Turning Points: Fourth Installment - When Messes Happen

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.