What I am about to say is based off of my own personal experience and what I have studied in scripture. In no way am I trying to hurt the reputation of this church or the people who currently attend. 

I recently left the church I had been attending for five years. I started attending this church at the end of my junior year of high school. It was around the time I started following Jesus. It is a church that draws people in for sure. The amount of people who come to Christ and are baptized at that church is substantial. They helped me grow in my faith when I was a young believer but I came to the point where I felt as if something was lacking. I went through the motions of what I thought I should be doing as a believer. I read my bible, journaled, and attended groups/gatherings with other believers. That is what I thought it meant to follow Jesus because of what I had been taught.

During February of 2018 was when I began to want more. I was reading the Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer and that is when I began to realize there was more. From that point till now, my faith and my walk with Jesus has been at an all time high. I began to want more of the Lord. I was craving intimacy with Him. I began to crave the Holy Spirit in a way that that church couldn’t offer and that really threw me off. In the fall of 2018, I sat down with one of the church leaders to discuss the possibility of me leaving the church. I expressed to him how I felt they hindered it’s people from the Holy Spirit. He then told me that he thinks it is a “trend” to want to feel more of the Spirit. That response completely threw me off. We, as believers, have the privilege of the Holy Spirit. It is the part of the Lord that dwells amongst us. Shouldn’t we want to feel more of the Spirit? Shouldn’t we want to know the mystery of it? Now, I am not talking about getting all charismatic. I am talking about experiencing the Spirit in a profound way while still following the scriptures. Intimacy with the Lord through the Spirit is found all over the Bible…

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”                  -Acts 1:8 ESV

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” -John 3:6-8

“But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.” -Micah 3:8

These are just a few and they don’t even began to scratch the surface. I have noticed this amongst many American churches. Why are we content with this? Why are we not longing for more? Why are we not craving Him? God wants his people awed by Him. When was the last time you went to a church service and left in awe of the grandeur of His beauty and not just merely entertained by the band? I firmly believe that if you are content to receive from others (your pastor, your friends, your family) then you are missing out on the opportunity for the Holy Spirit to manifest itself amongst you.

Another reason was I felt like a number. If I’m being honest, I went to the church for five years and when I left, it went unnoticed. Yes, I talked to who I was under in the high school ministry department to tell them. I honestly felt as if the only person who wanted me to stay was the high school ministry director. The church should be our family. I don’t think that’s cliche either. We were called to have a supernatural kind of love. Jesus commanded it in John 13:34-35, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” We, as believers of Jesus Christ, were called to this. Why aren’t we sacrificially loving our brothers and sister in Christ the same way we love our biologically family? Those are the people we are bonded to by Christ and will spend eternity with. Jesus made it clear in Luke 6:32-34 that even sinners know how to love. Think about the type of love you have with your co-workers or classmates or the cashier at Target. Shouldn’t the love we experience with fellow believers be at a whole other level? I’ll be honest, I didn’t experience that type of love at that church and I experienced it instantly at the church I am attending now. I felt the Sprit and I felt love as soon as I entered the door and I had people approach me who had never seen me there before.

The last reason I will list here is that I was tired of being burned. The church has what they call the “leadership pipeline”. It is basically for people have a calling for full-time vocational ministry. It is an internship and then also a two year residency. Last summer I felt a calling towards full-time vocational ministry. I decided to apply for the internship for the summer of 2019. I applied and I had my interview. The interview went great and the woman who interviewed me said she would fight for me to be put in it. That made me feel very confident that I would receive it. I was also active in the church. I was a high school ministry leader and a partner. I knew other people who had applied and they all had two interviews but I only had one. That honestly made me feel more confident that I would receive the internship. I also had leaders at the church telling me that I have a future in this and I should have no problem receiving the internship. I ended up not receiving the internship. I reached out to a few different people to see if there was anything I could grow in from this to receive it in the future. I either got no response or they didn’t have an answer for me. I wanted to know what happened and if there was something I could grow in, I wanted to know. I think that whole situation started to make me think, “is this being run like a business or is it being powered through the Holy Spirit?”. I am not the only one who has questioned that either. I know quite a few.

I think that situation was the final straw. I needed a church who had people and leaders who would not keep me in a box, who would propel me forward for His kingdom and would show me the Spirit in remarkable ways. Isn’t that the what the church is supposed to do? We were not meant to lose what was sacred in the church to appeal to this generation. In the New Testament, they didn’t need grand gestures and big lights to draw people in. The gospel and the power of Jesus Christ was enough.

I could have stayed there but that would have been comfortable for me. After hours of diligent prayer and worship, I knew there was more. I knew I needed to leave. I love the way Francis Chan puts it in his book, Letters To The Church, 

“Another pastor of a smaller church explained that the founding pastor had told the congregation not to stay in the church longer than five years. In his mind, after five years, there wouldn’t be anything else they could learn from him. Like a child turning eighteen, it would be time for them to start a new journey. But they were running into a problem: once the people got comfortable in the zoo, they refused to leave. In fact, they no longer believed they were able to live outside the zoo.”

I was way too comfortable at that church and it began to stunt my walk with Jesus and where the Lord wanted me to go to further His kingdom. We were not called to be comfortable. I firmly believe that if you are following Jesus and you feel comfortable, something is off. The scriptures promised us that this life would be hard, but it would be worth it when you see His face at the end.

I am not saying all of this to bash the church I called home for five years or the American church as a whole or to be prideful. I am also not saying that you need to find a perfect church because no church will be perfect. I am saying all of this to hopefully spark some conviction. I want you reading this to examine some things about your life and to study the scriptures to decipher what was actually commanded of the early church in Acts.