I'm sorry for the angst you are going through, and for the relationships which are strained because of your current predicament. ICK. ICK. ICK!
First let me say, that though I am sending you an impersonal email, I am also open to talking with you and praying with you more about this subject. I know without a shadow of a doubt that there is purpose in it. Godly purpose for your development, and how he wants you to grow and become even more mature. He has a plan. It doesn't take away the pain and frustration that you are experiencing on so many levels, but there WILL be a time in your life when you value having gone through this experience.
I've never taken the time to write out our story on the issue of finding a church home in Singapore, but you've given me a good excuse! So indulge me, while I share my church history:
James and I have been believers since the 1960's for me, and the 70's for him. We grew up in one church all our young Christian lives (different ones!) and when we got married he was a pastor in another for 12 years before we moved to Asia to serve churches.
We were 2 years church homeless while living in China. We did find Christian community there, but because of making the choice to put Tyler in chinese kindergarten, we didn't regularly fellowship with the other foreigners - so as not to let our kindergartener Tyler know that there was an international school option. We were in strong agreement, had the backing of our supporting church and family at home.
This however, heightened our eager expectation to move to Singapore and settle in a church, and let our boys grow up in a community of faith.
God's plans were different.
After many many weekends of church visits and short stints with Church X (the boys didn't have any friends after 6 months) and Church Y (one too many 'I can't take this any more' experiences in worship) it was finally 18 months before we settled. We had earnestly prayed, months on end we asked our supporters and church home in USA to pray for us about this. We never were naive to think we were looking for 'the perfect church,' yes, we know all the sayings and have been part of a church family long enough to know where there is people, there is messes! Grace Assembly of God is where we finally settled. More out of visitor fatigue than any sense of calling that it was the 'right church' for us. An interesting decision, which has turned out to be a good thing. But I'm not pentecostal, and like order and traditions in worship. But we loved the teaching of their Senior Pastor, and how he was empowering his staff. They had a lot going on with missions and their worship included musicianship and they even had a growing drama team. It took awhile. But Grace grew on us.
It seemed like such a let down to not ever have any church 'click' for us as we continued to serve and minister in many various churches while we called Grace Assembly of God home. And it was 'home' though even by 2009 neither of our boys had any peer friends, or older male mentors.
Both James and I have been able to see God's hand in this being part of our story. One of the biggest reasons, is how this has given us new eyes to see the Bride of Christ -- whom we love and long to see more beautiful -- from a different perspective. Steeped for years in churchianity and immersed in local church ministry from the inside, I wasn't able see corporate worship and the whole church experience from the viewpoint of the ordinary church-goer until I became one. If we had found the church we were seeking, and settled, we would not have experienced the breadth of churches we now know, which gives us now a unique understanding of the many facets of the broader church of Singapore. And then there's the best part: we would surely never know the dependence on and intimacy we now have with Christ from the loneliness that came from those years of never really finding satisfying community here for our family.
In 2007-08 when we had our year in USA, what I was most looking forward to was feeling at home in a local church. Ironically, painfully, it was never realized. The personal course on Christ's sufficiency, and abiding in HIM alone for identity and fellowship had a few more lessons to go.
HOWEVER, upon our return, I felt very strongly led to seek AND FIND a church home where the boys would find and worship and serve alongside good friends, develop a sense of extended family and male role models they could admire and want to emulate. I knew it had to be God's will for them to know the sweetness that comes from feeling "at home" in a church body. It had to happen before these boys grew up and left the home of his parents who love and are called to serve Christ and his church. Of course we wanted a place to enjoy worship together! And of course I wanted to find a place where we felt we could trust the spiritual nurture which would build on what they were getting from us and from their Christian School. We have nothing but fond regard for Grace, and it was heartbreaking to have to admit to our pastors David and May Lim that we felt like we had to make a change for the sake of our boys and in some strange way, for the future of the church that their generation will be leaders in.
This time in our search, we had Grace as a touch point to return to from time to time, and it was THANKFULLY only 9 months before we were confident it was the right thing to do to make the new Redemption Hill Church plant our new home. A story for another time, which includes Cameron asking me during worship, "Do you think I look like Pastor Simon?" and what (in fun) I called "Kimberly Creasman's Eccumenical Tours," AKA "The Gypsy Church" (This was to keep me lighthearted and sane - only somewhat successful - while we searched again for home)
I have a hard time expressing how wonderful it is to feel 'at home' in church again for the first time since 1997. But my sense of identity is (hopefully!) now firmly rooted in being in Christ rather than anything I am doing for his church.
In this new home, one of the 'callings' I sense is for me is, in some small way, helping those who are not new believers, but 'transfers' who come to settle there make sure to have made healthy closure with their previous fellowship, and with the Lord about what has taken place in the past. I've felt a strong conviction that the Lord will not continue to bless this church if people rise to positions of leading who have burned their relational bridges in previous churches, are sour grapes or have ugly roots of bitterness breeding under the carpet (how's that for a rojak of mixed metaphors?)
You have a solid grounding in your theology of church. You love Jesus and want to please your Master. You are being misunderstood by well-meaning and perhaps naive/immature individuals.
A wise and godly therapist once helped James and I through a crisis with some other people we worked with by saying, Take in what is said and lay it all at Jesus' feet. The Holy Spirit will confirm if there's any truth he wants you to take from it, and then let him lift the burden of the rest of it off of your shoulders.
I pray that you will sense, in the midst of this heaviness, that it's HIS yoke. Lean on him. Learn from him. When it comes to the core of your soul, and even as you cry those tears, knowing that it is HIS yoke makes it easy(ier) and his burden can be light.
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