THE REAL TRUTH BEHIND THE CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP CRISIS
Why are so many, particularly women, taking this news concerning the dissolving marriages of female televangelists Juanita Bynum and Paula White so hard?
The issues surrounding these two women of God are far beyond just them, their spouses or their respective ministries. It is forcing people in the "Body of Christ" to examine some real issues that have gone unchecked in the church for far too long.
For those of you who know nothing about me, I use to work for a mega church about 9 years ago. What I saw and experienced shocked me "on the regular" - to coin an urban phrase.
From a professional and career standpoint, my experience in working for this church was one of the best experiences and career milestones of my life. Upon first working there, I saw the opportunity as a blessing. I loved working for my pastor; a humble, smart man who clearly was spiritually driven to serve as a way of being in God's will and following God's calling for his life. While not a perfect man, he most certainly was a good man with a heart for people.
However, working for the church and my pastor also meant working for congregants and the community. This part of my job at times was like working in hell.
Mind you, I will be the first to take full responsibility for the role I played in my being emotionally hurt and feeling spiritually defeated that led to my eventual departure from attending Sunday service regularly. As it is often said, if I knew better, I would do better.
I was 29-years old when I first starting working at the church and so incredibly naive to the infrastructure and unspoken rules for being part of inner workings of a large, sophisticated ministry. The church does so many incredible things for the community and I have no problem defending the value of service it has been and continues to be for the people - both members and non-members alike.However, like most adults who find themselves attending a formal worship service on a regular basis, I chose my church based on a deep spiritual need. I sought the essence of who God really was. I wanted to know deep spiritual truths in addition to the purpose of my life as intended by God. For awhile, I found that for where I was on my spiritual journey in life, that this particular church served its purpose.
Yet, in time, I began to recognize some very disturbing social trends within the church that caused me to pause, that left me confused and made it more difficult to reconcile within my heart and spirit and justify my existence within a formal worship environment.
Comprised of mostly women, the church - especially the Black church - can be a very difficult place to grow spiritually and survive emotionally and psychologically. Once I had the opportunity to serve as an employee, I can still recall all the joy I had.
However, many women didn't like seeing such joy. So many were mean, vindictive and jealous and I...
You can't stop now>>>