Note: Some names have been changed for anonymity.
2012
As a mama to three littles, getting all three to church on my own was sometimes a feat. I had a soon-to-be eight, four and two-year-old in tow. The four of us had been driving for about 40 minutes each way to Silk Springs Church a couple counties away, for over five months. I had some roots there. My family attended and became members when I was in late middle and early high school. I knew many families that were still members all those years later. Now in my adulthood, the size of the membership however, had grown to the thousands and the building had quadrupled in size. The smaller church we had known in my adolescence had become mega after a new building and campus was built.
There was familiarity though and that’s what pulled me there, in spite of the drive from my then home of Cochran, Georgia. The pastoral and supporting staff was surprisingly mostly the same as the many years before. It was honestly easy to get lost in the crowd in this church now though. If you weren’t involved, no one would really know. If you weren’t connected to any group, you could remain inconspicuous and just come to enjoy the message and the incredible production of concert-like music every Sunday.
I was ready to plug in. I was ready to make a change so my small children and I were no longer just faces in the mass. So, that’s what I prayed for.
Where should I connect, Lord?
I thought back to an earlier time. I was about nineteen or so. My parents no longer attended Silk Springs, but I was still going some on my own. For a short time one year, I joined a small group of members there who would load up in a church van each Thursday evening and make a drive to the east side of Macon to visit the kids housed in the YDC (youth detention center). Although I wasn’t a part of this ministry for very long, I remembered the joy of taking Bible teaching, music and conversation, mostly love to the young people there.
Maybe that’s where I should start. Should I try there, Lord?
My three littles were happy to go to their classes each Sunday morning and every Wednesday night. I now knew the names of the ladies and guys who would receive them during drop off at the Kid Zone for my two oldest and nursery for Marlee, and mostly they knew mine. I recognized their children also and knew who their spouses were. I smiled at them in passing. We made small talk when I stood in line at drop off and pickup. I was feeling more connected as I grew to know those who were working there.
I felt it was time for me to jump head first into community and service. So I asked about middle school ministry.
My very first Wednesday night, I walked in and just observed. There were flat tv screens on every wall, multicolored high top tables scattered about the large room and a makeshift dance floor in front of one of the screens. Kids huddled up in small groups during their free time before the lesson started and were talking, giggling, and playing video games. It was a typical evangelical church youth room constructed to exude colorful fun. It had a stark contrast to maroon-colored cushioned pews lined up in perfect rows in the sanctuary not too far away. This mega church youth room was reminiscent of the skating rink or an arcade. It was techy and full of lights and colors and no doubt meant to draw the kiddos in with gadgets and games.
The mini dance floor was a hot area I noticed. Girls waited their turn in pairs to jump in, pick their song and move in unison with the little silhouette avatar in the dance video game. The girls mimicked the moves perfectly and sung along with the lyrics.
I sat back in a corner and took in the scene wondering at whether this would be my new jam. I listened to the dance beats playing as the girls danced along. One pop song, maybe more hip-hop was playing and I recognized the artist. Kesha. I wasn’t familiar with any of her tracks really, but I listened in a little closer when I heard her catchy chorus. Something about getting crunk, something else about a bottle of Jack and then the boys touching her junk and getting too drunk. Sure, junk and drunk were scrubbed over, but those kiddos knew what fit in the blanks.
Did I hear that right?
Well I was positive I did. I mean…Kesha. But something about those lyrics being played and sung in the house of God made me feel instant ick.
I couldn’t shake it. I looked around and no one seemed bothered. No leader walked over to turn it off. It was obvious this was normal. Do they not hear what she’s saying? Do they not see these young middle school girls singing about partying all night? I was confused about this being played inside a house of worship, but I was new. I mean brand new.
To me, everything that we wanted these young people to avoid in the world, Kesha was intoxicatingly praising in her song. I can understand meeting the kids where they are and trying to be relevant to them, enough that they would listen and actually hear the gospel in our teaching.
Somehow though I, the little fish in a very big pond, didn’t feel equipped to say, “hi, does any one else think this is not okay?” Although it felt like we were looking exactly like the outside of the church, I wasn’t sure how to approach this.
These kids can get this anywhere, I thought. I mean literally the arcade, the skating rink, their own bedrooms and eventually the club if they so choose. If they could get this type of experience already, why would offering it to them with a little of the Bible sprinkled in really be that impactful to them?
I knew I could be legalistic at times. I knew I’d always been a rule follower. So, I wrestled with it for the rest of the week.
