That Time at Summer Camp
The exact moment that broke my faith
The church I grew up in was small. We had a hard time attracting new people. We had a harder time getting them to come back the following Sunday. We could only achieve growth in our small flock at a snails pace over the years, and we never understood why.
Despite how tiny we were, among the kids in this church, there was an in-crowd, and an out-crowd. The kids in the in-crowd seemed to be the pastor’s two daughters, one of their friends from dance, and one or two others, who seemed to vary based on whether they were useful to them at the time.
I was the oldest child at the church — three years older than the pastor’s oldest daughter. In some ways, I was a leader. During the sermons, I’d be sitting in the middle of several kids, drawing a comic in the margins of the church bulletins to entertain them during that rather boring 30 plus minutes. After church, while we were all waiting for parents to stop gabbing, they’d come up to me and say, give us something to play! I’d come up with some sort of premise based in history or fantasy, give them all parts, and the start of a story, and then tell them “Ok, go!”
There may have been an exact moment when my status in the out-crowd was solidified. I was sitting with the pastor’s oldest daughter in my lap. Another little girl…
