St Johns Bridge, Port­land, Ore­gon (photo by Pam Hogeweide)

I live in a city of bridges. Thir­teen bridges in all that con­nect the east side of Port­land to the west side of the Willamette River.   I like the bridges in Portland.There is the Fre­mont Bridge, the Sell­wood Bridge, the Hawthorne Bridge, the Mor­ri­son and the Steel Bridge, a unique bridge that raises up it’s cen­ter part when large water ves­sels need to pass under.  My favorite bridge, though, is the St John’s Bridge, which hap­pens to be about a mile from my house.

A few years ago the St John’s Bridge was spruced up with some updates and a fresh coat of paint. To cel­e­brate the debut of the newly gus­si­fied bridge, the neigh­bor­hood threw a street party and closed the bridge for a while so folks could throng to it by foot, bike and skate­board. My daugh­ter and I were there. We trot­ted with the rest of the neigh­bor­hood down the mid­dle of the bridge, rel­ish­ing what we knew was likely the only time we’d ever be able to do this. When we reached the top of the slope, we paused to look over the rail at the river far down below.

On one side of the bridge we viewed the cityscape of Port­land with water­craft motor­ing to and fro around the river.  We crossed the road­way to the other side and viewed the indus­tri­al­ized areas of the busy river ports below.  So dif­fer­ent from one side to the other. It was like look­ing at two  entirely dif­fer­ent rivers.

My rela­tion­ship with the body of Christ is so much like this bridge. For many years I hov­ered in the busy waters of church vol­un­teerism spend­ing a great deal of time and energy in ser­vice. I felt that this kind of serv­ing was for a higher pur­pose, for I was serv­ing the king­dom of God, right?  At one point, I became dis­mayed as I looked at my cal­en­dar and real­ized how many things I was tied into that were church-​​centered. My faith com­mu­nity at that time had many oppor­tu­ni­ties to serve and I jumped in on just about any­thing I could. I was at my church on aver­age three nights a week plus most of Sun­day. All of my social­iz­ing became church-​​centered, too. Star­ing at my kitchen cal­en­dar that day could have been the tip-​​off that I needed to scale back. But I ignored the facts star­ing me in the face and pushed aside my uneasi­ness with hav­ing built such a church-​​drenched exis­tence for myself and my family.

One morn­ing in a time of prayer–with all those min­istries I helped with I had to keep the prayer tank filled–I heard that famil­iar  small Voice that rings big inside when I’m pay­ing attention:

Unplug from every min­istry you are in. 

These six words flooded my soul like a spot­light in a prison yard. In an instant I was filled with an aware­ness of how hard I was work­ing for the love of God. Rev­e­la­tion and wis­dom cov­ered me right then and there with her heal­ing power unleash­ing within me.

I love you no mat­ter what. If you never do noth­ing for Me again,  you are loved.

I am going to prove this to you. Sit down and do nothing.

Tears welled up inside and out. I had no idea that in all of my zeal to serve and over­serve, that I had been oper­at­ing under the tyranny of being per­for­mance dri­ven to earn God’s love.  I was undone.

And so, over the com­ing weeks I did just that, I began pulling the plug on the var­i­ous min­istries I had bus­ied my life with. I gave notice to the children’s pas­tor from teach­ing Sun­day school and  lead­ing the children’s mis­sions pro­gram;  I noti­fied  the pas­tor for the prayer coun­sel­ing min­istry and prophetic team that I was pulling out, and I resigned myself from the early morn­ing prayer meet­ings and pre-​​service prayer times that I had been attend­ing. Yeah. I was a prayer superstar.

All of the lead­ers were gra­cious and affirm­ing. “We all need time to rest our souls,” they said.

Thus, I began a new jour­ney into being a Christ fol­lower who Does Noth­ing. 

It was alright at first, but within a few weeks I began to real­ize two things:  I was more secure in the love of God than I had real­ized.  I knew with all my bones and mar­row that I was among the beloved…no mat­ter what. I knew with every­thing inside of me that I could not ever be a pro­duc­tive daugh­ter in the king­dom of God again and that the Almighty was just fine with that. “I love you no mat­ter what,” soared like a ban­ner across my life. I was content.

The sec­ond thing that I real­ized was dis­con­cert­ing.  I began to see that I was unno­tice­able among my church com­mu­nity when I was not Doing Min­istry.  My phone stopped ring­ing. My cal­en­dar was a ghost town and my social engage­ments shriv­eled up as if I had moved out of town.  What the…?

