Okay, let me be blunt. After talking with a friend tonight about church, I realized that there are so many things about Life Bridge that I love, but relationally, I feel like I'm starving.
Let me be clear. This is not a new feeling. I don't have these feeling just because I spoke with my friend tonight who Pursued a Different Church Body for exactly that reason. I spent the first few years at Life Bridge going back and forth to College. If there was a relational disconnect, I was not in a place that I would have been too concerned or noticed. But then... After I left Bethel and started going to church consistently, I was looking for those relationships and I didn't find a lot of them.
Then slowly, one by one people started being called to other churches, the few people I had relationships with, over this past few years started leaving.
So in 2009, I left to work for Camfel Productions and really felt the disconnect. I tried to stay connected to Life Bridge, sending post cards and letters... Tammy called me, and Becca wrote back to me, but I was otherwise unheeded. Out of site out of mind.
I've disconnected since then. I've gone through incredible depression, loneliness, and junk that hasn't changed much, but I've been trying so hard to feel connected and right, and while things have improved slighly in my own mind, and with my small group. I still feel terribly disconnected.
The thing that talking with my friend did do, was give me the mind to start praying about whether God wants me to stay at Life Bridge or seek fellowship (ultimitely relationships) somewhere else.
I will admit I have searched other churches online. The thing is that there is so much I love about LifeBridge that I don't want to give up. But I want more an idea of nurturing relationships, I want the practice of it and it's exhausting when you try to be relational and no one responds.
I wonder if this is the struggle my friend Josh had/is having.
So I will continue to pray.
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