Transitions and gut wrenching honesty
God has been speaking to me for several years now about beginning a new church. I don’t even like the term “church” only because of the stigma of the institution, however as soon as you mention “spiritual community” eyebrows raise among fellow believers (another term I have a problem with too) “Oh you’re on of those!” Jesus will build His “church” and I am a part of it… I guess we need to redefine what people see as “The Church”.
Anyhow, as I find myself once again in transition I am really interested in hearing if any of you out there have tried and tried to put your vision into an existing church and failed, either as the senior leader or in a staff/associate type of position. For years I have been of the mindset that there must be a pastor out there who desperatly needs a teamate. I have faithfully come alongside several leaders who affirmed my frustrations with the church and said that they wanted to make a change. The sad reality was that in EVERY situation the leader was unable to tell me that we didn;t see things the same and they worked really hard to keep this fact in the dark.
Has Christian leadership really sunk to this level. Deception outweighs honesty.
Oh yeah….. I am very familiar with Jesus words in Matt. 9:16-17; “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”.
But I can’t be the only one out here who has tried this a number of times… Yep… the tear is worse and there’s wine running all over the place. Fortunately there are no broken relationships in my latest wineskin burst. All is well and God has used this to show me very clearly His direction…
Is there anybody else out there who is cleaning up spilled wine?
