A story of convergence

On Convergence

I moved my family to an almost rural community in Central Virginia just over four years ago.  After a while I felt called to bring my family to a local church community and we started going to a rural Baptist church. 

The old folks appeared to have a handle on the community and control of the culture even though they had a very liberal pastor in place.  There was little convergence at this point however because he did not control the people who controlled the culture.

After about 5 months of attendance, the liberal pastor left and things got even better.  Our community seemed to flourish.  A few months later, however the church got an interim pastor who had spent his career with the International Mission Board organization.

Soon after becoming the interim pastor, the "pastor search committee" - which I will point out did not consist only of the elders of the church but was at least half women - decided to make a motion to have the interim pastor join full-time.  We weren't members yet so we couldn't vote and my few reservations may not have completely convinced me it was the wrong move anyway.  The church voted and he became the full-time pastor.

Immediately, he cut the number of hymns down from 5 to 3, changed our traditional Doxology to a simple and ill-fit melody, changed service time from 10:15 to 11:00, and soon fired the old lady who played piano for years and replaced her with a young buck.  Soon after, he did a library liquidation and sold or gave away all the books in the church's library. 

The preaching now started including quips about the "corporate sin" of racism that is common for us Virginia Confederates.  Messages about a generic love that will "break down walls between communities" abounded.  Missionaries were brought in to teach about the importance of caring for refugees. 

The final straw for me was when something called "The Welcoming Prayer" by Thomas Keating was not only preached but became the main prayer of the pastor.  As the pastor prayed this for the congregation my wife and I distinctly felt as if dark forces had been welcomed into our church.

The Welcoming Prayer (by Father Thomas Keating)

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I welcome everything that comes to me today

because I know it's for my healing.

I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons,

situations, and conditions.

I let go of my desire for power and control.

I let go of my desire for affection, esteem,

approval and pleasure.

I let go of my desire for survival and security.

I let go of my desire to change any situation,

condition, person or myself.

I open to the love and presence of God and

God's action within. Amen.

We haven't been back since that day.  We did get a few gems from our time there, but the best thing was the first hand experience of a church's decline.  It will be hard to not see these signs in the future.

Our church's culture had been corrupted, message inverted from Jesus to the new god of Social Justice, and finally the congregation had welcomed the enemy.  In a word, our church had been converged.