Author's faith journey

Growing up in the church

I cannot remember a time when I did not know about Jesus, but I never knew what it was like to have him alive within me until I was 35 (I'm in my late 40s now). I guess during those first 35 years you could have called me an institutional Christian in whom God had placed an unquenchable desire for more of him.

I grew up in Pennsylvania, going to to an Evangelical United Brethren (after 1968, United Methodist) church every Sunday with my family. But I remember worship being long and boring, something we did because it was good for us. As a child I knew I was a Christian, but I always felt like something—a passion, a certainty, a joy—was missing.

In Sunday School we learned the basic Bible stories but the overall message and truth of the Bible never got through to me. By the time I was a teenager I didn't go to my Sunday School class anymore. Instead, I sat with the adults in their class. But it felt dead too.

I tried to figure things out on my own. We were given a King James Version Bible in Sunday School. I wanted to read it cover to cover. But the language was too difficult for me to grasp and I had no idea what I really was reading. I struggled to get through things like the genealogies, and when I hit all the rules and regulations in Leviticus, I gave up. I remember thinking that maybe you had to be an adult to get any meaning out of the Bible.

Disillusionment — and God's grace

When I was about 15, our pastor at the time did some immoral things that affected members of the congregation. My dad was one of the church leaders who played a role in our denomination's decision to remove the pastor. Because the situation required the utmost discretion, the facts weren't generally known in the church, and my dad and the people who stood with him took a lot of criticism. A group of people left the church. Watching what he went through was hard, and it taught me that getting involved in church led to heartache.

I was wrestling with big questions about my faith at the time. How do you know you are really a Christian? If you've grown up as a Christian, do you still have to ask Jesus to come into your life? I didn't feel anyone in my church could help me answer questions like this, so I kept them to myself.

Occasionally evangelical speakers would come to our church. For some reason, they always seemed to be people who had led incredibly hard lives: former drug addicts, prostitutes, alcoholics and gang members. The stories of what Jesus had done for them were incredible, and I could feel the power in what they had to say. But they were also easy for me to dismiss. I did not know anyone who lived a life like that.

What I really wanted to hear was a testimony from someone who had lived their life within the church. Didn't people like me have God's power in their lives too?

During this time, God kept throwing out a lifeline to me. About twice a year the church's retired pastor would fill in as preacher. He always talked about how God loves us enough to die for us and that he wants to have a relationship with us. When he spoke, I knew without a shadow of a doubt who Jesus was, what he meant to that pastor and what he wanted to be in me. And those glimpses were enough to plant a seed in me that there had to be more to Christianity than what I was experiencing.

During college, grad school and then as a young married adult in Michigan, I still went faithfully to worship each Sunday. But it wasn't out of a desire to be with God. It was mostly out of a sense of obligation and fear that God would be unhappy with me if I didn't go. I didn't try to read the Bible again as an adult, and I didn't have much of a prayer life.

I hid out in large churches where I was sure no one would notice my presence or ask me to get involved. (And no one did.) I thought maybe in a big, established church I wouldn't run into the kinds of problems I'd seen in my home church. Deep down inside I was still seeking the God I had glimpsed in those few sermons as a teen. I guess I figured that in a big church they'd know more what they were doing, and I might run into someone who could tell me what Christianity really was about.

I heard a lot of good classical music. I saw a lot of nice stained glass. I listened to a lot of politically-charged sermons, academically dense sermons and sermons about our inhumanity to each other. But I didn't hear much about God's love for us or his desire to have a relationship with us.

My husband and I moved from the Midwest back to the East Coast in 1989. I ended up in a small church with a pastor whose preaching started to get through to me, but I did not get involved.

My turning point

In July 1993, the church got a new pastor who came from a more conservative seminary than the pastors I'd experienced before. He was very different, because he talked about God's incredible love for us and his desire to have a relationship with us. I knew what he was saying was the truth; it was the news about God I had been seeking for 20 years. As I was actually exposed to truth of the Gospel week in and week out, the scales began to fall from my eyes.

I went through a difficult time. I knew I was going to have to let go of 35 years' worth of what I'd been taught and accepted. I knew this Gospel news both offered and demanded more. I knew I'd need to begin praying and seeking answers in the Bible.

