘youth leader age group’, or image, or was seen in the hallway talking to a ‘yoof’, or was overheard accidentally saying the words “awesome” or “generation”), or anything else that’s gonna drain me of any life or energy or passion or personality I may have had when I first arrived. But then, we moved to Launceston, and out of nowhere this strange, almost foreign desire came over me – the desire to start attending somewhere again. I know – annoying – but I went with it anyway. I sussed out a few places, before settling on one in particular. Let’s call it, say, “Thump Plate”.
Originally, I went along to Thump Plate because my (then) boss invited me to. Then, I met some really cool people, and through those people became involved in the Group of Indeterminable Cause. It was those people who kept me going along to church. Then, a bunch of people at Thump Plate had a hissy fit about the pastor there – they wanted “good solid Bible teaching”, and he wanted them to get off their spiritually obese arses and actually do something constructive with their faith (I know – the nerve!) In the end, they ‘ran him out of town’ in the form of a pastoral feedback survey. So nearly all of the people that I’d become friends with there stopped attending. The only reason I’m still going at all is because in the midst of all this, I was coerced to play piano for the service occasionally. I enjoy playing piano, so I agreed – on the proviso that I wouldn’t be playing very often, and that there wouldn’t be too many rehearsals taking up my spare time. So now, a few months later, I find myself one of only two piano players in the whole church, rostered on to play at least every second Sunday, and spending most Saturday afternoons rehearsing. Fuxake. The only reason I’m still going to Thump Plate is because I enjoy playing piano. But I don’t have to be a prophet to see that it won’t be long before I’ll be tired of playing so often.
So for a while there, much to my disgust, I thought I was starting to turn from my church-whore ways, and settle into a long term monogamous relationship. But not for much longer, I fear. Now don’t get me wrong – when I started out on the seemingly futile venture of finding a church where I felt like I fit in, I was never searching for a place that offered interesting church services. I would have been foolish to set my standards that high. Interesting church services are on par with Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, unicorns, and church luncheons without egg sandwiches. Pure myth. Every service I’ve ever attended at any church has culminated in some form of church-coma – the only variation has been the depth. I’ve all but given up hope of ever reconciling the relationship I have with God to the outward appearance of religion that constitutes church as I’ve known it. (I’m totally willing to be proven wrong here. Please… someone? Anyone? I see that hand! Oh, you were just stretching? Okay…sorry). I guess ultimately what I’m searching for, in order of likelihood, is firstly to be able to connect with people, and secondly to be able to connect with God. Both of those things I find much easier to do outside of the church environment. So why go at all? I don’t know. Something just keeps drawing me. Boredom? Martyrdom? Dehydration? One of those giant hooks you get people off stage with? I’m not really sure.
Then, I had an idea. Pastor Beard, the ex-pastor, mentioned one day that there are over one hundred registered churches in Launceston. ONE HUNDRED. That’s a lot. Why would a population of 80,000, with an estimated percentage of church-going Christians of 9%, need ONE HUNDRED churches?! That’s one hundred buildings that are owned, mortgaged or rented. One hundred pastor’s wages. One hundred electricity bills. One hundred photocopiers that are on their last legs. What a waste of money. Surely there’s a better way? I suppose there probably is. But rather than ponder the answer to that, I got to wondering; is there a soul alive who has ever been to all of these churches? I doubt it. I am assuming that all but a handful are of the Christian persuasion, and probably most are of Protestant descent rather than Catholic, which means that the majority of the churches would be pretty similar. How different could they possibly be from each other? How could one small city need so many separate gatherings of believers?
So, I have set myself a challenge. I am going to try and attend one hundred churches in Launceston. No, really – I am. It will take years. But I will run the race. I will not rest until it is done. And I’m really really going to try not to be an utter shit about it. I don’t want to attend them all so that I can bag the crap out of them. I’m genuinely interested in why so damn many are necessary. (Disclaimer: I may at times lapse in this new-found earnestness – I’m not a freaking miracle-worker after all).
