4) For many years, I had a
pastor who graduated from college with a business degree. He seemed very proud
of the fact that he did not attend a seminary.
My reaction then: Our church
is run like a business. Cool. I guess that's why we use big words like
"facilitate" and expressions like "here's the deal" and
"the bottom line." People with seminary degrees are way too stuffy
and anti- Holy Spirit, anyway.
My reaction now: Tirzah, I
think YOU'RE the one who was too stuffy to see that the Holy Spirit can move
through whoever will let Him move, seminary degree or no seminary degree. I
believe it was Keith Green who used to refer to "seminary" as
"cemetery," and perhaps he's referring to the stuffiness that can
been encountered too often with seminary graduates and religion professors.
However, I've finally been learning that a person's heart is much more
important than the type of formal schooling they've received, whether it came
from a seminary or other institution. There are a variety of different ministry
trainings available everywhere -- there probably always have been, and there
probably always will be, from graduating with a seminary degree to following
Jesus everywhere and casting your net into the water wherever He tells you to
cast it. But the point seems to be to allow Him to mold a person's heart during
the ministry preparation. For example, a person who enrolls in seminary on fire
for God and ready to tackle whatever assignment He gives them but graduates
from seminary more enamored with biblical languages than with people, and more
stuffy with knowledge than heartbroken for people, probably flunked their
training, no matter what type of grades they got.
Regarding the business-graduate church pastor, that probably should
have been a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge red flag right away. Of course,
there's nothing wrong with getting a business degree. But demanding that the
people in your church give you results -- in the same way that a CEO would
demand that their employees would give them profits -- is severely crossing the
line. Evangelism is NOT like sales. A salesperson can manipulate, weasel, and
deceive others into giving them the results they want (especially if they're
working on commission). An evangelist should persuade but never force anyone to
make a decision; otherwise, that would be considered abuse (especially if they
carve a notch into their Bible every time they win a convert).
Tirzah, no wonder you've needed so much therapy from God your Counselor
-- you've been treated like a machine, a number, a lab rat all your life. I
mean, you're writing about yourself in the third person. Well, maybe that's
because you're wrestling internally with the part of yourself that likes to
hide behind humor. Who's hiding? You're about to post this into cyberspace for
everyone to read. And now you're talking about yourself in the second person.
So, who's the grammar genius now? Well, maybe you should move onto the next
point before you really go off your rocker. What's the matter? Did you neglect
to facilitate reaching your bottom line? Here's the deal: church isn't
corporate America. Amen to that.
5) After I was released from
a psychiatric hospital in 2000 and decided to drop out of missionary school,
the head of the school told me to not tell my class the real reason why I
wouldn't return to class. In other words, my natural instinct was to
straight-up tell everybody, "Hey, I was hospitalized because I tried to
commit suicide," but the head of the school talked to everybody himself,
without me there, and said something diplomatic like, "Tirzah was hospitalized
for depression; please pray for her."
My reaction then: I'm so
stressed out and souped up on antidepressant to have any other thoughts beyond
submission. Or my kitten. My life has been turned upside-down, and I'm not even
allowed to live with my kitten for a while. (But they didn't say I couldn't
drive 20 miles to go visit her every day.)
My reaction now: Head of
school, why do you have a problem with honesty? Were you trying to cover
something up? Were you worried about somebody like me giving your school a bad
name? "Enroll in our program today, and you, too, can become
certifiable." Are you ashamed of me and my story? God met me in my
hospital room. I don't understand why you wouldn't let me share my testimony
right away. After you've faced death -- with its slimy, fangy stench-breath
fogging up your eyeballs -- you become braver than 50 million superheroes. Your
program supposedly valued brokenness. How would me sharing my story with my
classmates not have been a brave expression of brokenness? Thank you for
allowing me to drop out of your school. If this is how you treat people who've
walked through a slimy, fangy, stenchy fire, I don't want you to teach me how
to do anything. (My kitten and I were later reunited permanently, and she grew
up to be a faithful cat who napped and perched nearby while I typed this.)
6) One morning during a
leadership meeting (and there were zillions of meetings), the pastor from #4
above asked if anyone had a testimony to share. After a moment of awkward
silence from all of us in attendance at the insanely early morning meeting, the
pastor appeared a bit flustered and said, "Nobody? OK, I guess God isn't
moving in anybody's life."
I bravely stood up and shared a testimony with everybody. I mentioned that
I went out to eat with a group of church friends, and we all laughed and had so
much fun and so much joy. Our joy infected the other diners at the restaurant.
What a wonderful experience we had, and what a wonderful witness our lives
were! Another pastor criticized my testimony in front of everybody and suggested
that it wasn't God who blessed the other diners. He said it was probably our
personalities.
My reaction then: My
mistake. How silly it was of me to validate the head pastor's childish display
of insecurity. In the future, I should probably keep my mouth shut. I guess the
only testimonies that count are the ones where people say salvation prayers.
My reaction now: Gosh, I can't
do anything right for you people. You really are trying to run your church like
corporate America; I haven't been able to do anything right for them, either. After
the treatment I got from you, I go through a kind of culture shock anytime I'm
treated with genuine love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness,
faithfulness, goodness, and self-control by somebody else. You might not be
able to learn those things in a seminary classroom, because those things are
fruits of the Spirit, which means that they take root and grow. Incidentally,
what DID you learn when you weren't being trained at a seminary? Is that how
God trained you to run a church -- like a business that holds periodic meetings
where you air out your dirty laundry in front of everybody in a very
un-Matthew-18 kind of way? Isn't "the bottom line" loving God with
every fiber of your being? Wouldn't our personalities help
"facilitate" that process? "Here's the deal": I think you
flunked. But this situation happened many years ago. I hope you've changed
since then.
I feel very appalled at how many years of my life I wasted investing
in these spiritually abusive environments. But my feeling very appalled gives
way very quickly to my feeling extremely thankful that God likes to take things
that were meant for evil (perhaps unintentionally by the spiritual abusers and intentionally by the devil) and
use them for good.
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