Me and My Big Mouth

My church has been going through quite a rough period of transition. Various issues began carving deep chasms between the congregation, and we've now been without a pastor since the first of the year. In an attempt to reunite the church, and in essence probably to save the church, before hiring a minister, the council asked the congregation to fill out a lengthy survey this summer.

Here I have a confession. I was fresh out of a college that teaches from a distinctly Reformed perspective, and so I had a head full of knowledge and opinions of how I believed a Reformed church ought to think and act. In addition, because of everything that had been happening in the church over the years that I had been away, I was concerned about my church falling away and falling apart. This is the church I was born and baptized in, the family that I grew up with, the church that I made profession of faith with. So partly out of a desperation to get my church "back on track," and partly out of frustration, I was less than gracious in my survey. I was passionate and honest, but perhaps not tactful.

The church council took the time to read through the surveys and analyze the varied results, and after church last Sunday. I shared what happened with that last week, with me speaking up for the "missing demographic" in the church. Today after church I was approached by the elder moderating last week's discussion. I was a little nervous, hoping that my speech hadn't offended. Quite the contrary, rather he thanked me for speaking up, told me that the council had been discussing some of the same points that I brought up. Then he reminded me, "No good deed goes unpunished..." and asked me to be on the 7-member pastor search committee. When they had asked for volunteers for the committee a couple of weeks ago, I had kind of toyed with the idea, but decided that I didn't have time, and that it would be a lot of pressure for someone my age. Apparently God thought otherwise, and moved so that I had no choice but to submit to his will.

Now I'm nervous. "Scared" might even be an appropriate word. I just turned 23 on Friday, and now I'm undertaking this huge responsibility. The seven of us are in charge of finding the next pastor of our church, the next spiritual shepherd of the congregation. And, if we do a poor job, if we make a poor choice, everyone in the church will know, and every complaint reflects directly back to the choice we made. It brings me back to my senior year of high school, when we were looking for a youth pastor for our church. Several of my friends were involved, and it resulted in bringing in a youth pastor who almost ran the youth group into the ground. Just over a year ago, he left in dramatic fashion. I don't blame anyone on that search committee. There's no way any one of them could have seen such a thing coming. Yet even so, I'm beginning to worry that the same thing will happen, and that I'll be partly responsible for bringing more hurt onto our church.

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As I was writing, God put a thought on my heart relating to my extreme busy-ness and level of involvement. In the RUF podcast that I was listening to about dating and relationships, the pastor pointed out that Christian marriage is for the purpose of advancing God's kingdom on earth. The question should be: can we serve God's kingdom better together than we can apart? Right now, God needs me to be single. He's using me in ways I never would have guessed--in my job, youth group, girls' group (starting January 2011), and now the pastor search committee--and ways that I wouldn't be available for if I were in a relationship, or if I were engaged or married. He needs my single-ness for his purposes right now, and I'm happy to let him use me in such a way.