To make my goal seem slightly more achievable, here are some I prepared earlier:
- Thump Plate Christian Centre
- The Church Near Our House (aka “Elderly Men Have Wandering Hands”)
- The Church That Starts With Z (aka “Banner Betty and the Hearing Loss Posse meets Mr Shouty”)
- City Life Christian Community Life Family Life Church
- The Church Formerly Known As “Joey Jo Jo Shabadoo's church”
- Nude Erections (does that one count? I only went for five minutes… Please don’t make me go back… curls up in foetal position)
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Quickie
Had a mini-church experience on Sunday night. I'd been meaning to visit a certain church, simply because of its name. Usually I don't like to mention names of churches specifically, but in this case I just have to make an exception – it's called Nude Erections. Okay, sure, it's spelt a little differently than that, but homophonic principles aside, that is the name they have chosen for their particular branch of the body of Christ. Which is cool – I'm all for naming churches after lewd images, if that's what floats your boat. After all, it was the novelty factor of the name that made me want to pay them a visit, so it must be achieving something. That, and the fact that a guy I was talking to this week told me he used to attend there regularly, and that now he considers it a cult. My interest was aroused immediately (so to speak). I was going to check out Nude Erections!
Rocked up to the night service to the new whizz-bang venue they've just built. The first thing I noticed was a huge sign in the foyer, clearly visible as you walk toward the building from the car park – "ATM HERE". I grinned. Funny how little things like that can create a mindset for the sort of church you're about to attend, even before you experience it for yourself. No cash for the offering? No worries, just pop out to the foyer! Credit card facilities also available for those who wish to give money they don't even have yet! I shouldn't jump to conclusions I suppose, but I was sure it was a sign. Well, it was a sign – it was on a little stand and everything.
Following the thump-thump-thump of the worship music I could hear emanating from the building, I walked through the doors and was greeted with a sight all church visitors dread – no more than twenty people, standing around a bunch of tables and chairs with pens and paper on them. Argh! Intimate contact with strangers! Run awaaay! It's one thing to be a casual observer in the back row, but it's quite another to sit awkwardly at a table with a bunch of bona fide born again bless-ed believers who are bending over backwards to make me (the potential convert) feel comfortable, and somehow managing through every action and deed to achieve the exact opposite.
I was just about to turn and escape when a lady approached me, wearing the all too familiar Frozen Welcome Expression. Standing about five millimetres away from my face, she proceeded to joyfully explain that this service was a 'little bit different' to the norm, with a more intimate time of connection and discussion. Hmm. I mustn't have looked too impressed, since she added, "It can be a little bit daunting for newcomers, can't it?"
"Just a bit" I replied, uncomfortably.
After giving me a reassuring pat on the arm, she pentecostal-hopped her way over to another uneasy looking guy, no doubt a fellow visitor. Seizing the opportunity, I quickly turned to leave. My movement must have caught her eye, as she turned back to me, gazing wide-eyed in confusion.
"Bye!" I called cheerfully, as I walked toward the exit.
"Wait!" she exclaimed, panicked. "Are you leaving?"
"Yep. See ya!"
She grabbed my arm, frantic. "Did I say something that offended you?"
I laughed. "No, of course not! How could you have? We had like a five word conversation. It's just a bit too… intimate for my liking."
The Frozen Welcome Expression quickly returned, and after squeezing my arm what felt like twenty times, I was finally able to leave.
Quite disappointed that I didn't see any actual nude erections during my time there – again, more for the novelty value than some sort of pervy voyeuristic tendency on my part. Nor did I see any evidence of cult activity, but it was a bit soon to tell I suppose. Perhaps I had a narrow escape.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Yumour, I'm Using Yumour
Received some negative feedback about this blog via email recently. Seeing as it's about my blog, and this is my blog, I thought I'd post it here. This is pretty much it, slightly edited to remove any identifying information:
"Hey old digger
I must admit Bec (I'll be honest, because you like honesty) the majority of your blog is very sad and ugly, (apart from your hilarious 99 points).