Lord, am I overthinking this? Help me figure this out. It just feels wrong. Is it okay to try to speak the kids’ language, get them in the doors at any cost, so that once they’re in, we’ve got ‘em and then BOOM, we smack ‘em with the gospel?!
I didn’t want to isolate myself, call people out or the worst of all Christian fears- seem judgmental. Oh, I didn’t want that.
It’s just a song, it’s just music right? Lots of people don’t pay attention to the lyrics in a song the way I do.
Music is very powerful to me. It moves me and can change my mood in an instant, so I’ve felt convicted singing lyrics out that don’t align with what is line with what I have left out of my life. Not everyone feels that or sees that. Sometimes a song takes me back to a person or an experience from my past that I want to forget about and certainly not remember. But that’s me. What about all the good these kids are getting here? I wasn’t new to following Jesus, but I was just getting back into being part of a church body and I didn’t want to be dramatic and over-the-top.
In truth, it was less about one single Kesha song that amped up young people to drink, party and stay out until the po-po shut them down. It was more about the culture being created in that space and whether that subtle overlook of music would lead to more overlooks that I couldn’t get on board with as a worker with the youth. I knew all too well about nights of drinking, partying and acting out in uninhibited ways that made me have deep regret over choices in my past.
The following Sunday morning, I remember a powerful move of God’s spirit in me as I surrendered to his will for what service in Silk Springs would look like. I stood next to my sister, Sarah in the balcony that stretched across the back wall of the sanctuary in a semi-circle. We were seated to the far right side, an area we often chose. Our children were down in the nursery and preschool classes. During the invitation at the end of the sermon, I silently prayed, “Lord, I’m going to give this a shot. I’m not going to turn away from it because I think this one thing is wrong. Please lead me. I’ll let you work this out. I can’t fix things that are not even in my hands.” I was excited about plugging in and serving somewhere; I was nervous also, about where I was supposed to be.
The invitation was almost over, and the musicians were still playing as Pastor Carter encouraged people to move forward for prayer. People were heading to and from the altar below the stage where he stood. Eyes still closed in earnest prayer, I felt a nudge on my arm that shook me out of my worship. It was one of the associate pastors, Brother Mark. I had known him since my entire family attended there. We had eaten lunch at Ryan’s steak house with his wife Carla and their two girls, as well as the other two pastors and their families many times after church as a teen. Lead Pastor Carter joked with me for years about taking a liking to one of his sons. I would grin and giggle. All three men knew me by name. I had been in youth group with their children.
Mark whispered and asked me to come with him.
Umm, okay.
I told Sarah I’d be right back. We were both confused. I followed him down the center corridor stairway in the middle of the building that led to the main level and finally asked him what was going on?
Brother Mark told me they wanted to talk to me about Marlee, my then almost two-year-old.
“Is she okay? Is everything okay?”
Yes, he reassured sensing my panic. She was okay, he said. As we were walking in the lobby of the huge building and starting down a side hallway, at this point the service had ended and the masses were exiting the double doors out of the sanctuary in every direction. He held his head low and seemed embarrassed. He apologized and told me it was out of his hands.
What is out of your hands?! Brother Mark, what in the world?
I was so confused and a warm lump was forming in my throat, a bit of nausea and anxiety were welling up, as I tried to keep in step.
“They want to talk you about the marks on Marlee’s backside,” he said in a hushed voice.
Wait…what?! Who are ‘they’? Wha…what?!
I couldn’t explain at that moment, as I hurriedly followed behind him. He led me through and in between the lines of people exiting in every direction, around the huddled groups stopping to talk and mingle. We were passing the nursery area at this point and as we walked, he told me that my sister could check out my children from the kid zones. She’s was following not too far behind us, just as confused as I was, so I looked back and motioned for her to do so.
And then suddenly, I wasn’t quite so confused. As we passed the nursery doorway, I saw her face, the nursery director, Bailey. I had considered her a new friend. She had even offered weeks ago for her mother to be a resource for me when I needed occasional childcare for Marlee, since her mother lived so close to me. Bailey’s husband, Joe, helped with security at the church. I knew them. They knew me. She was one I was starting to feel most connected to – the one I had talked with and texted even. She had been kind to me and seemed genuinely interested in getting to know me more. She saw me with three little chicks in tow faithfully come each week after week for months now by myself.
