Why go to church?

One of my very favorite Christian writers Rachel Held Evans recently posted about the struggles she’s having about church. How she’s been turned off by many things about church lately. And although she still likes the idea of people giving her casseroles when she has a baby (a tradition church people are famous for), she’s just not sure she can find peace at church right now.  

As a youth director at a church, I’m often grilled on why anyone should bother showing up on Sunday morning, so the topic is something I’ve given a lot of thought to. Below is my response to her post (which I also left in her comments section). 

I can completely understand your frustrations. I’m a paid part-time youth leader at my church and we are extremely contemporary, which helps with some of it.

However, being a paid staff member at a church gives you a totally different perspective, and many times that’s not a good thing. Unfortunately, many people feel they have the right to judge you harshly when you work at their church in way that’s totally different from how they would treat a regular new member or even a co-worker. My soul has endured many wounds in the role. Also, the politics of running a church can be ugly and I admit I’ve questioned my relationship with the church more during my time in this role than at any other point in my life.

That being said, I keep going back to two things. 1. It’s easy to be a Christian alone with your Bible locked in room somewhere. The hard part is living it out amidst all the messiness that is a world full of humans. 2. There’s no such thing as a perfect church, and even if you find one, it won’t be perfect the second you join.

Church is not God. But, I do think that being part of a community of believers is important to growing closer to God.

Through the church’s faults, we learn forgiveness. Through the messy behind-the-scenes clashes we learn how to create peace. And of course, through the fellowship and the mission work and the changes we see in the lives touched by the church, we get a little bit of a better understanding of love.

I have come to understand that only God can meet the perfect expectations I have in my head, and that in turn helps me extend grace to the church and those in it.

I’m sure there’s a church out there you would feel comfortable in and I pray you find it, not because I think of you as a “project” but because despite all the bad that comes with “church” there’s so much good stuff too.

Like working with a youth who decides to give up drugs and alcohol; or taking kids on a mission trip and seeing them try to live out their faith in a new way upon return; or finding a new friend who helps you understand scripture in a different way; or growing close to a spiritual adviser who you not only respect, but also love; or seeing a youth lead a week of Vacation Bible School and grow into a leader before your eyes; or listening to the praise band sing “I’ll go where you send me.”

And of course, the casseroles.

Love and prayers,
Crystal Lindell

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A post for the internet machine in the moon attic, circa 2108

I’m exhausted.

One day, when my great, great grandchildren fire up the old 2012 internet machine in the moon attic and they find my blog and my Facebook and my Twitter and my LinkedIn and my old college newspaper articles, and they read about my life in excruciating detail, they will look at each other and say, “She was always tired.”

I should be working on my youth group lesson for tomorrow night, but I haven’t blogged since before the health care mandate made it past the Supreme Court, so I figured I should say, “What’s up?”

Just in case you don’t stalk me on Facebook, I recently got back from a trip to Colombia for my candy job. Colombia, as in the country, not the Sportswear company, (which spells it with a “u” anyway).

It was awesome, amazing, fantastical and I would genuinely move there. To sum up: The drug violence is down, I never once thought I was going to be kidnapped, I spoke mucho Spansligh; the weather is 80 degrees every day there; they have fruit from the Garden of Eden because they grow it year round in their stupid perfect weather; 1,000 pesos is worth roughly 50 cents, which made me feel very rich all week; and some of the toilets don’t have seats on them, which kind of weirded me out.

Also, at one point, after a factory tour that left all of us sweating, I turned to our guide with all the Spanglish confidence I could muster and said, “Estoy” for “I am” and “Caliente” for “hot.” Except together, those two words translate to “I’m horny.”

“I’m hot” is actually “Tengo calor” for those wondering.

I went on that trip to Colombia just hours after giving the sermon at my church and having a huge pancake breakfast fundraiser for the mission trip.

And, the second I got back from Colombia, we had Vacation Bible School. During that week, I was truly blessed to have some amazing people around to help me survive not only sand art, but multiple renditions of Baby Shark, do, do, do, do, do, Baby Shark! (Hi Monica! Hi Sarah!)

On the last day though, I was a bit of zombie, and at one point a four-year-old girl was chatting with me and I thought she was pushing her chair in, and then in the middle of telling me about her the 12 pretend friends she brought so she could get a prize for bringing friends, she looked at me completely exasperated and said, “Umm, can you help me get my elbow unstuck from this chair?”

And I was like, “Oh, crap! Sorry! I didn’t realize you were actually stuck!”

Her arm had somehow been bent over the portion of the back chair where we store the Bibles and then gotten jammed.