I hope you get the part as well for the play you auditioned for, because if you do, I'm going to invite every single pastor in town to come along and critique your performance with ruthless honesty and bee-in-their-bonnet sensationalism. :-)
You do realise you can actually stay at home on Sundays; instead of pulling apart the very thing people selflessly and servant-heartedly give their lives to, even if it is a touch mundane, robotic and cliché. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for dramatic change in the life of churches, but I'm passionate about finding answers, not sitting there like a fricken goose and pointing the finger. Crap like this (I'm being honest) doesn't help anyone. Find some answers, make a difference, and your blog will be worth reading.
There is me being brutally honest, and I await your brutally honest response.
PS: I thoroughly enjoyed catching up with you guys; loved the house."
Well. Gutted was not the word. This email affected me more than I care to reveal – mainly because it was a friend that wrote it. I can handle this sort of criticism from someone I barely know, because they don't know me, where I'm coming from, or the heart and humour behind what I write. But this person does, which is why it came as such a shock. This was my eventual reply:
"Hi
I enjoyed hanging out with you too. It was great to catch up, and I especially enjoyed the discussions we had on church, some of the issues, and how things could be done better. I felt that we shared similar views on a lot of things, and I had no doubt that you heard my heart with regard to it all. That is why when I read your response to my blog, I was utterly astounded. Totally blown away. I shared the link with you because I felt certain that you would know where I was coming from. Your knee-jerk reaction to what I have written indicates that you have taken everything I have written about the church as some sort of personal attack, directed at you and everything you stand for. Perhaps if you read my blog from oldest entry to newest, keeping in mind what you already know about me and where I'm at, then you wouldn't have been quite so scathing in your correspondence.
I can't believe I even have to explain to you that it is FAR from my intention to personally attack ANYONE. The things I have written about my church experiences of late are simply satire, and were in NO way written with the intention of 'bagging out' or having a go at any of the people I have alluded to. I assumed that anyone who knew me well would know that I have total respect for the genuine attitudes of those who lead or are otherwise involved in churches. My entries are not personal attacks, nor do I believe that I am "pointing the finger". Rather, I seek to emphasise how ridiculous 'corporate Christianity' can seem to outsiders to the church. Having a few years away from church involvement has given me a perspective on the goings-on that I didn't have while I was a part of it all. I appreciate that someone like yourself, who is heavily involved, wouldn't really notice a lot of the things that someone who was 'unchurched' might - being in the midst of it all makes it hard to see these things. But I wouldn't have shared my writing with you if I didn't think you would at least see the humour in what I had written. Have you really lost the ability to laugh at yourself and your surroundings? I wouldn't have thought so by some of the comments you yourself made after the service we attended. Now I'm not so sure.
As I am attempting to explain, my observations were NEVER intended to be construed as personal attacks against anyone who is in there having a go. Take the 'Happy Clappers' blog as a case in point. I have no doubt that the lady on the welcoming committee who greeted us at the door was a lovely, genuine person, who really desired to serve God by being involved in that way. But the often over-enthusiastic approach of church welcomers can be rather annoying, especially to newcomers - I used this one experience to identify with this perception. The lady that night simply represented welcoming committees all over the world. Since I don't know her from a bar of soap, I thought this would have been obvious. Likewise, the guy that got up and spoke about growth said nothing that endorsed nicking people from other congregations, and I never meant to imply that that's what he meant. I simply used his illustration to highlight what I believe is a commonly held misconception - that numbers of attendees equals a healthy church. You and I both know this is not the case. My intention was not to highlight any personality faults in these two people, but rather to make light of common perceptions in general. I thought you would realise that.
