discernomatic said:
I recently had a traumatic experience that kept me out of a church when I thought I finally had "come home" after many years of being away from them. Have you had one? If it is not fit to print here because of the restrictions you may send it to me via my website. Just click on my profile and then the site link. I will definitely handle it discreetly. If you want it posted on my site anonymously, I will consider posting it. I have some links to organizations that help in such matters but am looking for more. If you can help me in that way (you will be helping others as well), please send me a mail.
This is from a post I wrote right after this happened. Ever since then, my family has not been able to find a church. We have been away from church for about 3 months or more. We are so tired of the "church search". Anyway, here it is:
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WARNING - LONG STORY - BUT WOULD LIKE INPUT
This is something I can't just keep bottled up. I have to share and get some feedback from others. This has never happened to me and I'm very disturbed by it. Let me start from the beginning.
A few months ago, my family moved back to a city we lived in 3 or so years prior. When we lived here before, we were never able to find a church to call home. We decided to visit a church back in Jan after trying two others and we liked this one enough to go again and again. We had a list of churches we wanted to try and we had reviewed websites, emailed the pastors, etc prior to making the list.
Well, we ended up going to this church we visited for about 2 months. I sort of started a dialogue with the pastor via email and began asking doctrinal questions and advice on scriptures and more in depth information about his sermons to grow on and further study.
The church began mentioning membership and we took the form to fill it out. My wife and I started praying about it and discussing our thoughts and feelings with each other. I emailed the pastor and explained we had the form, but I was concerned that we had not attended the church long enough to consider membership. He said, no, don't worry about that, we want you as a member. My wife and I kept coming back to the thought that there was this one church we had always wanted to visit and never did because of going to the other regularly. We decided that in order to be sure this current church was for us, we needed to finish out the list and try the last church we had intended to try anyway. We needed to be sure about the membership. We liked the current church, the people, the pastor, but we take membership very seriously. The church lacked some things we felt would enhance our walk with God, but we were willing to follow God wherever he leads us.
So, out of respect for the pastor and the church that we had grown fond of, I notified the pastor that we wanted to make sure we were making the right decision and that we were going to try this other church before applying for membership at his church. The response was not what we expected. We were told to pick one or the other and stay put.
After we visited the other church, we realy loved it. It had everything the current church had, but also had some of the things that were lacking. We decided we had better not apply for membership and that we needed to begin attending at the new church. I informed the pastor of this, again out of respect to him, not that we were members or needed to explain ourselves to anyone. His response was fine, but stay there.
It kept eating at me, so I finally emailed him and told him I was really bothered by his response and wanted to ensure I had not offended him by not joining his church. I told him the things we loved about his church and the things that his church didn't have that we were looking for. I wanted to make sure I was leading my family where God wanted us to be.
I received the most rude, unchristian response I have ever heard from a pastor. He begins to tell me that I have offended him, that I don't know scripture and that I'm full of myself. How dare I offer any type of criticism or evaluation of his church, I'm not a consulatant and I do not know scripture of their church. He accused me of being a church hopper. He tells me I need a mentor to get in my face and bring me down a notch, I should be listening and not advising anyone and basically that I'm a big piece of dirt that he wishes he had never met me. He said it is people like me that frustrate the leadership of a church after pastoring a person who then leaves their church. Almost as if, you had better attend his church for life if he is going to waste his time with you.
It would appear if you do not have a Doctorate in Divinity, then you cannot have an opinion about anything with this guy either. The kicker is this, he is buddies with the associate pastor at the church we tried and liked. He is going to share with him some thoughts about me and my family. Basically, warn them about us and that we will go there 2 months and leave, so don't waste their time with us. Which is odd because he knew from the beginning that we were looking/searching for the church God was going to lead us to. We never committed to his church and even if we had, God leads people away from churches and to others everyday. I'm very concerned about this. This is going to give the new church a wrong pre-conceived notion about us.
I'm very confused and hurt by all of this. This was a man that I trusted and looked up to. I feel like he is personally mad at us for not joining his church. I explained the reasons for us not feeling at home there, but all he did was attack me and degrade me and my knowledge of scripture. Now, he is going to share his dislike for me with the new church's leadership. This is going to hinder my family in their walk with God, growing, and all around comfort zone at the new church.
Sorry for the long message, but I had to get this out. It is effecting my whole family. My wife had intended on staying in her Thursday morning ladies bible study at this church since she had been going for 4 weeks, but she feels really uncomfortable at the church now. The pastor's wife is in her group and he is there during the day and she sees him when she is there.
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Well, there it is. We did not end up at the new church either. The leadership there got wind of the story and the rest is history. We've been without church ever since.
God Bless!
