This is Church(?) ... How I Got Here (Pt. 2/5)

I'll be the first to apologize for the removal of snacks. I still remember me and Cedric having this huge argument about it, about how important snacks were to get people to chat and fellowship. And I remember saying that if people liked it so much, they should do something about it.

Not the greatest attitude back then. I was so tired. We grew bigger and bigger, more attendance, more programs, more events. We had a small group of people who cared for this community deeply, but increasing our time and effort was spent administrating this corporation, and trying to recruit more people so we could cope with what we wanted most, which was people coming to service. And silly us in response to our tiredness we just created more programs where we invited them to come and sit: more encounter nights, more prayer meetings, more retreats, more bible studies, in hopes that some people would be inspired to partner with us in this ministry. During this time I was on the elder board watching Mississauga campus collapse after a decade in the same mode of growth. Dozens of people were leaving, almost all of them the ones who had given their effort wholeheartedly at Westside for so many years. We were 2 years in here and I was certain with the way we were going we were heading for the same fate.

I was distraught. I cared for this place, I loved this community. I had moved from my childhood church where I really didn't encounter God, to this community where for the first time I haven't just read about and memorized my being forgiven, I actually felt it, received it fully. I'd say I went from a church goer to a Christ follower here. The hardest thing was that to me we weren't doing anything overtly wrong, all of these programs and events had great intentions; they were in pursuit of God. People grew closer to God here, I grew closer to God here, no doubt that was real. So I couldn't figure out why God had seemingly pulled his hand of blessing away from Mississauga, and why even with all of our events we weren't seeing more of the disciple makers that God said in the Great Commission, like it says on the front of our bulletin. And because I'm me, I was angry. I was frustrated, I was lost. I didn't know what to do.

In a move that I now realized was long overdue, and severely backwards, I turned to the bible, leaving behind years of what I was taught about church, to figure out how a Christ following community was supposed to look like; rather than what we wanted church to be like, what God wanted church to be like.