Brother Mark and I weren’t stopping to talk with the nursery staff, although I saw her sympathetic glare in my periphery. As we turned at the end of the hallway, tears were damning up on the edges of my eyelids. Where was he taking me? To talk to the head pastor, Brother Carter? Or the other staff members?
It was such as easy explanation. Why all of this? Why pull me from the service before it even ended?
He led me into an office full of people standing around talking, and then a side room off that office before releasing me to two men, one of whom I knew. It was Bailey’s husband, Joe and then another man in uniform. In uniform. It was a police officer.
They closed the door behind me. What was spoken next, I can’t even now recall completely. It’s a blur. I remember crying uncontrollably. I tried to catch my breath. That was a foreign response for me. I was almost always composed and poised! My intuitive nature was to hide vulnerability, keep composure and decorum. Be tactful, not overly emotional. I kept things together for goodness sake! That was me.
In that moment, I was undone. Fear, betrayal and embarrassment tsunamied over me. My face was drenched in tears and was flushed and hot.
A police officer? That was their very first ‘go to’? At my church?! As if had they just asked me, but didn’t really believe me, I would have taken off running before they could grab me, take me into custody and interrogate me about a potential case of child abuse.
I remember thinking that my emotional response might be exhibiting some doubt in the explanation I was giving. I was even more anxious. There’s something about being accused that makes you hyper-aware of how you try to put your words together to defend yourself. Even in innocence!
The explanation was simple.
We had a space heater in the office of our home. It was one of those built-into-the-wall kinds. There were red ceramic coils that would heat up behind the metal grates on the faceplate. Those grates would get super hot and so we hardly ever used that heater. I was always afraid the children would touch it.
Well over a week before this Sunday morning, Marlee was fresh out of a bath and undiapered. She was running around that room, and I didn’t realize the wall heater had been turned on over night. Her little bare bottom barely brushed against it. Tears came, we treated it with a burn cream that my mom had given me, and she was good to go. We kept ointment on it as it healed.
Church hurt. Isn’t that the jargon used now? Lots of people have felt it in different ways. Sometimes it’s a complete misunderstanding, unspoken words or bitterness. Sometimes, like in my experience, it was an organization, a very large one, operating like an organization, instead of like the church. I’m sure in all of the legalities and liabilities that were woven into training and courses on working with children, they must have thought they were doing the right thing.
Perfect little lines, maybe three or four, on her cheek were already scabbed over at this point and nearly healed. What was more, she had already been in nursery the week before and none of the ladies had asked me what happened. It never occurred to me to mention it because it wasn’t painful for her and was healing.
After I explained, Joe tried to calm me, tell me it was okay. He told me they just wanted to see what happened and they wouldn’t have to call anyone or make a report.
A report?!
I couldn’t stop crying, but suddenly it was anger and not so much fear anymore. Was I really that close to a child abuse file?
If I could get out of that room and get my children, I would never, ever come back to this place.
I rushed out and down the hall toward my sister. I saw the faces of the ladies who worked the nursery. There they stood with sympathetic glances. I looked at them through tears and quickly looked away. These were women I had wanted to be in community with. Women who also had children the ages of my babies. Women who I had entrusted with my own children. Did they know I never left my babies with anyone? I was the mom in the nursing room at the back of the sanctuary listening to and watching the sermon through a one way glass while my babies played on the floor for a really long time – before I got comfortable enough to leave them. Did they know how protective I was over my children?
I just couldn’t fathom how. How had no one thought to ask me? To pull me aside and say Sunni, what happened? How had no pastor stepped into that room and said, “we will absolutely not put her alone in this room for questioning,” when in actuality there was no legal grounds for doing so? They called me into questioning by a volunteer security guard of the church and a police officer. Is that legal? I don’t know. How had this happened? It was so cold and unfeeling. I felt like a mere number to them in that moment. I felt like all the years of having known those pastors and my parents being members in their church meant absolutely nothing.
I wasn’t spiritually mature enough to really face this in the most Christlike way. I was a young mom ill-equipped to confront this in a better way. At that time, I didn’t know how to pursue reconciliation since I was spiritually young, and the spiritually mature didn’t lead me into that. I felt criminalized by my brothers and sisters in Christ no less, without even so much as a chance to explain before they called the police.
God meant for me to move that day. And I did swiftly. I didn’t move because I thought all was lost at that church. I certainly did not. It wasn’t because I thought any of the people involved were bad. I knew that amazing things have come out of and hopefully still come out of that church to this day. I moved because I knew I couldn’t align with the mega experience, the lack of intimate community and the corporate feel that the volunteers were operating underneath. I knew I couldn’t align with blatantly bringing the culture of the world into the walls of the church for our children either. I had wrestled with all of these things and he settled them for me in one single moment.
