two women.

A tale of two women.

One woman stands in front of me because she lost her son to a heroin OD.  He was 23.
Her questions are difficult to answer and she searches for hope in the midst of her devastation.  To this point what we offered to her as a church was not a place of hope or community of faith.  It was a seemingly irrelevant institution that would have been the last place to be on a Sunday morning.  Too many important things to do and tasks to get done.  Why come to church?  What have we invited her to? In a moment of crisis she turns to the church to offer comfort and peace.

Tonight, I attended the Lower Township Symposium on Substance Abuse.  I appreciated the response from our community leaders because they are willing to be open and honest about the issues and concerns in our town.  Other politicians in our state hide behind their office and turn a blind eye to the problems to make sure that their communities hold to a pristine image in the media.  Our town has a problem with heroin.  Every town does.  We are willing to acknowledge the problem and seek a solution. Here are just a few facts and figures of interest -

Usage of heroin with 18-25 year olds - up 24%
91 ODs so far this year - 5 last week alone.
Heroin is going for about $20 a bag.  Over 3500 bags were seized this year alone.
Adolescents - (15-18)  2009 reported a 9% usage.  2013 shows a 27% usage
Our counseling and treatment centers are revealing a 154% increase in treatment for heroin.  A noticeable impact is seen on younger students.

Our Superintendent of Schools gave a great talk about how we need to have a cultural change, an attitude change, and learn how to take ownership and respond to individual accountability.  This is one of the hardest, but most important, challenges of all.  In a culture that wants to blame someone else this is tough.  It seems that everyone I talk to about their problems has someone else to point the finger at.  It is certainly not 'their' fault.  How do we recognize our need if we are so quick to blame others for the problems?

Today another woman stood in front of me.  She is removing her membership from our church because she felt like she wasn't being 'fed'.  Ah yes, the classic 'being fed' line.  Basically what this means is that I don't like the Pastor and am not able to listen to what s/he says.  I appreciate her honesty though.  I think it takes true courage to say it to someone's face.  She has been a long time member of the church.  The challenge is that we took one of the many sacred cows, and not only tipped it over, but BBQ'ed it and served it for lunch.  She didn't want to eat this kind of meal.  The change was too much, her institution that she loved was different than the way it used to be, and she is leaving.

I am upset about both of the women that stand before me. The experienced and more reasonable pastors would suggest to me that I should grieve about both women.  I don't.  I grieve the first rather than the latter.  The latter, for me, has had decades of an institution that meant something to her.  She will find the same irrelevant and insider-focused culture in the next church she is attending.  I am not upset about her salvation or her eternal destiny.  I am grieved that this is the product of disciples that we have produced too often in the mainline church.  After all the decades of discipleship we have created folks that don't know how to feed themselves.  Infants still.  Look - the language of being fed in church needs to stop.  Or at least let's talk about it in its fullness.  If people are allowed to talk about being fed or not fed, can we realize that we have spiritually overweight Christians?  Those who take in but never give back?  We have eaters but very few exercisers.

For those of you (all two of you who read this blog) - What bothers you more?  The upset church member who is leaving, or the mother who has never come?