The Broken Coffee Cup – Part 1 – A Year & a Half Since I Withdrew My Membership
As a writer, I use my website for many purposes. I write for numerous reasons, on multiple different issues and subjects, and in a variety of genres. And, besides for myself, I write only for one other essential audience – others. At times, in my mind, I have written tending towards a particular audience but also always with my larger readership in mind. By design, I have leaned “The Broken Coffee Cup” series, perhaps the most personal I have penciled in a while, towards friends who have remained at the church I left after forty years attendance, who had issues and/or expressed concerns or questioned my thinking, motives, and Christian spiritual status in leaving the church.
However, I also penciled this series for my larger readership, to share the changes and issues that have arisen among friends and within the church since I resigned my membership, and my thoughts and emotions and the eventual understandings stemming from my experience and observations of this process. In addition, I write for others whose minds may also recognize aspects of their lives within these sentences, and for those whose hearts resonate, for whatever reason, with what this post offers, which may be again perhaps just those who appreciate how I write and what I write about.
The opening photo and motif for this series of postings – the broken coffee cup, which I broke in the earlier months of this year – was one of a set of two coffee mugs, both with roosters, one with a green color design, and the broken one with a blue design. These mugs, received many years ago as a random, unexpected, but very appreciated and admired gift, were from close friends who were also long-time participants in the Bible study I taught for many years in our home. Another reason I chose this photo was that, for me, a cup of coffee, or tea, with and among friends, has always been associated in my mind and life with friendship, and listening, and sharing in and enjoying the company and life of others – a useful, warm, and accurate concept for fellowship among Christians.
When I broke the coffee cup, a favorite, by clumsily banging it against the kitchen sink while washing it, I was upset. Then as I pondered its brokenness, I realized that this was how at times I felt about the loss of fellowship and friends from church – near the end of my letter withdrawing my membership, I described this feeling as “I have no place at the church, no place at the table, no encouragement or support.”
Now I knew I could glue the handle back on the cup and use it as a pencil holder, but also understood that I could never really safely use it to again drink coffee. And then I also began to realize that with friendships and fellowship that have been broken, or strained, or even seemingly ruptured and ended, that doesn’t always mean that something different or even new cannot eventually take its place. For sometimes things that are broken, like the coffee cup, cannot be restored to its original state or function, but can be resurrected to a different and perhaps better state, perhaps one with even enhanced and greater significance and meaning – such as becoming a metaphor to illustrate new understandings. And especially with friends, and also family members, if the new or renewed relationship is founded upon free, open, and honest communication without anger or judgement, then new and deeper acceptances and understandings can develop into stronger friendships and brighter fellowship – a thought for me permeated with light and hope.
I had just broken the coffee cup a few days before when one of the close friends who gave me the coffee cups visited us one afternoon. I still had the broken coffee cup on the kitchen counter when she arrived, and after a time, while she sat at our kitchen table talking to my wife, I again gazed at the broken cup, and picking it up, I remembered my musings on broken things and I brought it to our friend to share my thoughts. I began with how things that are broken cannot always be fixed, but can change and develop into something different. However, my words, thoughts, and explanations proved to be clumsy (like breaking the coffee cup in the first place), ineffective, misunderstood, and very counter-productive to my true intentions. In short, my explanation did not go well at all and sadly just seemed to make our relationship even more strained. (This is why with metaphors I should just stick to writing!)
This series then is written with that event in mind – among other events with other friends – to respond, explain, and reach out as best I can to friends still at church who were and are still troubled that I left the church and who may also be considering that it was me who broke fellowship, the bond of love and caring among Christian believers, and that my actions, if not sinful and selfish, were at least ill-considered and not in line with Scripture.
And, so…I freely confess that I broke the coffee cup, but I also state that it was not me who broke the friendship and fellowship between the friends I have that still attend the church, nor was it I who created the environment and soil in which all true fellowship suffered and withered and faded within the church. No, it was the church itself with its steadily developed and promoted political ideology over the years that came to be deeply rooted at the center of the church that broke the bonds of fellowship. This politically-tinged gospel began to overlay everything – the preaching, teaching, and actions of the church – and eventually eclipsed and I believe put aside the true basis of Christian friendship and fellowship – the primacy of Christ and His gospel of peace, an intimate relationship with Christ in prayer, a close walk with the Holy Spirit, and a devotion to and fervent regard and practice of the two great commandments – to love God with our whole heart, mind and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
I neither blame or am upset with any friend or acquaintance from church who moved away from me, as they, as with many others in the church, had come to be spiritually, emotionally, and rationally oppressed by the constant and repetitious political messaging embedded in what was preached and taught, to the extent that, for many, every teaching became uncritically accepted, believed, lived out, and repeated as if the political sound-bites and messages were instruments from scripture fostering justice and righteousness and holy service to God. This was and continues to be the church’s great unrepentant sin foisted upon the congregation and those reached by the church’s significant media reach.
