How I Lost the Church

Back in 2000, I became a staff member at a church for the first time. I was to be in charge of a group of high-schoolers, the worship team for our church's youth group. I had been asked to help out in that area by one of the youth leaders I knew from my own high-school youth group experience. Things were a little rough at the beginning, but in a short time we were becoming a close-knit group, and a pretty good band of worshippers. At that time, I was meeting regularly with the youth leader, and with the church's worship pastor, both men I respected and enjoyed. The first year working in that environment was positive and encouraging, and the reaction from the general youth group populace was increasingly favorable. Some of these kids were having their first true worship experience on Wednesdays at youth group. God was doing some pretty great things in and through our group.

The next year was beginning, and the situation changed a bit. The church decided to hire an additional worship pastor, and required me to meet with him weekly as some sort of required discipleship. My impression of this guy was that he was the most fake person I had ever worked with, just one of those churchy über-positive guys that just don't exist outside of a church environment. In my 20-year-old wisdom, I decided I didn't like this guy at all. I had no respect for him, and therefore would, in some sort of a passive-aggressive temper-tantrum, make our meetings as difficult as possible. (Thanks God for wisdom and age, no?) I was unresponsive and generally dour as we met weekly and interacted as a part of our work week. There was not a single part of me that liked this guy, and not a single part of me willing to be even remotely civil to him. Today I'm willing to fess up to the fact that I was a royal pain in the backside to this guy. My problem was that I just could not believe he was being real with me. Everything in my brain told me he was just another church guy, just another one of those phony Christians. There was also some serious depression lurking around the corner of my life, which was just beginning to consume me for the next few years.

Early in 2002, after having been around this guy for eight or nine months, I was called into a surprise meeting with him. He basically laid it out that I had been inordinately difficult, and that even trying to work with me was a ludicrous affair. Then he dropped a bomb on me. His words were: "You bring death into the room." That phrase was permanently seared into my brain, words I will never forget. Hyperbole? I certainly hope so. True? At least partially.

I think the problem I now have with that meeting was that there was little or no attempt to understand my side of the issue. I was certainly being a baby about certain issues, but there were some underlying issues, even some early signs of depression, that were never addressed. One step back from the situation would have provided a few clues that I wasn't doing so well in life, and that perhaps an attempt at understanding rather than condemning would have been prudent.

After that fateful meeting, things really didn't improve, aside from trying desperately to pretend everything was okay, that everything was on the mend. Of course the issues were still there because nothing was dealt with. Condemnation was doled out, but there was no attempt at understanding, and certainly no compassion. So I continued working with the youth group worship team for the next few months. Playing and practicing with them was still the highlight of my week, despite the interpersonal difficulties lining the periphery of working at the church. In the spring I was asked to come to a meeting with all the head-honchos at the church. To their credit, they really are a bunch of Christ-loving guys, and I still highly respect them in many ways. They brought me into their meeting room to tell me that the money they had been paying me was needed elsewhere, and that they would be terminating my pay. Any idiot can see that they were trying to passively scoot me aside. Unfortunately I was not just any idiot. Honestly I didn't get what they were trying to do, and volunteered to continue working with the kids for free. Working with the kids was the most enjoyable thing I could possibly think of, and I enjoyed it immensely week to week. The kids in the youth group loved it, the kids in the worship team loved it, and I loved it even more than they did.

So I didn't get the hint, and kept working at the church for free. Another couple months went by, and there was another meeting with the same group of pastors from the church. I can still see the room, sterile white, blinds letting filtered light fall on the large conference table in the center of the room. They brought me into the room, and told me what they probably should have told me the first time: they needed someone else. The way they worded it, there was the impression that they really just wanted anyone else. I was informed that I would still be welcome to participate on the Sunday worship team, but that my relationship with the youth group worship team was over. There was no explanation as to why it was over, just that it was over. They let me know who would be taking my place: a guy with a great heart but who was totally unqualified for the job, which was a bit of a slap in the face. So I had to break the news to my worship team kids, and never showed up at youth group again. As I had not been given adequate explanation as to the full reason for my termination, I couldn't even fully explain to my kids why things ended like they did. At that point I disappeared from that church, and buried myself in layer upon layer of depression, eventually culminating in the darkest years of my life.

I don't write about this to just be dark and hopeless. This was a painful and pivotal moment that brought both understanding and wariness of The Church in subsequent years. But God, in His Grace, has brought me full circle, and has restored me to a state I had never before known. His body, The Church, can be a beautiful thing. Like the blind man who got Jesus' spit-balls in his eyes, my vision has been restored, and my hope renewed. He is good, even when it takes a downward spiral into the pit to understand it.

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