As we sat in the living room, our conversation turned from topics of current events, to theology and ministry, and of course we soon found ourselves discussing the church. You would think that Moody students would love talking about the church, and we do. But that afternoon we found ourselves in the company of 9 students who had been deeply wounded by the church, our words and stories were laced with pain and grief. We laughed at the irony of the situation - students, preparing for ministry in a church setting, all baring scars inflicted by the church. Some of us with fresh scar tissue. Some with wounds still gushing blood. So, what drew us back? One theme kept resurfacing in all our stories: redemption.
We all eagerly long for the redemption of the church.
Almost a year ago, my family was hurt by a church that we had once called home; the very meeting place of my parents, where they committed their lives to one another, the place I called my second home, and the people I called my family. With no warning, my dad was asked to resign. And those who we had once done ministry with for over twenty years, turned cold and indifferent towards us. The people we called ‘friends’ treated our family as a legal situation. And still, a year later, we are bleeding, confused, and wounded. Wounded, but sustained by grace.
The church is the bride of Christ - the fulness of Him who fills all in all (Eph. 1:23). The church is called to be one as it participates in Him, draws its life and nature from Him, sharing in all He has done for it and sharing in His very life as the incarnate Son of the Father.
More often than not the church does not look like this. And sometimes, different aspects are more magnified than others. When the church becomes something that takes life instead of a the life-giving bride of Christ, deep and gruesome wounds are inflicted upon those involved in the church. It becomes the very thing it should be farthest from; and that is what happened to my family. Ideas and things became more important than people. A brutal mistake Christ never made, ever.
But those who have tasted the evil of what a church can do, have seen and experienced the goodness of Christ. That, He too was spit on and betrayed by the very people He came to save. If anyone knows deep suffering, it is Christ. And in those dark nights of the soul, it is He who comforts us, who presses His hand upon our wounds and heals the hurt. It is He who shows us His scars and how they match up perfectly with ours. It is He who weeps with our souls. It is He who knows our deepest groans and hears the pain too deep to put into words.
My mom wrote, in her blog “I’m grateful for those who have chosen to honor our loss with their presence, for showing up and ministering to us. Days and even weeks later when we couldn’t pray or sing in a worship service, faithful friends showed up and did the praying and singing for us. When all we had were tears they showed up to sympathize with us. We are not done with recovery. I don’t think we will ever be done with recovery. It is just something which has been absorbed into our lives...And so we are learning we would rather live in a world of suffering, knowing that God’s grace sustains us, instead of being in a world free of suffering and void of God’s grace.”
Those, especially those 9 students, have learned, and are learning to see our pain as a way of experiencing God. Instead of being content with this world, we have let this ache in our soul drive us to dig deeper into the Word, to search for God even in the dark places. We have seen redemption, we know the power of healing. We have been broken by the Truth, and we ache for the church to proclaim that power.
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