When church and convictions conflict - a personal follow-up

Yesterday I recommended Ed Cyzewski’s post talking about when church and your personal convictions come into conflict. Today I’d like to follow up by telling my own story.

The Idea

A little over ago my church decided it was time to promote men’s small groups. And the timing seemed great for me. I was coming through a time of spiritual wrangling and frustration, and was convinced that I needed more frequent and better interaction with godly men in my life. Then I found out how it was going to be themed: Band of Brothers.

(This isn’t my church’s actual ministry logo, but it’s close to what was used.)

If I’m objective, I’ve gotta give the planners props for buying in to the theme. The small groups are called “squads”. Each level of the leadership had a “rank”, and the promotional videos showed the leaders wearing fatigues, moving little army men around a map on a planning table. The invitations to various events were titled “Marching Orders”.

I’m pretty sure that the two pastors leading it up weren’t whole-hog into the theme, but the lay leaders who helped with it were, and so it got adopted. The activities were all camping and outdoors themed. They included plans for a “commitment ceremony” taken straight out of a Courageous movie marketing pack.

And I’ll be honest: my first reaction was to squirm.

Why must men’s ministries be focused around shooting/camping/hunting/outdoorsy stuff? Is it really that big a motivator? I’m not a big outdoorsy guy, so maybe I’m just not their target audience. I’m a musician. And a computer geek / engineer. I mean, I also run and play sports and know how to work with my hands, but I’ve never shot anything bigger than a .22 or more alive than a cardboard box.

But I think it was more than discomfort - it was conviction. Conviction that it would be wrong for me to participate in a program that appeared to be focused around all the militaristic trappings that I believe to be unnecessary and at times very unhelpful.

An attempt

After a couple days of mulling it over, I came up with what I thought would be a win-win solution. So I emailed the pastor leading it, explained that I really wanted to be in a small group but couldn’t stomach the militaristic trappings. So, was there room for “conscientious objector” status within the Band of Brothers? (Hey, creative thinking and humor oughta get me somewhere, right?)

The response I got back the next day was unexpectedly infuriating. Sorry, he said, but no. There was no room for “conscientious objectors”. He said it would be “detrimental to squad morale” if all the members weren’t totally committed to all the activities.

And that was that. I was pissed.

Here I am, I thought, trying to participate in a ministry that I know I need, and they won’t let me.

(Did I mention I was angry?)

That was the first time in what was then four years at my church where I seriously thought about looking for someplace else. Fortunately, there’s a better ending to this story.

A redirection

I talked to my wife about it for a while. I talked to another pastor about it. (Yeah, for you scoring at home, that’s the third different pastor mentioned in this story. Our church has five at the moment. Four will appear in this story before it’s done.)

That other pastor told me (very wisely) that he was more worried about my relationship with pastor #1 than he was about the small group thing. (I was appropriately brought down a notch or two.) My wife reminded me that there were other similar options that the church offered that I had, to this point, not pursued. (Down another couple notches.)

So I didn’t sign up for the Band of Brothers. Instead, the next Tuesday morning at 6 AM I came, bleary-eyed and with coffee in hand, to a men’s prayer group / Bible study hosted by our senior pastor. And within 15 minutes I knew I was in the right place.

At age 36 I’m the youngest guy in the Tuesday morning study by almost 10 years. There’s one regular in his 40s, but most are between late 50s and early 70s. Our senior member is a WWII veteran.

The agenda each Tuesday is simple: share requests, pray for each other, and study whatever the sermon text is going to be for the following Sunday. (Whichever activity we start with usually goes long, so we tend to alternate between mostly prayer one week and then mostly study the next week.) The accumulated wisdom in that room each week is deep and vast. I am (mostly) keeping my mouth shut and learning a lot. It’s awesome.

So this fall they’re cranking up the second year of Band of Brothers, and I’m starting my second year of the Tuesday morning study. And I’m at peace that I’ve made the right choice for me, for now.

Some final thoughts

As I reflect on this after a year to cool off, I’ve got some thoughts:

• I still think the militaristic theme is unnecessary. But having not attended any of the events I can’t fairly opine on the ministry any more than that.
• I know that they had far greater numbers of men in the ministry last year than they had expected. If it’s bringing men in and sharpening them, praise God.
• Like Ed said his post: look for ways to participate and serve that don’t confict with your convictions. While they weren’t going to change the men’s ministry just for me (nor should they have), there were other opportunities available if I was willing to seek them out.
• This situation highlights one of the benefits of a larger church: that diversity of opportunities. If this had played out at a smaller church it might well have had a less happy ending.
• Even though I disagree with them at times, I’m hugely blessed to have good pastors and leaders in my church.