As for "the majority of my blog [being] very sad and ugly", I am assuming that before you would make such a statement, you would have thought it only fair to read the whole thing, and are therefore commenting on my blog as a whole. Since only twenty five percent of my blog is about church experiences, then I can assume that you find my entries about Valentine's Day, swimming, work, moving, Gavin, finding a frog and my many introspective musings "sad and ugly". This hurts me more than you would believe. I have tried for the first time in my life to 'bare all' with regards to my thoughts and feelings on things, writing about where I am at right now, even thought it might not be where I want to end up. And you, a friend I've had for over half my life, who I thought would understand me as much as anyone could, thinks that the contents of my heart are sad and ugly. Maybe you're right - maybe I am sad and ugly inside. All I am trying to do is represent myself as sincerely as possible, right here in this very stage of my life. I hope that life gets better, and I hope my perspective on things improves. It is not my intention to stay stagnant, or to go backwards. But I'm NOT about to pretend that I'm not in the place I am, and I would think it fake to wait until I'm in a good place before I let people see what's inside of me. MANY people feel down, negative, cynical, all those so-called 'bad' emotions. It is my hope that those people can relate to some of what I am saying, and perhaps follow my journey as things improve for me. It is likely that you will encounter many "sad and ugly" people on your journey in life. I just hope that you show those people more empathy than you have shown me in your email.
Though you may not see it, I am on a journey of "finding answers" and "making a difference". I thought I made that clear in our conversations the other day. I'm not sure where I'm supposed to start looking for these answers, or how someone like me could make a difference. But I hoped my blog would be a record of that journey, if nothing else. I'm not interested in leaving out the bad bits. I'm not trying to say that my blog is God-inspired. Nor do I think he is opposed to what I say. The premise is pretty simple really - just someone trying to share where they're at in an honest way. Perhaps you're right - maybe church isn't for me. Maybe I should stay home on Sundays and forget the whole thing. I was hoping to find somewhere that accepted me 'warts and all', but to be honest, I'm starting to wonder if any such place exists. I refuse to pretend to have it all together just for the sake of being positive. In my experience, this only alienates those who might not be at a great place in their lives. I'd prefer to get alongside them.
I have waited a few days before replying in order to try to be as objective as possible in my reply, rather than blurt out the first thing that came into my head after reading your email. Replying out of anger or hurt feelings doesn't help anyone. That's not to say that I'm not still hurt or angry, because it's probably fairly obvious that I am. Criticism is always hard to take, but I can honestly say that I gave your email a lot of consideration before I decided what to write in response. Also, if you have decided to show other people my blog, and they feel the same way you do, then I would ask you to please show them this response so that I can at least have the chance to explain where I'm coming from. If you are willing, I would also like to use your email and my response in a blog entry (with any identifying information removed of course), just in case anyone else reads it who might misinterpret the things I have written. The last thing I want to do is hurt anyone.
Feel free to respond to this, but to be honest, if your response is going to be more of the same, I'd rather not hear it. I'm sure you'd agree that the last thing I need is to absorb more negativity into my life, especially after what has been one of the most trying couple of weeks I have had in quite some time.
Rebecca"
Received a response the next day, apologising for the hurtful comments, and explaining a bit about where my friend was coming from – frustrated with church in a lot of ways, but trying desperately to find a solution to the things that are seen as problems. I can understand this. My comments on church goings-on are honestly not meant as attacks – just observations from an old cynic who is tired of the role-play and would really love to genuinely connect with God without all the bells and whistles that seem to accompany it these days. I'm sick to death of hoo-hah. For a long time, it prevented me from attending church at all. But I'm a people person, and I really miss that about being a part of a church – connecting with people afterwards makes a boring service worth attending. So these little blogs of mine are written to help me get through it without going insane. I write them for ME. I'm rapt that others consider them worth reading. But if nobody else read what I wrote, I'd write it anyway.
