The tug-of-war that ensued after we declared God had exclusive rights to our church's ownership was nothing short of nasty.
Name-calling in meetings, a calculated effort to vote down the search committee's pastor recommendation, and pockets of coalition with a different agenda comprised the battle scene.
God is nothing if not strange in His solutions: that pastor came as an interim since he couldn't get the required votes...and stayed until he left on his own a few years later. He moved us forward in technology and continued the change toward a full stage band and praise music.
The choir loft was dismantled.
The pews, replaced by comfortable chairs, were sent to a church in Mexico.
We attended church conferences and read and studied books on leadership and hospitality.
And year after year, a prayer group met in a home, begging God to not let go, each of us clinging to the hope that we could be one of His magnificent obsessions--that we could become planted instead of prickly.
Prickly spread rumors that we didn't teach Jesus. To this day, we sometimes ask visitors what brought them to our church: "Because we were told in town not to come and that made us want to check you out."
Today we smile, but the fight was bitter. The legacy of those years that became the turning point was perhaps the hardest moment of all: those who sided with Prickly, who stirred with dissension and untruths, had their membership revoked for a short period, with the stipulation that with changed hearts and actions they could be brought back into full fellowship.
Church discipline is the hardest task of all, but it is what God brings to individual hearts. In critical moments, it must be brought to the heart of the church as well.
Jeremiah 17:9-10:
The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle no one can figure out. But I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, not as they pretend to be.Tomorrow: overhaul of the church's heart.
