THE
TRANSPARENT
CHURCH

Power structures can be difficult things to navigate.

In the church where I function in a leadership capacity, we do our best to be approachable, humble, and available for our members as best we can while training new leaders to do the same.

While we don’t always do it perfectly, one thing we are committed to is being committed to being touchable.

Why? Well, besides the many Biblical reasons that exist, we have personal ones as well.

Years ago, there was an untouchable hierarchy in our church. If you had money, you were in. If you had status, you were in. If you had good looks, you were in (did I mention we briefly had a Ralph Lauren Polo model for our youth pastor? He was actually a great guy- and really, really ridiculously good looking, as they say- but just sort of shoved into the position for reasons other than his wanting to do it).

Early on, I saw favors extended to others I believed I had earned, generosity freely given to others who had done a fraction of the work or accomplished a fraction of the results, and this stung, deeply.

The verbal humiliation in public I experienced from our pastor (He would call me to come to him by yelling out, “Hey, boy!”- and that in front of my wife), combined with his mostly ignoring me otherwise, did hurt. But-

In the end, I came to be unbelievably grateful for the rejection I experienced for a number of reasons, but one reason stood out in particular when the church began to go up in flames:

Those who were closest to the center of the dysfunction paid the deepest price. Multiple other leaders, primarily due to their exposure to toxic ministry culture were eventually divorced from their wives, and their families were shattered.

Those who were closest to the darkness were the ones most deeply affected by it. I don’t know God’s reasons for keeping us at arm’s length from harm’s way, nor his reasons for allowing those other men to be so close to the fallout, but I can see now that what felt like rejection was actually God’s protection for us.

I think of David, in the Bible, as a boy, and the sting he had to feel while his brothers were out at war with the Philistines. David, of course, was left home to take care of the sheep- a menial task at best- while the opportunity for honor and glory for his King, country, and family was reserved for his brothers.

Only, it became clear to him (and to us, the reader of the 1 Samuel narrative), when he was sent one day to the battle camp to bring his brothers food and supplies from home, that what felt like rejection was actually God’s protection. How so?

Look at what had happened to his brothers- they became like the man they followed! King Saul, once a great warrior in his own right, should have been the one answering Goliath’s challenge, but his fear and cowardice had infected the whole army, to the point that none of the men would go out and fight- his brothers included.

In other words, they internalized the spirit of the one they followed.

But David’s heart and life had been protected. How? Because of and through the rejection!

And of course, the ultimate example of the way in which we are delivered through rejection is in the life of our Savior, Jesus.

He was handed over to death- rejected- that we might now receive God’s mercy, rescue, and protection.

I feel an incredible sadness for our friends who were in the “inner circle”, so to speak, who absorbed the punishment given out and whose lives were permanently affected by it. There was a time, later, where my wife and I were called upon to do the same thing, to a certain extent. But I learned this: sometimes, if not most of the time, when we experience legitimate rejection by those who ought to be treating us differently- God is up to something. And in our case, we learned, that what feels like rejection from others can actually be a form of divine protection. If we had been closer to our pastor at that particular point in our lives, there’s no reason to think that we would have ended up any differently than our friends.

If you are experiencing rejection today, don’t quit! What if the pain you are experiencing were actually a shield from something worse, and a sign of something better to come?