After the Church Split

Four chairs in a front room and a low table and somebody has brought a tin of something.

It is Wednesday. It has been Wednesday for about fourteen months.

There are three of them plus her. Two came from the old place and one is a woman from three doors down who came because she heard them through the wall and asked, which is a story none of them can tell without laughing.

Nineteen years.

The meeting was in the March. It was about the building, which was really about the money, which was really about two men who had not been able to be in the same room since about two thousand and eighteen. It lasted two hours and eleven minutes and she remembers the length because she looked at her phone at the end.

Half of them are at the new place across town now. Some are nowhere. There is a woman she loved who she has not spoken to since and it is not because of anything either of them did, it is because there is no way to start.

And people say things.

Her cousin said God was pruning. A man from the old place, who she likes, said in a parking lot that the split was the best thing that ever happened to that congregation, and she said mm.

She will not call it a blessing. That is fixed and she has been fixed on it since about the June, and she would go to the wall on it.

And on a Wednesday there are four chairs in her front room and something happens in them that did not happen in nineteen years at that building, and she does not know what to call that either.

If your church came apart and something small grew afterwards, you know that front room. And you know the trap exactly: everybody wants me to say it was worth it, and it was not worth it, and I still have to find a word for Wednesday.

The word, and then two verbs in one verse

Let me take the fourth chair and say the plain thing while the tin goes round.

The problem is not Wednesday. Wednesday is real and you know it is real and you would not give it up.

The problem is that the only available word for Wednesday appears to be a word that also approves of March, and you will not approve of March, so you have gone fourteen months without a word.

So let me put the word straight first.

Blessed does not mean something good grew afterwards. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is about where He is looking. It was on you in nineteen years at that building and it was on you at eleven minutes past nine in the March and it is on you in this room, and the split never once moved it.

Now the passage, and I want you to look at the two verbs, because Luke separates them completely.

And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad. Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word.Acts 8:1-4

They were scattered. That is a passive. It was done to them and it was a persecution and the same passage says Saul made havoc of the church and haled men and women to prison, and Luke gives it no redeeming description whatsoever.

They went every where preaching. That is an active. That is what those people did.

Two verbs. One done to them, one done by them. And Luke never joins them with a because. He joins them with a therefore, which is about sequence and not about purpose.

You have been scattered and you have gone somewhere, and Scripture keeps those two as separate verbs with different subjects. Acts 8:4 puts the going in the active voice after the scattering in the passive, and it is the Holy Spirit who had already been given to those people before any of it started, which is why the going was possible.

What Luke does not say about the persecution

Now let me stay with what Luke refuses to do, because it is the most useful thing in the chapter for a woman in your position.

He does not say God sent the persecution to spread the gospel. That is preached constantly and it is not in the text. Read it again. There was a persecution. They were scattered. Therefore, being scattered, they preached where they landed.

And Luke names the man who did it. He names Saul, twice, and says he made havoc, and the word he uses is one you would use about an animal wrecking a body. There is no softening.

And in the chapter before, Stephen is dead. A man is dead. Nobody in Acts 8 says his death was worth it.

You are reading a passage that names the damage without excusing it and reports the going without explaining the scattering. Acts 8:3 uses the language of havoc about what was done, and it is the Holy Spirit whom those same people had received in Acts 2, which means what went with them was a Person rather than a silver lining.

And that is precisely why you may have a word for Wednesday without giving March anything.

March was a business meeting where two men who had not been in a room since two thousand and eighteen took nineteen years apart in two hours and eleven minutes. That is what it was. It is not pruning and I am not going to call it pruning.

And there are four chairs in your front room and a woman from three doors down who heard you through a wall.

You have something growing that did not require the thing that preceded it to be good, and the text you are standing in keeps them apart on purpose. Acts 8 uses therefore rather than in order that, and His Spirit is the one at work in where people land rather than the one who scattered them.

The woman you have not spoken to

Now her, because she is the actual weight and she has been in every one of these fourteen months.

You said it yourself: it is not because of anything either of you did, it is because there is no way to start.

So here is the plain thing. There is no way to start, and that means somebody has to start badly. That is what starting looks like when there is no good opening available, and one of you has to do it clumsily or it does not happen.

It does not have to be a conversation about March. It could be four sentences about anything at all, sent on a Thursday, badly.

I am not telling you to do it. It is yours. I am telling you that the absence of a good way in is not the same as the absence of a way in, and you have been treating those as the same thing since June.

You have a way in that will be clumsy rather than no way in at all. Scripture is full of reconciliations that begin awkwardly rather than well, and it is the Holy Spirit who prompts a person toward a badly worded first sentence rather than waiting for a good one.

And I am not going to tell you what happens. She may not answer. That is a real possibility and it should be said out loud rather than left as a thing you find out.