Sunday, February 20, 2011

3 Things I Try NOT to Say Sunday Morning

1. "My husband says..." If my husband wants someone to know what he thinks, he can tell them.

2. "Sure, I can be on that committee!" The energy of worship and fellowship time can make volunteering for a project seem simple, but it almost never is. Better that I take the time to consider an opportunity before I make a promise. Generally, I think of my role in the church as participatory and supportive rather than leading. My husband leads and organizes a lot and neither the church nor our family needs much more of that from me.

3. "I'm fine." I long for church to be an authentic community. I struggle to be honest, not to vomit the details of my personal life but to be honest when I am miserable or delighted. How can we "rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn" (Romans 12:15) unless we know each other's joys and sorrows?

3 comments:

  1. In light of number 3...I struggle with this because I feel like we sort of set ourselves up for the fake "I'm fine" answer by doing a five minute hand shake time in the service where we go shake hands and ask everyone how they are doing. How can you really be authentic during that time? People seem to really like it though so I don't know that the answer is to cut the hand shake thing out but my preference is to not add one more thing that just helps us be more plastic.
    And for the committee's ...I'm learning about this right now. We came from a church plant where there were no committees to a church where there is a committee for everything single thing. It's a whole new thing for us. Interesting to say the least. Ha! But a lot does get accomplished through them so that's good.

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  2. Good list, I especially agree with number 3. I think the church really needs to get better at being an authentic community. The expectation seems to be that because your a Christian you should be joyful all the time. As a sufferer of depression this can make an already difficult situation even harder. We are told that being a Christian won't be easy so why then do we pretend everything's great? It's frustrating.

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  3. So good! You are doing a beautiful thing here for women in the ministry life!

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Thanks for using this space to share your encouraging words.