I guess I wanted to post this discourse for the benefit of anyone else who might read my blog and consider it "sad and ugly". If that's what you think, and you don't know me in person, then I don't give a shit what you think. But if you do know me in person and you think that, then I just want you to know that I'm sorry if anything I've written has hurt you in any way. I'm not sorry for writing it though. And I'm not about to stop either. I like to write. I like to be honest about how I feel, seeing as it will all be hollered from some dude's rooftop one day anyway. But I am sorry if you have taken it personally. It was not intended that way. I'm just a person on a journey, like everyone else. A person who feels sad and ugly and depressed and worthless sometimes.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The Real Deal
Went to a church service like none I've ever been to this morning. The service was held in the foyer section, much to mine and K's surprise – we were hoping to slink in to a back pew somewhere, unnoticed. Instead, we walked straight into a room full of people. Hung around near the entrance for a while, before we realised that was a dumb spot to stand for a couple of new people trying to blend in – we accidentally became the welcoming team for a few minutes there. Quickly went to find a seat at one of the tables in case someone tried to pin a 'Hi, I'm Rebecca!' badge on my front, and sign me up to chair the welcoming team's committee meetings on the penultimate Tuesday of every month.
While we were waiting for the service to start, I flicked through a church bulletin I'd found on the table in front of me. Most of it was the usual yada yada – what's on this week, tithe targets, praise and prayer points, and the ubiquitous hall of fame on the back cover. But there was one article that particularly caught my eye. I hope the author doesn't mind if I copy the article here. This is what it said:
"Is This A Sign Of A Dying Church???
I write this editorial with a heavy heart, burdened with a sense that all is not well in [this church]. Take a look around and count how many of you are here in church today? Where have all the others gone? Why are they not here?
I cannot try to offer reasons for their absences except that I can only hope that they have not chosen to
I will confess that I have been rather disillusioned by what has been talked about in church over the past few weeks. I was not impressed by a visiting speaker telling me that church is no longer sacred, and we should be thinking "Outreach, Outreach, Outreach!" While I acknowledge that as Christians, we should not be an exclusive group and shun the non-believers, I take offence to the suggestion that it is better to outreach than to attend church on Sunday. If that is the case, I shall be looking for a nice shady tree in a park next Sunday, bringing a large picnic rug and lunch, and inviting some stranger in the park to come share my rug, my lunch & do "outreach". "Nothing wrong with that", I hear some of you remark, but the bottom-line here is not all of us are cut out to do outreach, or want to do outreach. Some of us prefer to come to church to worship the Lord, be inspired, motivated, and encouraged by a Biblical message and cherish our time of being able to be in the Lord's temple. After all, is not the church the "Body of Christ"?
What are you getting out of church these days? Have you made your thoughts or expectations known to the Elders, your Home Group, your spouse, your fellow brother or sister in church? Or will you just slip quietly away to another church to find more meaningful worship & hope things will improve at [this church]? Are you losing your church before your very eyes? Can you afford not to say or do anything and let [this church] meet her inevitable demise? I sensed that these are troubled times at [this church]…
(Disclaimer: Views expressed in this editorial are not necessarily a representation of the views of other members in [this church]. This editorial is meant to generate discussion, reflection, and quiet meditation before the Lord.) – EDITOR"
Felt a bit like a rabbit that had accidentally hopped onto a shooting range. Didn't have much time to contemplate the article before a guy with a microphone started ahem-ing and shuffling papers up the front. Didn't hear much of what he said for the first few minutes, because all I could think about was his ENORMOUS BEARD. I've never seen a beard that big. Soon snapped out of my beard fixation when I realised that he was introducing what was to be a very serious time of discussion.
