Church as community.

I've been thinking alot about church, or more specifically, about the one church I've called my own for the past nine years.

I've gone to this particular church for nearly a decade.

I've participated in bible studies. I've led Christ centered 12 step recovery groups. I've spoken to Shepherding groups about the spiritual disciplines of fasting, simplicity and silence. In other words, I've been a part of the fabric of this church in very real and significant ways.

I'm not sure what I expected when I first walked into our church nine years ago. I was, at best, a spiritual seeker. I knew God was real, but I thought He was a vindictive, punitive God and Christ made no sense to me at all, so I'd discarded Him completely.

I went to church because I had questions about God. I went because I was lonely and I craved community. I went because on some deep, intuitive level I sensed that there had to be more to this life than what I was experiencing.

I am now convinced that the real reason I went to church was because in some mystical way, I was responding to God's call, to His desire to draw me to Himself.

The funny thing is, I never really found a safe place at church to ask my God questions. I never found the answer to my own loneliness and I most certainly did not discover any real or lasting community.

And I think to some extent, that is what this post is about. It is about a failing of community, or again, more specifically, it is about how my church has failed as a Christian community.

Several years ago, a homeless African American man walked into our church and was treated shamefully. I wrote about that here.

One morning, a man came seeking comfort after hearing the news that his wife had breast cancer. He found none, or precious little comfort in our church lobby or with our church staff. I wrote about that here.

An inebriated, homeless man was barred entry into our sanctuary for Sunday service. I wrote about that incident here.

A friend, and longstanding member of this same church was facing homelessness and when she sought assistance from our church she was turned away. I wrote about that too, you can read about it here.

I referred a young mother to our church earlier this Fall. She'd just been released from jail and was in need of linens, towels, etc in order to furnish a room for herself and her daughter in an Oxford house. No help, no response ever came. A homeless teen we know and care for needed new glasses and again, our church did not respond.

When I was ill earlier this year and hospitalized not once, but five separate times, not one soul from our church called, or visited, or offered succour of any kind.

Now, for a long time I've thought that these things happen to me and to others in my sphere of influence/vision because I am such an incredible fuck-up. The love and support and community I saw others enjoy, or at least heard was happening within the church community , was never mine. Nor was that love and support extended to those like me. I figured we must all be such unworthy fuck-ups that somehow, in some way, we didn't deserve entrance into this community.

I would never had admitted to this on a conscious level, because doing so would have revealed two things. It would have revealed that I am still deeply wounded and struggling with my own self-esteem; and two, that I have not fully grasped and internalized the truth of the gospel message. (And God forbid that anyone who's ever publicly taught within a church such as mine admit to such failings.)

I've spent the past four months on a church fast, praying and processing and asking God why do these things happen to me and to the people I care about? Why are we, the marginalized, and the hurting, and the poor, denied access to the same love and support seemingly offered to all the "proper" Christians within my church community? What are we doing wrong?

God hasn't answered. At least not in a real, lightening-bolt-from-the-sky kind of way; but I am beginning to grow into this realization that what I am experiencing is a failure of community. It is not that my church is "bad", or that I am "bad", or that the entire body of Christ is a failure. This one particular community has failed to do what a community should do.

It has failed to care. It has failed to love.

And now that I know this, I am not certain what my responsibility in all of this truly is; but I do know this much. I am a member of this community, and as such, I do share some responsibility.

In the meantime, I've broken my church fast. In returning to church, I see that little has changed, within me or within my community. I continue to struggle with the words I hear preached and the disconnect between what I see lived. I continue to struggle with the demonstrated lack of caring and the felt lack of community.

I continue to struggle and in the midst of it all, I know that God is with me. He is the only thing that keeps me going. He is my head. He is my heart. He is my very soul. And so I stand with Him, and I stay and I endeavor to love as God loves.

At this point, what more can I do?