Suffer Well

Grateful for this tiny Adoration chapel: a safe space to love this Head whose Body threatens to divide my heart. Like you, I’ve wounds and judgments toward the Church—a din that competes with praise to God.

Our church world seems in free fall: Vineyard Anaheim, the once robust ‘mother’ church of the Vineyard movement (our base before KC) lost its name and purpose to the withering leadership of Pastor Alan Scott, blackening the eyes of the Wimber family (and any Christian of conscience). Our next home, IHOPKC, barely exists today due to fallout from ex-leader Mike Bickle who tried to manage his sexual sins alone, not unlike the now ex-pastor Robert Morris of Gateway Church in Dallas (one of the biggest churches in America).

Note to self—fall on the Rock by declaring all your historic sexual sins before the Rock (or the Roys Report) falls on you (Matt. 21:44).

News from Rome, no less discouraging: after the hedging and flip-flopping over Fiducia Supplicans, soft-minded Pope Francis and his doctrine guy, Cardinal Fernandez, are nearly incomprehensible to me (a soft heart does not a sharp mind make). Only follows that equally soft-minded Christian approaches to the LGBTQ+ set like Revoice and Preston Sprinkle (Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender) and Eden Invitation (united in a fluid anthropology—‘be your rainbow self, just don’t act on it’) loom large on the American church scape. Combined, these voices contribute to the queering of Christianity.

Before the host, I struggle to witness a Kingdom Church welling up with Divine Mercy to set captives free. I am offended. By the Church! I am tempted to divorce Head from Body, to harden my heart, to join the unclean chorus chanting Her lacks and failures. I catch myself: the dismembered dies slowly and takes others with him.  

So I haul myself up before Jesus and ask for His heart to somehow align mine with His toward the Church. I forgive members who betrayed and still confuse me. I reconsider grievances and gauge the intensity of my emotional response. I forgive again. Today is better than yesterday. I recall accusations against me and ask for mercy to see myself clearly.   

I remember: Jesus loves this Bride more than anything. Might He give me His heart for the fallen and misdirected? Might I have the grace to own my partial sight and entrust my offenders to Him who sees all, including me in my limited self-awareness?

I recall today’s Gospel when Jesus looked on the crowd and felt deep compassion for the harassed and helpless, sheep without a shepherd (Matt. 9:36). I think of Christians scattered and disillusioned by churchmen who betrayed trust; I invoke this Jesus who invites us all to heal by welcoming His gaze of love and trusting Him anew.  

His mercy, mightier than my wound, frees me to own membership. I can say ‘yes’ to this Bride again––starting with my parish and diocese––then extending to Christians of many stripes who surround me. (Protestant America, she’s a great country.)

Before the host, I renew my vows. Might my temporary affliction join with His wounds and find healing there, He who is betrayed over and over by blind churchmen? Might His free gift of compassion to me overflow to those in need of empathic Christians who have not forsaken Her?

No other way to help our fellows but to model membership based on Jesus’ capacity to heal our wounds. Yes, the Church wounded us, and yes again, She will heal us. (Maybe a different locale, eh? You can forgive one sharp corner of the church then find a safer one.)

More than ever, we need to be those watchmen on the Church ‘wall’ who intercede for wounded saints and do all we can to make our communities ‘places of springs’ (Ps 84:6) for them.

We can suffer well. Place your wounds in His and, while healing, let Him give you His heart for the Bride. Take steps toward a concrete community. You are a necessary member, endowed with new mercies and wisdom. Suffer well. Your wounds can make you, and others, better.   

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