Pastor Beard went on to outline some feedback he'd been getting from people in the church lately, and told us he was about to set a few things straight. He drew a diagram on the white board that looked like this:
He explained that he believed that most Christians had a tendency to separate the different components of their lives into sections – work, church, God, family, marriage, social life, etc. It wasn't often that the components intersected. Church and God in particular are not often seen as having anything in common with the world, but rather as a refuge from it. Then he drew a different diagram, one that looked like this:
The dark grey area, he explained, was the goal – that was the ideal place to be. He urged the congregation to view their lives holistically, and not in separate, irreconcilable sections. He wasn't saying to embrace the world, but rather accept that we are all a part of it, and to see all aspects of our lives as a part of our walk with God, and not just the churchy stuff. He said that in
This was all very interesting as an outsider. The thing that struck me the most about the whole thing was that this church (or the pastor at least) wasn't afraid to admit, even in the presence of visitors, that things weren't as great as they could be. Nobody was pretending that things were perfect. Nobody seemed afraid to be themselves, or to say what they thought. Some might have seen it as division in the ranks – I saw it as a place where it was okay to be where you were at. It made me want to be a part of it. Mainly because the thing that puts me off church the most are the people/congregations that pretend they have it all together. I don't want to be a part of a church that has it all together! I'd only come along and wreck it. The sort of service that I attended today was, in my opinion, the real thing. People being vulnerable. Leadership being vulnerable. Not pretending to know all the answers, but willing to be open to whatever those answers might be. Sign me up, I say. Am I climbing aboard a sinking ship? I'm not sure. I guess time will tell.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Happy Clappers
Wasn't going to go to church on Sunday, but ended up there anyway. Not that I got dragged kicking and screaming mind you, but I sort of tagged along with someone else before I really realised what I was doing. It was one of those churches that everyone knows because of the guy who runs it, but it's still got some token ambiguous Christian-sounding name (usually with the word 'life' in it somewhere). You say to someone, "I went to
- Walked in slightly late, to a packed auditorium. Was greeted at the door by a middle aged woman, who crinkled her eyes right on cue, and put on her best 'full 'o joy' expression. Then, quick as a flash, my tonsils nearly got a paper cut courtesy of a church bulletin being rammed down my throat. Welcome to church! Had I been before? No? Well, I'd better have a contact card then! More paper ammunition headed straight for my face. I ducked just in time and went to find a seat. Like, contact cards are like, so 2006.
- All the seats were taken, dammit. Suggested joining the throng of people on stage. We probably would have blended into the crowd up there quite nicely. A bit too much jumping/boob bouncing for my liking though. Chose some seats in the back row instead. Ended up sitting behind a young kid who looked like a frog, who stared at me through the whole service.
- My highlight was the power going off during a Powerpoint presentation. Felt like standing up and prophesying that it was God's way of showing people not to have boring slide shows in their church services. But then I remembered I wasn't wearing a hat, so I thought I'd better not.
- Went to find the toilet (snuck out while every head was bowed and every eye closed, with everyone locked in the shampoo position). Accidentally walked into the kid's church room instead. They were playing some lame follow the leader game. Exited the room just in time to hear one kid whine, "what's the point of this stupid game?" Felt like taking the kid aside and telling her to get used to it – that she'd probably be lamenting those very words for the rest of her churchgoing life.
- I'm struggling to think of an object, person or concept that didn't receive a round of applause at some time during the service. Give the Lord a round of applause. Give the band a round of applause. Give the kids going to kid's church a round of applause. Give that last round of applause a round of applause. Sat on my hands obstinately, in case they developed a life of their own.
- At one point, someone spiritual instructed us to lift our hands towards the front to pray for something or other. Grabbed K's arms and lifted them right up for him, making them do a muppet dance. Ha ha.
- Learned that growing is about numbers. And not even numbers of new converts – just numbers of people attending. Well, that doesn't sound so hard! Why not just go and flog a whole heap of existing Christians from other churches? That would be the easy way to do it. Besides, those Christians probably weren't being used or fulfilled in their church anyway. Surely it's the best thing for everyone.
- There was cake at the end! Triple brownie points for food. It was nice cake too. Got talking to some people we know, and ended up being some of the last to leave – not sure how that happened, but I don't want it to happen again. Don't wanna look too keen… keep em guessing, I say.
