STRONG MEN ALSO CRY - By Chuck Ryor
There is type of person I’ve seen whose soul is dying for lack of relational connection. This person is the self-described mature Christian who seems to have a lot of answers for everyone, and often strong opinions about how healthy or faithful a church may be. Ironically, he is emotionally shallow and alone because of this propensity to criticize others. Additionally, this person historically has used his critical assessment of the churches he’s attended as justification for moving on so frequently. Yet one thing seems to be missing from the story of his regular departures: he’s shed no tears. You may ask yourself, “What does crying have to do with it?”
In the New Testament historical book of the Acts of the Apostles, there is a moment when the Apostle Paul is traveling back to Jerusalem with a somber bit of news that God Himself had spoken to him about. On his voyage back to Judea, Paul made sure to sail through the city of Ephesus and say goodbye to his friends there. Paul had spent three years founding and developing a church in Ephesus, which was more time than he’d spent at any other church he had pioneered. Paul often left cities, but it wasn’t because the churches there weren’t doing the trick for him anymore. He was proclaiming the Christian message in cities where it had previously never been heard. He’d start churches with the converts, building up the church by establishing leaders, and then move on to the next unchurched city. If Paul’s experience saying goodbye to the Ephesians was any indication of what it was like for him to leave cities when his work was complete, his calling was an unenviable one.
The setting for this painful goodbye was the shore in Miletus. Paul meets the Elders there (and presumably many others) and addresses them by saying he doesn’t know what’s in store for him, but that the Holy Spirit has warned him that prison and hardships are part of the plan. Paul lets his Ephesian brothers and sisters know that he considers his life about one aim, and that task is proclaiming the Gospel of God’s grace. Then he gives them the bad news, telling them that this would be the last time they would ever see him. The response of the people is indicative of both their connection to Paul and the Apostle’s connection to them.
“When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. After we had torn ourselves away from them, we put out to sea and sailed straight to Kos.”
Acts 20:36 – 21:1
Tearing themselves away from each other. Tears abounding. Apart from the amount of time spent in Ephesus, there is nothing in the New Testament to suggest that there was something unique about Paul’s connection to that church compared to the others. This seems to indicate that this was the nature of his relationship to Christians, whatever church he was leading. From this passage I will often pose these three questions to people who have the courage to inquire about whether their flight-from-their-church instinct is healthy and to be followed. The questions are about experiences in past churches where they were involved, and I make clear that if they conclude that they need to leave our church, they do so with our blessing. These questions are ones I ask of myself and are worth asking before you decide to move on to another congregation.
First: Have you ever cried when you had to leave a church? Perhaps you claim to be a non-crier. Fine. Then substitute “significantly troubled inside” for “cry.” The question is designed to probe our hearts to see if there is a pattern of leaving churches that suggests we’re fleeing situations that God has provided to challenge us. This as opposed to a genuine sense of receiving God’s leading to leave. When you have left past churches, did you sense relief instead of grief? Has relief always been your primary emotion? Take it from me, if your primary feeling is akin to being released from prison every time you leave a church, you have to question whether you’re having trouble connecting emotionally with people. If I didn’t have real friends in the church where I serve, I wouldn’t last very long. This was true before I became a pastor, too. My community (dating all the way back to high school and college) is where my closest friends existed. Have you ever cried when you left a church?
Second: Have you ever cried when someone left your church? Like the other questions, this isn’t an attempt to get someone to stay in one particular church. Rather, the question is designed to see if over the long haul of someone’s church life they’ve been prone to keeping their emotional distance from others. Why we might do this varies from person to person, but we all could be guilty of this to one degree or another. When we are called to be part of a church, we’re called to relate to people honestly and openly. Past hurts may have made us reluctant to risk giving ourselves to others emotionally, and that is understandable. However, if you’ve left three local churches in the last ten years, and never had a relationship end that made you grieve, you may be cheating yourself and others of real connection. This could be intentional or subconscious. Either way, it’s a question worth considering.
Third: Has anyone ever cried when you left a church? This question is designed to find out whether or not people have ever been so emotionally connected to you that when you left, what remained was a painful absence. Over the years I’ve watched members leave churches (including some church staff), and there was seemingly no sense of their absence. Others called to see where they were, but there was no obvious sense of missing their presence. In fact, there was often a sense of dismay about how casually the exiting person took their departure. It is quite possible that if no one (in multiple church exits) has ever cried when you left, you just might be emotionally disconnected from the relationships you have supposedly developed in any particular church.
The Apostle Paul longed for this connection, and we see evidence of this in his second letter to the Christians in the city of Corinth. Paul had a difficult relationship with this congregation and wrote multiple letters of correction to them. This would have made the relationship rocky, for sure. Very few people’s first reaction to critique or confrontation is impressive. Have you ever seen on television or been present for an intervention in the life of an addict? I’ve seen a few, and they’re not pretty. I understand why. Those in recovery have to say goodbye to something that has, in many ways, been their friend in life’s most difficult times. Addicts have come to love their substance more than the people in their lives, and when they are forced to choose between the two, they get angry. This was the sometimes condition of Paul’s relationship with the Corinthians. But Paul didn’t give up on them. Instead, he appealed to them as a father in the hopes that they’d have genuine community with him.
“We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. As a fair exchange—I speak as to my children—open wide your hearts also.”
1 Corinthians 6:11-13
The applications for making Christian community part of your life are numerous. First of all, you are only delaying the inevitable if you continue moving from church to church looking for that perfect place. Eventually the Lord is going to help you resist your flight instinct, and in so doing, He will work in your heart to endure with others through difficult times and show His grace to them. He’s calling you to open wide your heart to the Christians of the church you call home. Second, your unwillingness to walk through difficult times shortchanges the work that God wants to do in your life. He wants to show you His grace through others.
Finally, your unwillingness to reconcile with difficult people (or any people) and live in an environment that is uncomfortable for you cheats others out of your presence. Because, after all, it’s not ALL about you. Tip #1 is “Don’t go alone,” which is true for you and for other people. Are you making it difficult for people to live that way?