Dear family,
This will be an odd group of letters, but they are letters I felt led to write nonetheless. I hope you are able to follow along without too much trouble.
I want to share a bit of my past which will serve as a bit of context.
I am a P.K. or I was anyways, for those of you who don’t know what ‘P.K.’ stands for it stands for Pastor’s Kid.
My father, when I was born up until a couple of years back was a Pastor. He wore many different hats with every local church body we were apart of. Which was always incredible for me to watch, but that also inevitably put a lot of pressure on him and my family to be an outstanding Christian family in and out of the church building.
Now, my family has also had a very rough history with churches. I personally have seen so much negative and ugly church politics and falling outs in my short lifetime that I can definitely say I’ve got a couple of scars from the different churches I have called my home.
I won’t sit here and share all the hurt and brokenness I’ve walked through, that won’t be edifying at all. But I will gladly share how The Father has slowly and surely been redeeming this part of my story over the past 3 years or so.
I am not a huge fan of going to church.
But. I am a huge believer in The Church.
If you don’t understand what I mean I’ll get there in just a moment.
The way churches all across America have turned corporate worship into many different programs, religious activities, and worship services aren’t very effective and edifying to the Christian walk that Christ commissioned us to walk.
In my opinion, we could do much better.
Now, that may not be the case all across the board, it is a very large blanket statement. But I do want to share what I mean.
It’s Sunday. You wake up, run downstairs to make sure the kids are all up, and have their ‘Church clothes’ on. You run back upstairs, quickly shower, and throw on a suit and tie. Your wife is running down the stairs as she is still putting her earrings in each ear.
You get to church a little late, someone took your parking spot, you go inside, drop the kiddos off at the nursery and Sunday school, and you and your wife go and find a pew to sit down.
You sit, stand, and sing, sit, stand, and sing put some money in the plate as it goes by, listen some more, stand, and say goodbye to your friends. Pick up the kids, head out the door, telling the pastor it was a great sermon, get in the car head home.
“I cannot wait to do that next week.”
Now, I’m sure you noticed that was a bit exaggerated. But yet, did I make any of that up?
Is that Sunday morning routine bad? In itself, no.
Worshiping God, learning more about Him, community with other self-professing Christians, giving your money to God and however His people choose. Allowing your kids to learn what the Bible says to be true. All of these things are good, God-honoring even, so why am I not desiring to do that anymore?
I am a Christian, very much so, I love God, I know I have a very real and personal relationship with Him due to His son dying on a cross for my sins.
So why don’t I want to go to church?
I want to be The Church.
Allow me to explain in the following letter…
-Mitchell
