burned

“The church is a whore, but she is my mother” - St. Augustine

My Basic Christian Doctrine professor promised us that we will get burned by the church. Especially for those of us going into ministry, whether a head pastor or youth pastor or working in missions. The church isn’t made up of the perfect suburb people. The church looks like this, like the family that I’ve been working with all summer. They are far from perfect, and so am I. And the issue is learning to work together. It hasn’t been easy. There have been days where I’ve been burned, when all I’ve wanted to do is run.

But you stick with it. Not for yourself, but because God calls us to be faithful. He’s been the most faithful to us broken down and sinful people, so why is it so hard for us to turn around and understand where the people we’re working with have come from? Why must we judge when we’re all the same in the end. We all need our faithful God. We also all need each other.

The church may burn me, but I couldn’t live without it.