Friday, February 1, 2008

Unchurched Friend # 1

The girl that I interviewed I’ve known pretty much all my life. Her and I at one point were really close friends. Now we’ve drifted and I think I might see her once or twice a year. She was the girl who would spends hours up at the altar at camps praying for her lost friends and to be filled with the gift of speaking in tongues. She went to every youth event, was in every play, every choir activity, everything, her and her older brother.

Somewhere along the way things went down hill, probably about five years ago.
Her older brother came “out” saying he was gay his freshman year in college. That ripped their family to shreds and they left the church. People in our church did not know how to handle it, and if they tried, it probably didn’t help their family. There were many other reasons why her parents left the church some are still unknown today. That was when my friend started changing. It was a fast change, jumped right our of church and into the group of friends who hated “Christians” because anybody who was a Christian was judgmental and rude and mean.

All of this to say I wanted to interview her, to see where her hurts might still really be, and maybe if I asked the right questions, it just might bring her back to thinking about why she left in the first place. Did she leave because her parents left? Because of how the church judged her brother before we even got the facts straight? Or was it because she was just tempted way beyond the point of coming back again?

I obviously did not ask her those questions not with the relationship we have right now. I did however find that she is extremely hurt by the church. Not like that’s big news I think most people who did go to church once and now don’t were hurt by the church. That is so sad, because to me I think if church is all you have then you really haven’t learned the point of church is way beyond all the activities we do, all the sermons, all the worship songs, it’s about you and God. Getting to know Jesus and then using that knowledge to reach out to others.

Her first answer about what the needs were in her area was for people to be who they are and not judge others or worry about being judged. Now that to me sounds like she’s saying her needs not everyone in her communities needs. I asked her what topics interested her the most and she said that depression, psychology and other religions interested her the most. I can understand her interest in different religions, because the way we were raised, we were never supposed to even ask questions about our faith. I asked her why she thought most people don’t go to church and she said because she didn’t think most people want to go by themselves. This is very true, but when someone invites you, you don’t have that excuse anymore. Her other reason was that people were too busy. I heard someone say the other day that in our world today saying yeah my life is busy technically means we’re doing good, but in actuality it means we’re just poor managers of our time! The next two questions I asked her, her responses were almost the same, not push religion on other and don’t judge people.

I am just going to keep loving on my friend here, try and catch up with her while im home and grab something to eat and just talk with her. I don’t want to push religion on her, but just to hang out and love on her and let her see Jesus’s love in me!

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