It's been about a year since we decided to leave the church we were in. Soon I told my parents, who attend the same church. They were disappointed but supportive of us finding something that works better for us. Soon after that, they were at a meeting talking about some of the church's future plans. They gave me a sheet of paper they got at that meeting, not intending to pressure us to stay, but to just make us aware of potential changes just in case it would make us want to stay.
The paper had an outline that the pastor wrote up about where he saw things going with the church in the next few years. This ministry plan included stuff like starting small group Bible studies in various parts of the city, which is something that I would've appreciated. This was also part of efforts to reach out to other people. It also covered a bunch of other ideas. Something about this whole thing frustrated me. As I've said before in this series, my enthusiasm for reaching out to people through the church is near zero. Simply reading a "ministry plan" frustrated me, however good its intentions were. Maybe I'm better off attending church services but paying absolutely no attention to the church's other programs and plans.
I read that plan on a Sunday morning when we didn't go to any church. That morning, I went out for a jog to a nearby park in the river valley. Maybe I had been planning to go running before I started feeling frustrated, but running turned out to be a good way to vent the frustration. I ended up exploring off the beaten path a bit, ending up at a little ravine where the trail basically ends, or at least gets very narrow. I turned around and continued running, arriving home feeling like that was what I needed.
Why would something like that frustrate me this much?
In future posts, I'll start talking about churches we've visited.