The Lord answered my prayer immediately. In an instant, he literally plucked me up out of that service. Immediately after I asked him to lead me and was surrendering to his path, he gave me an answer – right after my prayer! I had no way of knowing what was being orchestrated during that service. The staff had no way of knowing I had been praying all week that the Lord would lead me into really planting into this church. They didn’t know I was asking if I was supposed to plant there.
He didn’t answer me in any way that I expected. And it was an incredibly painful way to answer me. For years after the experience, when I shared this with only several people, I would tremble, as in I would have a literal physical response to the depth of pain I felt. It was a hard retelling and when I noticed the deep response it would evoke in me, I sort of buried it.
Instead of treating me like a sister, the church placed me in a room alone with two men and not a single one of my Christian sisters or even my actual sister. Not even the associate pastor on staff who had escorted me down to the little room walked in to sit with me.
The Monday morning after this happened, I did go back one more time. I hand delivered a multi-page letter to Pastor Carter’s attention expressing my deep hurt and shock at how all was handled.
Two weeks later, I received a text message. It was Pastor Carter. “Hi Sunni, can we talk?” By that point, the raw heat of the experience had cooled. I politely told him that time has a way of healing things. “No thank you, all is well now.” That was the very last time I had contact with him.
Those people in Silk Springs Church that made the decision that Sunday morning weren’t affected by their choice the same way that I was. Either way, unbeknownst to them, God used their decision to set me on a completely different course. I don’t hold any ill feelings toward any of them now. I know they are my brothers and sisters in Christ. Our paths just weren’t meant to be parallel at that point in time.
Sometimes God allows separation – even amongst believers. Sometimes, we go in different directions and sometimes our own sin and wrong choices are the reason. Other times it’s the sin of others that he uses to change our course. Even when it appears we’ve messed everything up, the Lord still orchestrates his plans. It’s important for us to repent and move forward, seeking him in obedience after we do sin. It’s also important to remember that churches are full of people – imperfect people. We, us flawed believers, don’t always handle things in the best way. We don’t always see things the same or have the exact same convictions. That’s part of our broken nature. That is also why our faith walk with Him can’t be dependent on others.
He commands us to meet in community for fellowship, to break bread together in communion, to pray and worship together. That is for our good, but number one, for his glory. Despite how the cliche goes that “the church is full of hypocritical Christians,” that is not our out, since we are commanded by our God in his word to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together.
We are being sanctified, walking (not planted) in ongoing repentance. That is a continual process.
I knew twelve years ago that I still wanted the church in my life. I desperately needed it, because I am a member of Jesus’ body. I felt led to join a church body that aligned most closely to what I saw modeled by the early church in his word. The Lord in his sovereignty led me to one, so I can only be thankful for the trial that took me there.
For the next six years or so after that, my children and I were members of a small church in Cochran where all four of us grew in the knowledge of the Lord. We were in community and service there.
Several years later, after that season in that little church and after relocating, he led us to a new fellowship, for which I am so incredibly thankful. It is our church home now. I have been beautifully blessed in my faith journey, even through the trials and even when I contributed to them myself. There was a bumpy off course season in between these two churches that have made the greatest mark on my faith. My Father redirected my steps. He reproved, redeemed and restored me, even though I intentionally entered into sin for a short period and strayed off of his course for a moment.
That is another story for another time of the beautiful intervention that he has woven into my life.
If you have experienced hurt, intentional or unintentional from your brothers and sisters in Jesus, you may have to grieve that, but then seek to reconcile and move forward. Seek the Lord in your move – whether that is to stay where the offender and the offended can both grow in the Lord and there is restoration – or perhaps in cases where the leadership or culture is not modeling repentance and reconciliation commanded in God’s word, he may lead you elsewhere. Although that shouldn’t be our first go to of course, sometimes it is necessary. Either way, I encourage you to be in a fellowship. Obey the Lord – for his glory, but also for your very best as well. We need community as his body. Flawed, sinful people will never get it perfectly until we are in community on the other side of this life. And oh what a new life that will be!
Scripture to help in reflection:
Acts 15:36 – 41
Romans 12:14 – 20
II Timothy 2:24 – 26
Hebrews 10:19 – 39
Mining Beneath the Ordinary 