The Misplaced Wound, Inflicted

This whole experience is an interesting one for me. Again, I'm calling this the misplaced wound, and so I'm going to be writing about what I thought the issue was. It wasn't until healing took place that I realized what had really happened. The inflicting I'm about to share is the moment that I held on to and attributed to this wound.

It was sometime in the spring, I had been at the church for about six months, and honestly things were going pretty well. The new young adult group was growing rapidly, and they were really into the study we were doing. We kept out growing our space, and we were discussing expanding to a second night, and even kicking around the idea of starting a young adult focused service on Saturday nights. The prayer nights I had started were also going well. They weren't growing, but that didn't bother me as we were meeting after dark, but we had seen some really amazing things happen on Sunday mornings that I can only attribute to our prayer time. The teen group was also doing well. Again, it wasn't growing numerically, but the teens were learning, and remembering, the things that I was teaching them. Honestly, I felt good with what I was doing and the fruit I was seeing.

Every month we had a meeting with the Sunday School Board. This consisted of the pastor, his wife who led the children on Wednesday night, another lady who led the children on Sundays, myself, and one other woman who led another class (she and her husband were a huge encouragement to me, and I really had a genuine love for them). I don't remember the specifics of what happened in this meeting. I know we were at one point talking about how to split the pre-teens and teens more effectively because there were some kids who were outgrowing the children's ministry but not ready for the youth group. Again, I don't remember the specific moment, but at one point I felt the passion I had leave me. It might sound weird, but it actually happened. The pastor told me a later, "I saw the fire leave your eyes."

I don't know exactly why, maybe because I was being challenged illogically, maybe because I was leading one of the few ministries in that church that was growing, maybe simply because I was a 23 year old kid with his first real job, maybe it was a combination of all three, but something changed with that meeting. I began to dread going into work. My relationship with the pastor, my boss, began to be strained, as did my relationship with the other children's leader. Honestly, I'm going to attribute a lot of my feelings and reactions to youth and immaturity. I've grown up a lot in the past few years, and I've learned a little about playing the political game with organizations (though I still have a lot to learn when it comes to putting this into practice).

At that moment, my whole attitude and outlook began to change, and this would be the moment I would keep coming back to as the defining wound of my time in Michigan...


Fight the lion, 1 Peter 5.1-11

TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!