But I was petrified, because I really didn't understand how God works. I thought that the moment I turned to him in real prayer or in the first Scripture passage I read, he would just completely condemn me for not being faithful for 20 years.

So I kept putting it off. But I kept feeling worse, until one day, at age 35, I surrendered. I told God that no matter what he was going to do to me I was going to start over with him and I would pray and I would read the Bible.

God didn't respond with the condemnation I expected. Instead, he was gentle and loving. And as I read the Bible I found it wasn't making me feel worse; it was healing me. There was reassurance there, and forgiveness, and most of all, love.

God was so different, so much more, and so much better than I'd imagined. Jesus was alive and he wanted to be a part of me and bring life to me. I could not believe what I had settled for all those years.

As I matured, the Holy Spirit called me to work in ministries that helped others discover the truth too. As I matured, God gave me a gift for teaching others about who Jesus is, and I took on responsibility as a Christian. I really believe that his work in me has made a difference in the lives of others.

What I've learned about Christian leadership

I'm not going to mislead you. Walking with God doesn't guarantee you a pleasant life. You're not going to soar from high point to high point.

In my case, from 1995-1997 God blessed me with an initial period of fruitfulness. I saw what a difference I could make when I was obedient to his call. I ended up on church staff and felt a call to ordination, which I began to pursue.

On the other hand, 1998-2001 was a pretty sobering walk. Now that the Gospel was being preached, many at the church I served were becoming increasingly offended and angry. As Hebrews 4:12 reminds us, "For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."

That church went after the pastor who had brought them the Gospel — then it tore itself apart.

In the aftermath, I helped plant a United Methodist church. I had grown up with a low opinion of the hierarchial system in my denomination because of the way the pastoral situations in my youth had been handled. Now I got to see the system up close as an adult while we were doing the plant. My feelings towards my denomination's governance and bureaucracy did not improve. The people at the top had no understanding of how to plant churches or support the people who were planting them. I also saw very little concern for local churches in general or the people in them. Largely because of the hierarchy's neglect and ineptness, our plant lasted only 18 months before it died.

You ask yourself —- and God —- a lot of questions when these kinds of things happen.

Since late 2000 I have been on sabbatical from my denomination, although I still occasionally have thoughts of going back as a missionary to the UMC, perhaps if my family moves out of the local area. I have been worshiping and serving at a 15-year-old community church.

I graduated from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 2005 after six years of commuting from Baltimore to various places in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Virginia for classes, and taking online courses through Asbury Theological Seminary. I have regained my footing and gotten my confidence back. And by God's grace I was ordained on January 17, 2006, by a committee from my current church as well as my former pastor and a good friend from the UMC.

Where am I at right now?

I am struggling with new issues. One is the difficult position of being a female ordained leader in the evangelical world. Our church affirms women in ministry, but some of the visitors and members of our church either do not outright or are uncomfortable with it. We constantly have to explain and defend our position. Because of the tension, I feel that I am not able to minister through the main gifts I have been given (teaching, exhortation and prophecy) as freely as I would in the mainline church world. It is wearing on a body.

I have also struggled with the blind acceptance among many in this branch of the faith to a handful of celebrity pastors and media figures and their ideas—everything from their political views to their views on Scripture to women to sound doctrine. Evangelicals often lash out at Catholics' obedience to their church hierarchy; I feel it is no less the case in the evangelical world. Despite the cries of "sola scriptura!" many evangelicals today get their views on scripture secondhand, interpreted by a handful of loud and accessible voices. I feel increasingly called to emphasize being a Berean amongst those I serve.

Christ is the foundation

One thing has been constant since I came alive in Christ — the fellowship of my walk with God. The incredible joy and peace that comes from talking with him, growing in knowledge about him, responding to his direction, submitting to his correction, and feeling his healing in my life is almost impossible to describe. Above everything else, this walk is what I want the people God gives me to experience.

In the kinds of churches I grew up in, I really had no chance of ever become anything other than an institutional Christian who never really got the point of it all.

But God's in the business of beating the odds. I know that if God's grace can reach through institutional Christianity to get to me, and if, because of the Spirit's presence in my life, I can not only withstand the kinds of spiritual wounds church leaders accumulate, but also gain strength in my faith in their aftermath, then it is true that "with God, all things are possible."

— Rebecca Copeland