Organs Of The Church - Why I Didn't Go Today

I didn't go to church today. I just couldn't bring myself to go. I'm tired and fatigued. Taking stock of things last night didn't help. I'm tired of going to a church that has nothing for me. I'm tired of going to a church where all I can do is give. At RCC I was not a person--I was a resource to be used by the church. I was the producer; RCC was the consumer. That worked quite well for RCC, but it destroyed me. And I left.

Now I'm at TCC. I don't know if they think of me as a resource, but in my estimation, I will become one if I stay. TCC needs help, and lots of it. They need resources and many of them. They need people in the worst way possible. But they don't have any established ministries, least of all for single adults. Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, they don't offer anything for me.

Wait! Stop! That's not the right attitude! I can already hear the arguments for why I should keep going. Fine. Here's my counter argument: The church is a body, and the body has certain organs that carry out certain tasks. Consider the human body. The liver filters the blood. The heart pumps it. The eyes see. The ears hear. The skin protects the internals from harm. Pretty much everyone I explain this to agrees.

Here's where the rubber meets the road for me, the flip side of the argument if you will. Each organ in the body is fed. The brain, liver, eyes, ears, etc. are all supplied by blood. Even the heart is supplied with blood. When an organ is no longer supplied with its essentials, bad things happen. If the liver doesn't get fed, it stops filtering the blood, and eventually the body dies of poisons built up in the blood. If the lungs aren't fed, they can't take in oxygen, and the body dies of suffocation. If the heart stops getting its supply of blood, you have a heart attack. Get the drift?

In my case, I became a big organ at RCC, and I didn't get fed. RCC was reaping all the benefits of my labors and producing nothing in return for me. Relationships have to be two-way affairs, even physical ones like organs in the body, and when they are not, bad things happen. Are heart attacks and liver failures survivable? Sometimes, but the organ, if it's salvageable, is never the same and usually never as effective.

Applying this principle to church members, when a person goes to a church for some time and gets very involved, that person had better be getting something in return for their efforts, otherwise they will get burned out and become cynical and hollowed. What the return is varies from person to person, but each and every person who contributes to the church needs something in return. It's not a psychological concept or even a spiritual one--it's simply a fact of life.

So where does that leave me? I'll provide TCC what I can in an advisory capacity, but I think that my search has to continue. I guess you, whoever you are who are reading (or not reading, as I think the case probably is), this blog, can look forward to some more church reviews as I continue my search.