Bible scholarship has suggested that
Mary of Nazareth may have been as young as 14 when she became the
mother of Jesus based on the fact that it was common custom for girls
in that day and age to marry around this time. What I remember most
of the Christmas of 1994 was that in our small fellowship we had
another “Mary” in our midst, a teen who was found to be “with
child” but not of the Holy Ghost. No, it was in the usual way and
the fact that she was became another turning point in my
philosophical development as a pastor. I have permission to tell this
story. Those close to me or who were part of our fellowship at that
time will know who I speak of. But since this column is about how her
pregnancy affected me and my understanding of what it means to be a
pastor, I choose to reference her simply as Liz to
protect her and her daughter who is sixteen now (and one of my
friends on Facebook, too) from any unneeded attention. In this case,
this isn't their story but mine.
Turning Point: Fall
1994-Winter 1995 – Pastors walk with people through their messes.
We had moved next door to Liz and her
mother, Jill, in the fall of 1993 and within one week
of our arrival in their neighborhood, Jill, without any invitation on
our part, began regularly worshiping with us. She was a Christian but
had not been a practicing one for many years. She was a single mom
who happened to be friends with another single mom in our fellowship
and apparently the fact that a pastor was now her neighbor was God’s
way of awakening her out of her spiritual slumber. Jill was not
tentative in waking from deep REM sleep. She practically leapt out of
bed. She not only became regular in attendance, but within short
order she became known as the “sucker lady” for her penchant of
gifting young kids who memorized Bible verses with a lollipop. She
joined our early Tuesday morning prayer group and became one of our
most fervent members.
Liz, however, was of a different
stripe. She came with her mother to the weekly worship gathering only
sparingly and usually it was clear that she was present only at her
mother’s behest. She was fourteen and fearing that coercion might
only stiffen her resolve against God and anything to do with Him,
Jill had left it up to her to decide when and if she would come to
Sunday worship. But with a little parental encouragement, Liz did
check out our Wednesday night youth ministry and shortly after became
a regular participant in it. Ultrahigh Frequency (Uhf) was an
entry-level youth group whose focus was evangelism. We did a lot of
crazy stunts and games and at the end of the night shared Jesus and
his love for them. In the early years, we really were made up of two
groups – some Middle School-aged “church” kids and a whole slew
of teens outside the walls of our fellowship (or any fellowship
whatsoever). In fact, at times they – that is, the kids who didn’t
really know what they believed – outnumbered those who considered
themselves “in the door.” It created some interesting dynamics
and when we had, for a short season, two pregnant teenage girls
participating in our Wednesday night programming we encountered
essentially Pharisaical attitudes among a few of the parents of the
“church” kids who attended. “Why do they have to come?”
But we carried on persuaded of Jesus’ wisdom, “It is not the
healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Matt 9).
 |
| Liz, Jill and I traveled to Mexico to serve |
Liz, while raised sporadically in
church, really didn’t run with that crowd but as time passed we
witnessed this young woman’s hard heart soften in incremental ways.
After several months, in fact, she came with her mom on her own
accord to the Sunday morning worship gathering and was one of the
leveling factors in our discussions on Wednesday nights that helped
keep us more or less on track. In the wake of these pregnant girls
joining our weekly gathering one of my co-workers decided to hold a
day-long retreat at her fellowship focused on abstinence. I don't
recall the particulars but at some time during the day Liz shared her
story with the others about how she had lost her virginity two years
before but was now committing herself to chastity until her wedding
day. In the winter of 1994, Liz, Jill and about ten others from our
fellowship traveled to northeastern Mexico where we spent a week in
the mountains helping lay the foundation of a new church building
there. It was yet another milestone in the spiritual development of
this young woman and something that kept our team “in the game”
when it was easy to despair over the lack of progress many of her
peers at Uhf were experiencing. Maybe...just maybe...we were going to
“win” this one.
It was a Friday night football game
that fall, however, that alerted me something ill was afoot. It was a
home game but I don't remember who we were playing. I do, however,
vividly recall seeing Liz there in tow with a guy I'll call Bubba.
Everything about him spelled trouble and my heart sank when I saw
them together. After she missed a few Wednesday nights as well I
asked her if we could get together to talk. She agreed and a few days
later after school we met at Norm's for pop and fries and I asked her
what was going on. She had been busy (she said) and even though the
new school year was just a few weeks old, already she was behind in
several of her classes which is why she had not been at group. And
what of Bubba? I'll never forget what she told me, “Don't worry,
Pastor Jeff. We're just friends.” I didn't believe her when she
told me but with nothing profound to say, we ended our little chat
with prayer and a gentle admonishment to be careful. She assured me
she would be.