Over the months as I began to prepare in my mind and heart to write this posting – originally envisioned as just one long post – I considered including passages from certain of the letters I wrote to the church leadership to again illustrate the basic spiritual issues just noted above that led me from the church, but discarded that idea as all the letters and other writings to the head pastor, the elders, and several other pastors at the church and to Christian friends, etc., are still posted on my website if anyone wanted to refresh their mind with what I actually wrote or even peruse them for the first time. (The link to exact website location provided directly below.)
Letters, Correspondence, & Dialogue with Church & Friends on Christ, Faith, & Christian Living | Writing In The Shade Of Trees
Also, once I realized that I needed to break down this posting into at least three parts, I understood that I needed to include at least some information on the main issues that had developed within the church and among friends since I left the church.
I then decided that I would share my major thoughts gleamed from a letter I wrote to a dear friend in the earlier part of this year, almost a year and a half since I left the church, after a lengthy discussion in which I expressed my thoughts and distress over the continuing political process at church. Originally, I was going to post these thoughts in the Part 3 of this series, but realized it best served as an introduction, as the letter describes my anguish over the deliberate political overlays that had engulfed the church and its effects within the church and the congregation.
Thus, this first post is lengthy because of the included letter. The next two postings, as envisioned now, will be much shorter – one dealing with the grief and emotions I felt at times hearing and addressing the actions and expressed thoughts propagated within the church and repeated by friends and others – the other describing my goals, hopes, and prayers for the church and for my friends through this series.
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Date: 1st Quarter 2022
Dear friend,
1st paragraph… I was very encouraged and blessed by your exhibited friendship …
2nd paragraph … member of Grace…described to me the painful conflicts of conscience and faith of thinking…must choose between speaking out on significant issues or having to remain silent to preserve the image of the “integrity” of the teaching ministry at Grace.
3rd paragraph …And the idolatry at church…to me first epitomized by the pastor publicly announcing the church’s disregard of local government pandemic regulations by the authority of and in the name of the now ex-president – not based on scripture as later preached and published – then by the pastor’s declaration to the ex-President before the 2020 election that “all true and real believers will be on your side”, followed by all the ensuing pronouncements of political/religious support and lack of condemnation or even mention of any of his evil and unlawful activities – all this is so overwhelmingly sad and still deeply incomprehensible to me.
4th paragraph Also sad is the state of the church right now where this mindset of idolatry, and its uncritical acceptance, and even applause at church, seems to me to have become so deeply entrenched and rooted in the thinking and lives of many at Grace, that it has created its own diversion from critical thinking through a self-validating, and publicly proclaimed cover story of “truth and clear biblical teaching”. The chains of this mind and soul enslavement were perhaps unconsciously but inevitably forged by a growing need within the church leadership to self-deny and deter the church membership from thinking about and understanding this sin and its political origins and dynamics within the church.
5th paragraph Thus, as is natural with the world and all those implementing its ways, there emerged an increase of authority-pressure and scripture-wrapped intimidation, creating an eventually enforced Christ-dishonoring church environment of silence and conformity of mind. Moreover, this conformity of thinking, understood by some members as within the context of the unity of believers, is maintained and guarded from critical thinking and independent thought by the church’s boast of always being a church of “clear biblical teaching, scriptural integrity, and excellence of teaching”.
6th paragraph This is so sad to me. For much of what had been done in the surge towards tempting God’s people to consider this man as good, and then shepherding them into a further complex of idolatrous sin of putting their trust in him and the political process, is clearly not taking every thought captive to Christ nor can it ever be said that this process was Spirit-led. It is a gross and ugly hypocrisy to boast of the church’s “clear biblical teaching” while simultaneously and continually violating the two great commandments. This sin against God’s people at Grace and the masking of this evil, is at the core of my spiritual conflict with the church and is what I spend much of my time concerning the church in prayer before the Lord.
