Part 3: Stretching Out

Three years ago, after months of praying and struggling, I left my church and went out searching for something more. I wallowed a wee bit (I confess), visited other churches, and 12+ months later, came back to my former church determined to make a fresh start.

I immediately tried to get busy serving and doing. I’m a doer, one of those people that can’t just sit still. I’m a Martha. I had struggled to get involved in the church ministries in the past and thought that the church membership class might help me get more involved. I enrolled and took a spiritual gift surveys. I guess I should NOT have been surprised at the results, but I was disheartened to discover my gifts nonetheless. My top 2 gifts were leadership and administration. Not missions or evangelism. Not teaching or serving. No. GOD didn’t make me that way. Fact is that GOD made me to lead, organize and direct. Those are my gifts, and I’ve struggled to embrace them as a woman, especially in church.

Armed with the spiritual gift knowledge, I tried to get involved in the church ministries again, but alas with the same results as before. So I decided to look elsewhere and get actively serving outside the church. I joined up with LDM (Lutheran Disability Ministries) for 5 weekend SonRise Retreats from November through April and loved it. My spirit soared as I rediscovered what “church” should look like – a community, a family of believers coming together out of the bonds of sin and into the arms of Christ to serve together and spread the light of the Gospel in both word and deed. I experienced more community in those weekends working mostly with high schoolers and college age adults than I had encountered in years of attending church.

Then a friend suggested I join her and some of her fellow choir members for monthly hymn sing-a-longs at an area senior living center, and I decided to try it out once and loved it and kept going back for more. Again, here was community in action - a community of senior citizen saints that included me! I was blown away by what GOD was revealing to me and teaching me outside my own concept of church.

I was glad to be actively serving again, but I was struggling with my own church again, and I found myself right back where I started 2 years ago. If I couldn’t find ways to serve at my church and couldn’t find avenues of fellowship there, was worship truly reason enough to keep going? What's that saying about trying the same thing over and over, hoping to get new results? AHEM!

I debated for months and wrestled with GOD about it, but HE just wouldn’t let it go. My friends thoughtfully listened to me and encouraged me. My parents lovingly counseled and prayed with me. And finally, I faced facts. For whatever reason, I have not been able to settle down in my current church assembly, and it is time to move on. I believe that GOD wants to use me elsewhere.

My friend encouraged me to join her church choir and sing with them on a regular basis. This is the same friend that got me singing at the senior center. It sounded great, but I wasn’t sure I could make the switch. I was raised Baptist and was going to a conservative non-denominational church that was once aligned with Baptists, and so attending a Methodist church seemed like a pretty big stretch.

One day my sister shared her own family’s struggles with finding a church and said: “Attending church isn’t like a marriage, Mel. You aren’t committed for life.” I thought long and hard about what my sister said and about all the ways GOD had been leading me over the past few years in such unconventional styles. HE has stretched me, broadened my horizons and broken down my reserves. It’s been quite an adventure, and now I feel HE is leading me into another one.

I don’t know what the future holds, but this is just one step along the path. I'm just following the LEADER, and we'll see where HE takes me. Here I go…