A month later I was at Troy's (one of
my co-workers on Wednesday nights) helping him winterize his house by
helping him tack plastic on his windows. It was mid-morning and who
should pull into Troy's driveway but Liz and Bubba. I waved and said
hello as they went into the house to speak to Troy's wife, Kim. All I
remember thinking is, It's the middle of the morning on a school
day. What possibly could they be doing here? At lunch, I found
out. Liz was pregnant and too ashamed to face me she had asked Kim to
break the news to me.
It was like a roundhouse punch to the
gut that just took all the wind out of me. I was sick to my stomach.
And angry. How could she? Why didn't she listen to me? After all
the crap we often had to put up with because we let “those kids”
come to group, here was yet more grist for the complaint mill. Of
your own volition you went public with your story vowing to remain
chaste until marriage. What about all those young girls who respected
you for your candor and your resolve to stay pure? This is
vaguely what I remember about my state of mind at the time of her
disclosure. I didn't name drop at the weekly worship gathering but in
those first few weeks I segued into rants during my sermons enough to
catch the attention of those closest to me. “You sound angry,”
Renee told me privately. I argued that I had a right to be since
everybody else seemed indifferent about the whole matter. “It
happens,” I actually heard someone remark. To wit I shot back,
“Shouldn't we care? Is this best we got for all those young girls
in our midst, “It happens”? At the same time, while Liz
had made her way back to group, I emotionally distanced myself from
her. She had betrayed my trust, spurned my counsel and I was not in
the mood to carry on as if what had happened was no big deal.
It was somewhere around that time that
Glen called me one Wednesday night before group. He was on staff at
the local YWAM campus and he and his family worshiped regularly with
us on Sunday mornings. We were not especially close but were
colleagues in ministry and so we had a mutual regard for one
another's work. But he wasn't calling to shoot the breeze. He called
to get in my face. He, too, had picked up on the spirit behind some
of the things I had been sharing on Sunday morning. At first, former
youth pastor that he was he commiserated with me appreciating the
disappointment I was experiencing. But as our conversation evolved he
deftly turned the focus off what she had done to how I was reacting
to her actions. And then he said something that hit real close to
home: “The day you can say to someone, ‘Blow
hot or blow cold, I'm for you’ - that's the day you know you are a
pastor.” I don't remember anything more of that
conversation but in retrospect that 20-minute phone call became a
turning point in my development as a pastor.
As I thought on that comment over the
next few weeks, I realized what had happened. In some subtle way,
over the last year or so I had begun to use Liz as a means to
validate the effectiveness of my ministry. After all, wasn't
it after she began attending Uhf that she returned to the God of her
childhood years? Hadn't she, of her own accord, gone public in her
intent to remain pure until marriage? Didn't she accompany us on our
mission to Mexico? And now that she was pregnant she was making me
look bad, as if her situation was a referendum on my calling as a
pastor. In fact, it was but not in the way that I was, at the moment,
consciously aware of. If there was anyone who was in need of
repenting it was me. In fact, sometime after this realization I went
to her privately and asked her to forgive me for distancing myself
from her. Her response was touching, “Don’t worry, Pastor
Jeff. I know you love me.” Frankly, I don’t think I deserved
that.