Luckily, Sarah, the amazing youth who helped me run VBS, was smart enough to tell me to unbend the little girl’s arm so we could slide it out. If it had been left up to me alone, I would have probably resorted to lard and/or firemen.

Then, about an hour later, during our finale water balloon fight, the under wire in my bra broke. And it started jabbing into my skin like it was trying to stab me to death but it had patience to do it right and to cause as much torture as possible. So I ran to the bathroom, and grabbed some duck tap and tried to mend the problem “Burn Notice Style”, channeling Michael Weston:

“When your bra brakes in the middle of Vacation Bible School and you can’t leave to change it, the best thing to do is to grab some duck tape and make a patch. It won’t hold forever, but it will get the job done.”

Le sigh. I love Michael Weston.

Now, if only I could figure out how to fix my “over scheduled life” problem with Michael Weston wisdom, maybe I could finally get around to watching the latest Burn Notice. this could be the week Fiona finally gets out of prison you guys!

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Some things.

1. Financially, my family is pretty much on the brink of things, but I’ve a gained a strong trust in God for taking care of us all, after going to hell and back with the big guy upstairs and having him save me every time so I’m not freaking out too much.

2. For the record, I am the best Scrabble player in my family. I need everyone to know that because I’m not the best at any other game among them.

3. I’m currently hosting my mom and my three siblings in my apartment for Christmas. My mom and I shared my bed, while one brother got the couch and then my sister and my other brother each got their own queen-size air mattresses, which are lined up end to end between the couch and the TV in my living room. We made it work.

4. I got a free kitchen table from my best friend’s boyfriend, and it came just in time to host all those people. Praise the Lord, Hallelujah! Amen! And, AND!, it even has a leaf in the middle, so it’s totally big enough for all of them to sit around and lose at Scrabble to me.

5. My amazing friend Sarah helped me pick it said table because she’s the only person I know within a 100-mile radius that has a mini-van AND enough love in her heart to drive to Timbucktoo with me and get it. She never once complained — even when the two of us were trying to carry the thing down a flight of stairs that randomly featured a left-turn right in the middle. I love you Sarah.

6. The Bears season is over then, I guess. I knew as soon as I got the text message from the Chicago Tribune that fateful night saying Jay Cutler had broke his thumb that it was all over. It still sucks though. On a brighter note, Tim Tebow seems like a genuinely nice guy. I mean, ya, I was mad when he beat the Bears, but then I remembered that everyone was beating the Bears these days, so I got over it.

7. I hid all of my sister’s gifts in a really good hiding spot and she has no clue where they are. This is especially hard because the two of us share a psychic connection and she can usually tell what I’m thinking just by looking at me.

8. I joined my church last Sunday. I know, I know, you’re all like, “Dude, Crystal, you started going/working there like 18 months ago? And you JUST now joined? What the what?!” But I take that decision very seriously and  I really wanted to make sure everything was a good fit before I said my vows in front of the congregation. A wise man once told me that it takes about 18 months to feel fully accepted as a new leader in a church. Over the past year and a half, there have been extreme highs, but there have also been days when I left there feeling like I’d been hit by a truck because I was so stressed about it all. And I just kept telling myself, 18 months, 18 months, 18 months. And you know what? It’s been 18 months and I really do feel like a genuine part of the family there now.  That doesn’t mean I don’t still stress and worry and whatnot, because you know, I’m Crystal and stuff, but it makes me feel like they’re kind of stuck of with me the way a sister is stuck with her brother. There’s a strange comfort in that.

9. I’ve been off work since Thursday for the holidays, and my company closes its office the week between Christmas and New Year’s because they rock, so I don’t go back until Jan. 3. This means I have a legit Christmas break. At 28. And did I mention the free candy? Best. Job. Ever.

10. I’m saying a formal pastoral prayer for the Christmas Eve services at my church tonight. It’s mostly a mash-up of Christmas and Advent prayers from the Methodist Book of Worship, but it’s my first time doing something like this, so I’m kind of excited about it. Usually when I pray in church, I just wing it, so this is really different. I wanted it to be formal, but also accessible, which is really hard to do. An excerpt:

“When our need for a Savior was great, you sent your Son to be born of the virgin Mary. To our lives, he brings joy and peace, justice, mercy and love. Grant that his Spirit may be born anew in our hearts tonight and that we may joyfully welcome him to reign over us.”

I love that line, “When our need for a Savior is great, you sent your Son.” It makes me think that humanity was just barely hanging off the cliff, with their fingers slipping off the edge, and God came through. Like He always does.

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