One Sun­day one of the min­istry lead­ers approached me. A lit­tle hope surged inside of me that per­haps I wasn’t so forgotten.

“Pam, how are you?”

“Fine, thanks, and you?”

“I’m good. So when are you com­ing back to the prayer team?  I need people.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well let me know when you do know. I need people.”

And with that, she walked away. I sat there a bit stunned. The view was get­ting clearer. My place in this faith com­mu­nity seemed to loom on Doing rather than Being.  I was deter­mined to  stay out of the matrix though, and really, there was no temp­ta­tion to back­slide pre­ma­turely into min­istry of any kind.

Over the next months, two other pas­tors approached me, attempt­ing to recruit me to their min­istry areas. One of them offered me a job. Are you seri­ous?  For years I had yearned to be on church staff, think­ing it would be amaz­ing to earn a salary and be truly involved in a voca­tional capac­ity.  It was a dream of mine, a small dream, but a dream just the same. As he offered me a job to be his assis­tant, I leaned my spirit in towards my Father in heaven, silently ask­ing for guid­ance.   Noth­ing. Not a word. Not a hint, not a clue.

Yet some­how I knew that I could not yet come out of my spir­i­tual rest. With con­fi­dence and total peace I politely turned down his offer.

As time passed,  my rela­tion­ships with folks in this com­mu­nity became weaker. Pas­tors no longer called me to con­sult with me about their vision;  women did not return my calls and Sun­day meet­ings at church began to feel emp­tier and emp­tier.  It was bewil­der­ing and dis­tress­ing. I loved church! I loved the peo­ple!  What was hap­pen­ing that I now found excuses to skip church?  What was going on?

It finally came to me.  My soul wilder­ness, as I had come to define this sea­son of bar­ren­ness, revealed how secure my rela­tion­ship with God was, but it also revealed how inse­cure my rela­tion­ship with the peo­ple of God had become.  As I jour­neyed on this bridge from being a work­horse for Jesus to becom­ing just a sim­ple, inac­tive pew warmer,  my view of myself in the body of Christ became crys­tal clear.  It was true I per­formed to be accepted and loved… but that per­for­mance was not really for my Cre­ator. It was for his cre­ated. In my search to belong and be accepted, I had been will­ing to do what it takes to be amongst the tribe of the church. And the pri­mary way one becomes Amongst is to Plug In.

Over time, I have come to real­ize how code­pen­dent I have been with every sin­gle church I have ever been a part of. Every sin­gle one. My bro­ken, dam­aged wom­anly soul needs to belong. When I serve, vol­un­teer, show up, work, over­work, pray and over pray, I Am In.

When I unplugged, I was forgotten.

It’s been sev­eral years now since I crossed the road from my busy indus­tri­al­ized reli­gious life. I’ve been stand­ing at the rail for a long while, soak­ing up this new view with a mix­ture of lib­erty, lone­li­ness and grief.  Though my accep­tance had been con­di­tional, it was, after all, accep­tance. My phone rang. My cal­en­dar was a mash-​​up of Chris­t­ian chaos.  I was sought after and affirmed for my spir­i­tual giftings.

Now, like a way­farer on a lonely bridge, I am tak­ing my time to recover who I am apart from the machine of min­istry. It’s a painful process. My iden­tity was so tan­gled up with reli­gious activ­ity.  And it was good activ­ity.  I’ve prayed with the broken-​​hearted, served the poor, cooked for home­less cit­i­zens and gave Sun­day school lessons to the next gen­er­a­tion. I’ve given money, time, energy and tal­ent to the tribe that I des­per­ately wanted to just love me for who I am and not what I can offer.  But like an imma­ture boyfriend who dumps you after you stop putting out,  I was left alone with no prom date.  I don’t like this, yet I am mak­ing amends with myself about it. I’m learn­ing to Not be Amongst the very tribe that was my life for most of my adult life.

The view from here is not so bad. I can see more of the river with­out the hub­bub of port activ­ity clut­ter­ing up the water­way. The blue sky blazes down from the Ore­gon sky. Port­land shines in who she is,  her thir­teen bridges criss­cross­ing east to west.  I respect those who do the work of min­istry and suc­ceed at it.  I am not one of them. I am just me with my empty cal­en­dar and quiet telephone.

*****

Spe­cial shout-​​out to She Loves mag­a­zine and the arti­cle,  Learn­ing the Unforced Rhythms of Grace that helped prompt today’s blog post. Def­i­nitely worth tak­ing a moment to link up and read.