Church & Community
I am at a new church and I want to get involved, but I keep bracing for it to go the way the last one did.
“What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee. In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.”
David wrote this while in the hands of the Philistines at Gath, genuinely unsafe with no obvious way out. What he writes is not a claim to have stopped being afraid. It is a description of what he does at the moment the fear arrives. Trust here runs alongside fear rather than replacing it, which is the only version available to anyone who has actually been hurt before.
“For, when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears. Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus;”
Paul describes a stretch of ministry with conflict outside and fear inside, and he says so without any embarrassment. What lifted it was not a revelation or a resolve. It was the arrival of Titus, a person he trusted walking through the door. Paul of all people was comforted by company, and recovery from church hurt tends to come the same way, through particular safe people rather than a decision to feel better.
A path forward
Get involved at a level you could step back from without wreckage. Serve monthly rather than weekly, join one group rather than three. Going slowly here is wisdom, not cowardice.
Tell one leader at the new church, in a sentence or two, that you were hurt before and are moving carefully. Good leaders hold that well, and how they respond is useful information either way.
Pray before each step rather than in general, naming the actual fear, that this will end the way the last one did. A fear named to God stops quietly running your decisions from the back of the room.
Closing verse
“A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.”
- Isaiah 42:3
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