#6: Connecting at Your Church

I’m pretty sure I’ll lose my man card over this story.

It was May of 2010.  I had been back from the field for just over 2 months, and Joelle was set to go to New Mexico for the Summer.  She had stopped in California on her way back from Australia 2 weeks prior, and during that time I had proposed to her.  She was going home to report back to her church and reconnect with family, and we likely wouldn’t see each other for another three months or so.

The night before she left, we took a walk in the park.  We got to talking about what we planned on doing over the Summer, and before we could get a lot of talking done I started bawling like a baby.

Here was a grown man, crying his eyes out on a park bench.

There were a lot of strong emotions involved in that particular evening–I was going to miss my fiancee and I didn’t want her to go–but oddly enough, the thing that got me whimpering wasn’t her.  It was my church.

At the time, my family was very involved in a biker church in California.  Now, we’re not bikers, and it’s a long story of how we ended up there, but this church had faithfully supported me throughout my entire time overseas.  On top of that, my Mom led the worship team, and my Dad was the associate pastor.  We had deep ties there, and for lack of a better word, I felt a strong obligation to that church.

A lot of people there were new Christians; some were recovering addicts, almost all rode a motorcycle.  Most of us feel like square pegs when we return from the mission field; this situation amplified that feeling by quite a lot.

Joelle and I had been talking that night about our churches and feeling out of place in America, and that’s when the waterworks started.

“I know it’s not right for me to say this, but they’re just not ‘my type’ of people,” I clearly remember telling her.  I was weeping because I recognized the arrogance of that statement.

(And I’m pretty sure I was sad because she was leaving; like I said, a lot of emotions were coming up.  As a side note, I drive a big truck now for work; hopefully I’ve earned at least some of my dude cred back.)

We stayed at that church for our first three years Stateside.  As I said before, initially we were motivated by a sense of obligation.  But as we grew closer to the pastor, the leaders, and the members of the church, it grew into something more than that.  I taught a Bible study for a few months; Joelle painted the exterior sign, started a small hospitality ministry, and spoke at a women’s brunch.  Although it wouldn’t have been our first choice, we ended up plugging into that church until we moved away.

It was hard to connect at that church.  But Joelle and I are incredibly glad that we did, because it stretched us in ways we didn’t expect at the time.

In the West, it can be hard to avoid “consumer Christianity.”  We pick churches like we pick brands.  But I think there’s something to be said for deliberately serving a church where you’re not comfortable.

Don’t get me wrong here.  I’m not saying that you need to leave if you like your church or have friends there.  And I’m definitely not saying that you should stick around in an abusive or unbiblical situation.  If you’ve had the good fortune to land in a church that appreciates your service on the field and affords you the chance to serve in some capacity, by all means, stay.  If you’ve landed somewhere that doesn’t have room for you, you don’t need to feel guilty about leaving (we’ll even have more on that later this week).  And if you’re in any kind of abusive situation, run.  But all that said, there is real merit in sticking it out where you are.

The truth is that almost any church won’t fit our new, post-missions identity perfectly.  A big part of the re-entry process is formulating our identities off the field (which is an entirely different entry).  There may even be trauma to deal with from stuff that happened while overseas.  But I’ve found that the best way to normalize is not in isolation.  It’s not effectively done by distancing yourself from your local church.  Just as it is with the rest of the world, the Church is the returning missionary’s model of the Kingdom of God.  It’s the community of saints, and it has a great power to bring healing and wholeness to the broken…

…Even when the broken are its own missionaries.