Not big on the concert style service, myself. It was kind of like, "sorry God, can we chat later? I don't want to miss anything". But the pastor is a genuine guy, so I really hope it all goes well for him. It's just not my thing/cup of tea/scene. 2 Joy Gems. **
Monday, May 07, 2007
Time Warp
Man I had a crap week last week. I cried at work three days out of five. Go me. On Tuesday I cried three times. Two of those times were about the same thing. I don't even remember what it was now! It was obviously pretty life threatening. My poor male co-workers. Ha ha ha.
K and I went to church last night. It's slowly starting to dawn on me that I am probably never going to find a church whose service I enjoy. The main reason for this is because they are all so BORING ("it's not me, it's you"). You take a group of perfectly nice people, all shapes and sizes, all sorts of different personalities, chuck em in a church service, and WHAM – instant homogenisation. What are people afraid of? Enjoying their lives? Being themselves? Heaven forbid! I'm not entirely sure why I'm even going. Why am I? Something is compelling me to. Not sure why, but heck, I'll run with it. At least it gives me something to write about.
We ended up going to
- Opening the front door quietly, K and I were hoping to be able to sneak into a back row relatively unnoticed. Upon entering the auditorium, we snuck into a back row all right, but unnoticed we were not – being two of only nine people in the entire room kinda makes you stand out, visitor or not.
- As we perched on our turquoise plastic school chairs, I felt like I'd entered some sort of time warp. So much so that I half expected archaeologists, complete with film crew, to come tiptoeing onto the stage, whispering, "folks, here we have a perfectly preserved room AND congregation, untouched for some thirty years. Note the orange and brown paint on the walls, middle aged members resplendent in period attire of acid wash jeans, sneakers and fleecy jumpers with collars. And here's a delightful specimen – a mural of what appears to be the Lord, looking serene whilst leaning on a shepherd's crook, gazing out over the city". The mural was a talking point between K and I – he insisted the white blobs in the distance were houses. I was sure they were sheep. They had to be sheep; otherwise the whole shepherd theme would have been a little redundant, surely.
- A guy up the front was singing when we arrived. As soon as the song stopped, he practically broke into a run, skidding to a halt in front of us. A bit out of breath, but trying to look nonchalant, he thrust his hand towards ours, introducing himself. "So, you're visiting this evening?" he asked. I replied, "No, we've been coming here every Sunday for years." A bit mean perhaps, but surely it was obvious to Freddy's blind goldfish that we were visitors. Luckily, he got the joke. He then explained how the service was going to be run. Twice. A few songs, cup of coffee, a bit of a yak, then another coffee. Got it.
- The songs practically creaked with old age. All of them were about spiritual warfare, and all of them were from no later than 1987. Rise up, call on the fire of the Spirit, because he's the lion of the tribe of
- At coffee time, a friendly looking chap ambled over to us and introduced himself as the pastor. Thus followed a fifteen minute conversation full of more awkward silences and bored fidgeting than I'd ever experienced. I guess he hadn't exercised the gift of welcoming visitors for a while. After a riveting five minutes discussing the weather we've been having lately, isn't it crazy, yada yada, I asked him what the white blobs were in the mural. "Houses" he replied, looking more than a little ashamed of being a pastor of a church that had a mural on the wall such as this one. "But they're all white! I thought they were sheep" said
- The sermon was next. I slept through it, albeit sitting bolt upright with my eyes open. The topic was "Six realities you should know". The six realities were; 1. God's word. 2. Righteousness. 3. Our freedom. 4. Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 5. New creation, and 6. Name of Jesus. I would never have remembered these in a million years if K hadn't observed that the acronym for these six points was GROINN. Snaps for
- Rather than go in for Round Two of Coffee and Small Talk, K and I opted to sidle out the door. Eyes to the ground, look like you have to be somewhere, that type of thing.
This service reminded me of a CD that you've played over and over and over and over. Perhaps you once quite liked the album, but it's probably had one too many plays, so all the fun has gone out of it and it just annoys you now. Time for a new CD, guys! 2 Joy Gems. **
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