So what do you do when you are a little scared to divulge how you feel to others in your own church for fear that you may be judged, shouted down, or overwhelmed by a wave of denial or "positive thinking"? Thinking about Krista's blog yesterday I want to comment on some of what has been going on in our church for the last five or six years.

I talked to a lady yesterday after our service who made the comment that people are scared to talk to each other. I think that is so sad. I completely understand that it affects most likely many churches but shouldn't we, as a church that is hurting after so many blows to membership, confidence and mission, really open up to one another and speak about the pain, suspicion and sense of loss that we all feel?

It has been a unique experience for Krista and I, and anyone else who has joined the church in the last 6 years, as we have come in what sometimes seems the twilight era of a church. As has been told us, the church had formerly been a shining example of renewal and had been a focal point of a presentation dealing with that subject that went across the country. The last decade saw the rise and flourishing of a vibrant youth program that touched many, many youth in the community and left an impression that I have experienced as my time as the music director at St. David's.

Somewhere all the way some things began to happen that would eventually chip away at the membership resulting in not only those who were perimeter attenders leaving, but core members who gave tirelessly of there time and love. One thing I know has been the rise and acceptance of the gospel of Love. It is a focus on social gospel within an emphasis on the love of others and especially their rights that ignores the source and meaning of the gospel itself, Christ. This gospel of Love becomes an idol that many people worship in place of Christ himself. There is much talk of God and his love but Jesus seems to become less than he truly is, a man who taught the social gospel as the most important thing. Out of this comes the same-sex blessings and ordination issue which again you can read about in Krista's blog. Our pastor came to our church at this time never intending to leave the diocese over this issue and has said that he never considered this to be a communion breaking issue. He has lead the church in taking a stance that we are part of the diocese but we are opposed to same-sex marriages. We are as of now one of only a few churches in the diocese that are claiming this stance that in my mind has become a nebulous claim resulting in what effectiveness I'm not sure. Another blow came, as Krista has said, when one of the orchestrators of this vibrant youth program was arrested on a missions trip on suspicion of sexual assault of a minor. Yet another continuous blow, I believe, has been poor administrative handling of the church and a lack of proactivity in encouraging open dialogue as a way to healing.

Now any and all of these have jointly combined to provide a massive heart attack to our church that it definately has not recovered from as of yet. The facts are that people continue to leave, the youth program is decimated and in my opinion, finished, and our pastor pleads for people to remain committed to our church as a shelter within the storm of what is going on in our diocese. I have felt likee we could remain because technically we as a church disagree with our diocese position on same sex marriages and ordination. But I see little evidence of that and the more conservative people who leave our church the less effective this voice has become until it is a rather almost a position of trying to block out what is happening rather than speaking against it.

I wish I could give you a mental snapshot of what has happened and is happening to our church and then explain to you that we have felt many times of good fellowship, Christ's presence, and Godly teaching despite of all these struggles. This makes it hard to think of leaving because through all of this we have felt that God is teaching us about what it means to be part of the body of Christ. Yet we may be leaving, for job and life reasons, so we take the knowledge and relationships gained out of this 3 year experience and pray that we are always listening for God's voice.

I feel like I need to say more to flesh this out but I need to give Jakob his breakfast now.

It is Monday morning and I'm feeling the need to capitilize properly when I type on MSN. In fact it does take me a longer time to do this and thus to respond to people but part of me just feels wrong when I use lower case "i"s.