7th paragraph This hiding of the sin of idolatry and diffusion of guilt seems an even uglier, darker, and more idolatrous sin than the blasphemous proclaimed allegiance to an evil man. For now, the sin is amplified by employing God Himself, His name, and His word, to cover sin and hide this sin from God’s people. And all of this done in order to protect a trio of other idols – the sanctified image of the teaching ministry, the pastor of the church, and the exaltation of Grace Church itself. This idolatry is such a black hole of sin and deception, an ever-increasing abomination to the Lord, His gospel, and His kingdom.
8th paragraph Please forgive me for the strength of my writing and any overreaching I have done…
9th paragraph… Word of Life Church (WOLC) in Missouri has been a vital part of my spiritual journey since 2017, and…the Lord has continued to actively intertwine my life more and more with others at the church, both those physically present that I have met over the years during our visits to St. Joseph, and those within the on-line church that I have met and grown ever closer to through our weekly interaction. However, even with all this, I was still hesitant about actually becoming a member of WOLC because by the Lord it did not seem quite the right time to join. I had been praying about this heart issue and possibly joining for half a year…the Lord provided the one thing that my heart needed, and that was His gracious and gentle permission in His timing to now join my life to another church, another group of believers, who are all on a similar journey as mine. …
10th paragraph When I left the church…I never turned my back to the friends I still had there. In the aftermath of my leaving, a few of my friends at church and I have become even closer because of their own struggles with the church. With others, their relationship towards me in a sense continues, but with an uncomfortable estrangement tinged, I feel, with judgement. Some friends have decided to just outright end or let wither our friendship, and a few characterize me now as a backslider or not even a believer. Other sweeter friends are just thoroughly confused as to what to think and do with me.
11th paragraph Whatever the relationship or attitude towards me, I have continued to pray for them. For those struggling against the political currents and ensuing idolatry at church, I have prayed for wisdom and their strengthening. For those seeming to be spiritually captive to the surging political/religious mixed ideologies, I have prayed for the Lord’s grace and wisdom to lead them away from a heart-involvement with all this confusing, sinful noise, to a renewed thinking mind, a greater intimacy in prayer with Christ, and a deepening understanding of and desire for a close walk with the Holy Spirit. For all, I pray that the Lord will lift from them any spiritual oppression and the debilitating effects of being led astray to trust in something other than Christ and His gospel of peace and love. I further pray that He will shepherd them back to a true faith and a joy in fulfilling the two great commandments of loving God with their whole heart and mind and their neighbor as their self. In short, I pray that the Lord will rescue His people from errors, lies, deceptions, and the idolatry that without repentance will remain a center of sin at Grace.
12th paragraph…I believe that a calling out for the pastor, elders, and other pastors of the church to repent is essential for the rescue of God’s people from the idolatry at Grace. However, I also believe, that the only calling out to repentance that can now possibly touch the pastor and elders is through a deep heartfelt understanding and conviction of the havoc the church’s calculated departure from Christ, the truth of the gospel, and the ensuing idolatry, has visited upon the collective church of God’s people at Grace.
13th paragraph Within me for months now, I have felt a leading to write of this havoc as a posting for my website. This sense of leading has been through a growing and deepening burden for the spiritual plight of certain friends and others at church, and for the church as a whole, by what I see, hear of, and sense of the turmoil and sin within the church through the Holy Spirit. However, here with this issue, with my writing, I do not have a clear focus of whom I would write for, or who my overall audience would be. …
14th paragraph Right now, in terms of Grace, my main audience is the Lord through fervent prayer for His convicting and intervening grace, and for the cleansing of His church and the rescue of His people. The issues at Grace before the Lord are not PR issues, rather they are serious and abiding sin issues that cannot be ignored, for the Lord is not blind or deaf, and they are sins which can only be addressed by a public humbling to the ground, and a deep and thorough public acknowledgment of this idolatry from the pulpit by the pastor, followed by an honest, active and enduring repentance.
15th paragraph For this I also pray, as these prayers stem from the love and care I still have for those I know at Grace and for the church as a whole. And I know the Lord welcomes these prayers because He has promised to hear our voice and supplications, and because these prayers reflect the desires of His own heart. Also I know He will and is answering these prayers because He has promised to carry His church to perfection, and because of His great jealousy and love for His church and for every individual within His body – the struggling, the wayward, and even the believer blinded and enslaved to sin, regardless of position or status within the church.
16th paragraph …
17th paragraph … Thank you again for your encouragement and prayers …
Chris
I always am a bit sad at how some of these relationships have ruptured for you.