I met with a friend the other day for lunch. He's a good man with plenty of God-given vision for the Kingdom, but he's discouraged.

My friend is discouraged for many of the same reasons I discuss in posts here at Cerulean Sanctum. He sees the problems in the American Church today, but rather than dwelling on them, he works toward solutions. He loves the Church and wants only the best for Her, yet he's had a rough time finding a place that will appreciate his talents. Instead, he's found a lot of the business world in the Church, where people in leadership positions, when confronted with problems, would rather let innocent underlings die by the sword than to be responsible men and fall on it themselves.

As I listened to my friend, it struck me how alike we are in what we see and understand. It's like we were thinking the exact same thoughts at the exact same time. I found myself nodding my head the second he opened his mouth to talk about an issue because I knew precisely what he was going to say; I would have said it that same way, too.

The difference between the two of us is that my friend is still actively pursuing a life in the ministry. I, on the other hand, tired of the gamesmanship, the unwillingness to look beyond the ordinary, and the perpetual confrontations with people lacking vision, got out.

I don't say that with any malice toward any one person or any single church. The cumulative barrage is what hurts over time, particularly for those people who by God's design are the square pegs in the round holes.

Not too long ago, I interviewed for a pastoral position at a respected church. The pastor was clearly a man who pushed the envelope and was wholly unsatisfied with the status quo. I didn't agree with every move he made, but you could tell he was on the right iconoclastic path. Sadly, during my first interview, I realized his board did not share the same vision.

When asked how I defined "spiritual growth", I made the mis-step of defining my view by opening with what it was so obviously not: keisters in seats. On this, the pastor and I wholeheartedly agreed. Someone forgot to clue the board in, though. The laser death beams that drilled about two dozen holes in me revealed the truth. To the board, it was ALL about packing 'em in.

Same planet, different worlds.

I really don't know how those folks get in positions of power in our American churches, but somehow they do. You can stamp folks like that out of a mold, put a certain regional dialect on their lips, and plop them in church leadership roles around the country—sometimes I think that's how they're made, devilishly manufactured in secret government cloning tubs in a lab outside Poughkeepsie.

For those godly people who have a better vision, the small-minded are everywhere. More often than not, they're standing in the way, doing everything they can to secure their own kingdom at the expense of the bigger Kingdom.

But what to do?

My friend and I were on the same path at one time, but broken and battered, I got off. Am I happy with that decision? Not really. It leads to the inevitable question of what might have been. But then I see my friend, a man wholly sold out to God, and I see the utter discouragement on his face and I wonder. More than anything I pray that some church that hasn't been infiltrated by small kingdom people will recognize the goldmine, will see the prophet, and turn him loose to do the thing that God so desires to do through him.

You can't peer into the holy depths of a Jeremiah and know every emotion of his every day. Who understood him except God? Who consoled him except his Creator? To not seek the approval of men is to exact a cost that too few of us are willing to pay. Certainly small-minded, small kingdom people can't understand that cost.

More than anything else, I pray that God would blow those small kingdomites off their perch, like a carpenter blows sawdust off his work. I've seen too many godly people shot down in flames, not because they were wrong, but because they were so excruciatingly right about problems and the solutions needed to fix them that no one could tolerate their correctness.

Opposition from the world is to be expected. But opposition from the Church? That's a sting no anesthetic will soothe.

Today, I'm sad for my friend. I wonder why so many good people suffer at the hands of the very people they seek to serve.

Hmm. Sounds achingly familiar, doesn't it?

{Image: The Stoning of Stephen by Pietro da Cortona}