I had a great Childhood

I was in a Twitter conversation the other day and people were talking about their church upbringing  and someone tweeted that someone should write about growing up in the Evangelical culture and being ok now.

I have attended the same church all of my life and for my family it is a generational church, my great great grandparents attended there too. This isn't a small community situation where this was the only church in town, I grew up in a town large midwest suburb with plenty of church options.

My grandfather was the church janitor for about half of my life. My dad has played guitar in the worship band since our church started a contemporary Saturday night worship service in the mid 90s and now serves as an elder. My mom has had her hat in so many different things from directing plays to teaching preschoolers and teenagers.

I grew up in the walls of the church. Sometimes very literally. When I was in upper elementary school our church built a new building and to help save money people from the church did a lot of work which brings funny stories like the toddler toilets being installed first and there being an issue with the bathroom dividers so for a little while it was just a large open room with tons of toilets. During musical season many nights of the week were spent at church rehearsing, putting on way more stage make up then I was allowed to wear at home, and baby sitting cast members children.

I was the teen who was at all the events. I started running slides when I was in fifth grade and when I transitioned to the teen service I was in charge of putting together the weekly Power Point for service. I went to church camp, stayed up in tons of lock ins, traveled to another country on missions trips, participating in a True Love Waits ring ceremony, and was there most Wednesday nights. I started teaching the 3 year old Sunday School class when I was 12 and continued to until I was in college.

I had the quintessential Evangelical up bringing by many of the statistics.

There are some things that looking back I can see left some scars in my life. I watched people leave the church over music styles. I heard the fights about baptism. I now really struggle with the purity culture, not because I rail against everything that was, but I know I came out with some scars from it that still effect me in ways that are not healthy. I love the church so these situations deeply hurt when friends would leave or splits would happen.

In the last few years I have become more vocal about some of my wrestle with the American church and some of its choices right now. I struggle with who it is pledging its allegiance to right now because it often doesn't feel like Jesus at the moment. I have been critical about many things that I feel like we are really missing the mark about and watching church fights of the past has always showed that when there is disagreement in the church that people have to leave which has made me really wrestle with a lot of my up bringing and what I currently believe. When people you go to church with post of social media that if you don't hold the same American values as them then you must not be a Christian it can feel very personal and like they are trying to lower your deep love for God based on American values. It all feels so personal. Its reached as far as a church member saying that we didn't need to have our church follow ADA because Trump said that churches are not going to be persecuted anymore into following laws that make them do things, I understand that churches are excluded from ADA but as a mom of two kids with disabilities this situation was so painful because this person was using Trump as a reason to not love and exclude people like my children. The past few years have been rough in a way my childhood was not. 

This weekend we had a celebration for one of our ministers, he retired after ministering our church for 40 years. The celebration brought a lot of people into town who had moved away over the years and I was lucky enough to get pizza with a few of them. We settled in like family because we have been for years despite DNA and caught up about life with each other. We joked about old stories and talked about what is going on in our current churches.

Before this event was planned I had already promised my daughter to take her to an event on the same day with a friend which meant we would be missing church on Sunday morning with all of the people from out of town. I was happy with the event we were going to and knew it would be a good time a friend. My heart however felt sad to not be worshiping with these people that I do not get to worship with often anymore. While we are at church most Sundays, we do miss sometimes, but I can't think of the last time my heart felt so sad to be missing church.

I think its that I looked at all of these people who are like a timeline of my life all tied to my faith, ministers, Bible study leaders, friends and all I could think about was how much I loved them all and how after all these years my heart still longed to be with them. Sure there are stories of frustration, hurt and anger that fit into this timeline, but there are so many more stories of the beauty of the Church.

High school me dressed for a musical