Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Pastor (11/30/06)
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TITLE: Kaleidoscope | Previous Challenge Entry
By Symantha McClennan
12/07/06 -
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Kaleidoscope
My first experience in looking for my very own church as an adult clicks through my head like a Kaleidoscope whirling Lucy as she gorged herself on chocolate: I went to church looking for something. Click! Something that I expected the pastor to provide; answers, clarity, a direction to my life that I had not heretofore known, a place to belong, a place to be useful, a place free of hatred and anger and hypocrisy.
I was wrong. Click! He was merely a man. A man in a nice suit, a comfortable middle-age paunch and thinning brown hair held in place with some sort of men’s “beauty” product. Click! His wife didn’t like him. I only saw her once but her manner was abrupt, her tone icy, her demeanor harsh and unforgiving. Perhaps she just didn’t like him in that moment but her manner lacked grace, beauty, even the simple respect that one human being reserves for another.
I attended a class. Click! A class to learn how to be a member of the church; the diagram was complicated and meaningless to one whose only introduction to church had been as one of “those” children picked up by the bus and transported to church where I’d dropped my few coins in the passed plate, learned a memory verse to get a wildly colored pencil and a pink eraser, and then procured a stale cookie and glass of syrupy sweet punch for the ride home.
I called the pastor. Click! I’d worked up my courage much like the time I called a boy when I was 12, though I’m not sure that I ever actually made that call. Anyway, with much delay the pastor returned my call. We agreed to meet. Click! He didn’t show. I screwed up my courage to call again, we agreed to meet. Click! He didn’t show. I didn’t call the third time. I saw him at church. Inserting a finger in the tight collar of his shirt beneath his brown patterned silk tie- he said, “I for…., had something come up. Shall we try it again?”
I replied, “You call me when it’s convenient for you and I’ll be there.” He never called. The church and that pastor provided me with nothing.
Click! I quit going to that church and didn’t feel like trying another.
Click! Perhaps my attitude was wrong. Perhaps my desire to be useful, to be ministered to was too self-serving; I wanted a place to belong, people to embrace and smile at and laugh with, to be useful.
Click! I had not first asked God how he wanted me to serve him. I had not asked him what He wanted from me.
Nehemiah 13:10
I also discovered the Levites had not been given what was due them, so they and the
singers who were to conduct the worship services had all returned to work their fields.(NLT)
Click! I wonder now if the pastor’s needs were being met. Did he have any support? I never bothered to ask him what he needed.
Click! The pastor is no longer a member of that church.
Click! I am.
Click! Click! Ask not what your pastor can do for you…ask what you can do for your pastor.
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I could really feel the narrator's hurt and frustration!
Was a little confused as to who "Lucy" might be. Also, would find the story easier to read if the paragraphs were broken up with white spaces in between them.
Great message!