Goodbye Yellowbrick Road

Wow, another blog entry so soon? I know, I’m just as surprised as you are. But I have much to share about Churchgate 2009 and things have taken a turn from the worse. Allow me to explain…

As I said, I skipped church tonight since my mother had requested a private meeting with the Pastor and, once there, several things were discussed that really broke my heart. As I’ve mentioned before, I find myself “tuning out” a lot of times in regards to the lessons and sermons preached by my Pastor. It has nothing to do with him personally, but I can only hear about gay marriage, abortion and how the King James translation is the only true translation so many times. The problem is that I want to LEARN, I want to explore the depths of Jesus and really dig nose first into the scripture.

“I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.” ~ 1 Corinthians 3:2

See, this is how I feel. I want solid food, meat. I want to study the Hebrew and Greek, learn more about 1^st century Jewish culture and lessons and teachings. I can only hear “Gay marriage is wrong!” so many times. Yes, I won’t be marrying a guy anytime soon, nor will I be getting an abortion. Now what? Teach me! Educate me, help me learn.

Because of this, I won’t lie, I sort of “tune out” when the lessons fall into the repetitive nature of The Big 3 (Abortion, homosexuality, King James only) and I check my Facebook, blog or text people because I’m honestly not paying attention. When the lesson does go towards something that is new and interesting, I shove the phone back in my pocket and pay attention. So because of this, a member of my church saw me do this constantly and was curious what I was doing, so they did a Google search on my name and found several of my social media websites. Well, they were simply horrified about the content of my tweets, blog posts and such, and made several copies of several pages of this information. Keep in mind; this is all being done behind my back.

Now the “dirt” on me is given to the Pastor. The Pastor decides to not call me because “he wanted my Mom involved” (NOTE: I’m damn near 30 years old, for crying out loud!) and that’s why he went to her instead. The Pastor also pointed out my exceptions with the repetitive nature of some of his lessons, and with a completely straight face asks my mother “Does Stephen really have a personal relationship with Jesus?”

…?

Now keep in mind, I have attended this church since I was 12-13. I’ve taught in Vacation Bible School, do the weekly slide show, attempted to start-up an eNewsletter that no one bothered to sign up for, I teach Sunday school and often give more on services then the Pastor’s own family! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to sound like a Holier Than Thou, as I’m merely flesh and blood and have a lot of self improving to do. But one glance at my track record will show why such a question is ridiculous.

By this point, I’ve gone beyond angry and just feel hurt, violated and betrayed. Am I perfect? Hardly. Do I sometimes make off-color jokes and run R-rated language? Yep. But how I act on Twitter, or Facebook is NOT how I act in church. And when I teach the kids on Sunday it’s never anything controversial or too out there, in fact, I take great strides to make sure what I teach is in line with what the church believes. Regardless, it’s become clear to me that the proverbial writing is on the wall. I will work on a resignation letter this week and quit my church (again!) and shall attend this Sunday at my grandparent’s church. I’m not happy with this decision, but I feel the odds are against me and it would be an uphill battle that I cannot win. So I will walk away and hope for the best.