Which is not to say that this was the
end of the matter. I was still wrestling with what our response as a
fellowship was supposed to be. I knew that there was a time when
congregations like ours required the offending parties to go before
the fellowship and declare their sorrow for engaging in such sin but
what if they didn’t want to do as much? Wouldn’t it be the same
as telling one of your kids to tell their sibling they’re sorry
when it was clear they weren’t very sorry at all? Mercifully, Jill
settled the matter for us. She called me one Saturday afternoon
weeping. She felt so bad over what had happened and blamed herself
for her daughter’s circumstance. She wanted to say something to the
fellowship but by this time my heart was free of rancor and I simply
told Jill that I couldn’t make that call on my own. But given that
our board was meeting that very night I invited her to come and share
her story with us. And come she did and shared with us her journey
from divorcee to cohabiting with another man for a season to where
she was now. Again and again she was adamant about the fact that
given the way she was living when Liz was coming of age, she made her
predisposed to engaging in such a lifestyle. As she was nearing the
end of her sharing, I asked myself – What are we supposed to do
with this? – and suddenly a Scripture was dropped into my
consciousness: “If you forgive anyone his
sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not
forgiven” (John 20:23, NIV). I realized then and there that in
matters like these, Jesus defers authority to the designated leaders
of a given fellowship, regardless of how unspiritual they may feel,
to decide if a person is truly repentant and declare them so. So I
recognized immediately then what needed to be done. Persuaded of her
sincerity, one by one, the board members needed to affirm Jill in
this manner: “The Lord Jesus forgives you.” It started with me
and by the time it got to Harvey, the fifth man, he was weeping and
could hardly get the words out. The presence of Jesus was thick at
that table. Having concluded this matter by praying over Jill we then
asked the obvious: “Is this it? Is this all we need to do?” But
Jill was insistent. Now that she had shared with the leaders, she
felt obligated to share with the rest of the membership. She
suggested that the next morning, she and Liz would stand before the
congregation and share an abbreviated version of what she had just
shared with all of us. And given that she was willing to do this, we
were willing to go there with her.
It was Communion
Sunday – the one Sunday in a given month at which we celebrate the
Lords’ Supper. I remember we were hosting friends who were
pastoring a small fellowship in northern Minnesota and were with us
for a little bit of R&R. I don’t remember if he preached that
day or was just part of our worship gathering. But at some point in
the service, after sharing some preliminary words, I invited Jill and
Liz to come forward and share their story. There they were, mother
and daughter, standing hand in hand, single mom with one who would
soon be a single mom, before all of us and drawing us into their
journey. When Jill was done, I shared with the congregation what had
transpired the night before and so for the congregation’s sake I
repeated what had been the consensus of the leadership: The
Lord Jesus forgives you, Jill. And
then I turned to Liz, and said the same to her at which point I saw
something physical break in the spiritual realm – I saw a yoke that
was weighing heavily down upon her break in half and fall off her as
she hung onto me for dear life. I then turned to the congregation and
invited them now to do as I had done and affirm Liz and Jill
together. I was not prepared for what happened next. Those gathered
arose out of their seats and began to form a line – a line that
stretched from the front of the sanctuary all the way into the
entryway. It was like a reception line at a wedding as one person
after another came up to them, affirmed them and loved on them. And
then we had communion like we have not celebrated in many services
since then. It was the Supper of the Redeemed, those forgiven and
cleansed by the Lord Jesus. There was a palpable sense of joy in the
place and truth be told, as worship followed the sharing of the Meal,
it was the first time I ever danced in the weekly gathering – but
not the last.
By publicly
affirming Liz and Jill, we released the fellowship to embrace them
and walk with them through the months leading up to the time when she
delivered a healthy, beautiful daughter. I realized through this
episode in the life of our congregation that church discipline was
not for the purpose of punishment but for the sake of restoration –
and thankfully, Jill and Liz were wanting to be restored. At the same
time there was another single young woman in our midst who became
pregnant while away at college. She had been a “good” church girl
but she and her boyfriend “just got carried away.” Her mother was
deeply mortified by her daughter’s condition but instead of
inviting us into their trouble, her family chose to keep it a
“family” matter and conveniently, her daughter remained “away”
until the day she married the father of her baby. How different the
journeys – on the one hand we were free to love on Liz all the way
through her pregnancy but with the other we could do nothing but try
and console the parents who really didn’t want to talk about it
anyway.
People make
messes, messes that are not always easy to clean up. And some messes
are such that they often opt to go into seclusion until their lot
improves. In modern parlance, they drop out of church until the baby
comes or their situation is not so personally embarrassing. In one
sense, they become lost. A good shepherd, however, goes looking for
his lost sheep. He leaves the flock and searches diligently until he
finds it. And when he does, he hoists it upon his shoulders and makes
the long journey home whereupon he calls upon his friends to help him
celebrate the finding. As Jesus put it to his original audience, “I
tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven
over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons
who do not need to repent” (Luke 15:7). I stumbled my way to
finding my lost sheep. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Glen I’m
not sure I would have ever even thought to find her but only wish she
quietly fade from our fellowship. But thankfully God was better to me
than I deserved and the sheep was found anyway and brought home where
a big party was held in her honor. She taught me that being a pastor
is way more than preaching or visiting people in the hospital or
organizing a youth group activity. It’s being there, in the
middle of the storm when the outcome is not certain and it’s not
clear yet whether or not the lost one will come home.
