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Commentary
In therapy for a ‘strained relationship’ Eric Van Meter, Jan 21, 2008
Eric Van Meter
By Eric Van Meter Special Contributor
Editor's Note: This is the first in an occasional series.
“The fact that you’re here tells me a great deal,” the therapist says. I squirm. My church sits on the couch with me, but I don’t look at her. “It tells me that you want to find a way to reconcile. Eric, why don’t you start?”
My throat tightens. I suppose no one ever plans on ending up in therapy when they begin a relationship, much less when those in the relationship are rooted in God. Yet here I sit, in the imaginary office of an imaginary counselor, trying to somehow work things out with my very real partner, the United Methodist Church.
The fact that our sessions take place solely inside my head is perhaps an indication that I could use a sabbatical, individual counseling of my own, perhaps anti-psychotic medication. But it’s hard to find a counselor who will help a person work out his issues with 8 million other people without first prescribing the aforementioned drugs.
So I squirm under the patient gaze of my imaginary counselor and try to explain.
“She—the church, I mean—was gorgeous, vibrant. I never felt more alive than when I was with her.”
“Sounds like a beautiful story.”
She’s right. And so I tell her how I fell in love with the UMC.
Initial attraction
It all began my freshman year of college. I was 18, away from home for the first time, and living in a room the size of a monastic cell in a dorm appropriately named Paine Hall. Life was bleak, until someone invited me to the Wesley Foundation.
I went to a cookout and met some nice Methodist college students, but didn’t think it was for me. I had no intention of coming back to Wesley.
Only, I couldn’t seem to get away from it. Everywhere I turned, I ran into someone with a Wesley T-shirt. Every day for the first three weeks, I talked to someone involved in Wesley and they were so excited to be a part of it! So I kept going, kept meeting people, kept watching how committed my new friends were to each other.
Finally, after a weekend getaway for freshmen, I awoke to the strangest of feelings. I was in love. Over my head in love with these people, all because of one thing.
Or one Person.
God. Undeniably God—Father, Son, Spirit. Creator and Re-creator. Redeemer. Pentecost flame, even for someone who couldn’t find Acts with a table of contents and a compass. God had breathed a special kind of life into these people I was encountering, these Methodists. Through them, God’s arms caught me up in an embrace that shocked me with its grace and selflessness.
My Methodist friends did things I had never seen before. They sang with hearts full of conviction—hymns, praise songs, choral pieces, didn’t matter. They prayed together, without shame.
During chapel, people actually went to the altar because it was natural to kneel before God in the presence of others. They offered communion every week, and with real bread, even!
They tutored local children. They visited nursing homes. They studied the Bible with intense curiosity.
Did I mention these were college students? Most of them, 18 to 23 years old. Too young to know better, perhaps. Or maybe too enamored with grace to care what it would cost to live out their faith. And I found myself as one of them.
The more time I spent with the Methodists, the more I heard about God’s love, about grace, about forgiveness, about the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. I believed every word of it, and when my belief wasn’t so strong, someone always seemed to be there to carry me through the doubts and doldrums.
After awhile, I became a Methodist myself, even though I hadn’t joined a local church yet. In the context of that faith community, my adult identity took shape, and along with it, my sense of vocation.
The calling
I decided to become a UM pastor just after my 21st birthday. My campus minister explained the process of ordination, which seemed like the pact Laban made with Jacob: Work faithfully for a certain number of years, prove yourself worthy of your beloved, live happily ever after.
Of course, that’s not the whole story. Laban tricked Jacob into marrying Leah, Rachel’s ugly older sister. Before he realized it, the marriage was consummated. So he had a choice: to take what he had and make the best of it, or start all over to earn Rachel’s hand as well.
Can I ever relate!
The therapist scribbles on her legal pad. When she looks up, confusion furrows across her brow.
“I’m afraid I still haven’t heard the problem,” she says. “You sound like your love for the church is genuine. When exactly did things start going wrong?”
“My first board of ordained ministry retreat.”
“Oh?” she says. “What happened?”
“I met another group of Methodists—good people, many of whom I’m friends with today. But I realized there was a whole litany of things that Methodist leaders valued that I didn’t: distinctive theological elements, particulars of polity and the like. I was expected not just to learn all that stuff but to form a new identity around it.
“I had not been nurtured in the United Methodist womb like many of them. I did not have emotional ties to structures or traditions or distinctive elements of polity or personality. All I had was the depth of my own experience with God and his people, which had been inextricably tied to the close-in relationships of a community that identified with the UMC.
“At the BOOM retreat, I began to understand that those relationships were not the priority of my denomination. The UMC didn’t seem to want me for who I was so much as who they could train me to be. That hurt. I hadn’t expected it.”
“Surprises are common as a union approaches,” the therapist says. “Do you think you have commitment issues?”
I hold up my hands. “These weren’t just things I found out about the church I fell in love with. This seemed like another church entirely. I’d never really seen it before.”
“Seen what?”
“The split personality. The lovely and the repulsive. The pure and the prideful.”
“Rachel and Leah?”
“Exactly.”
Wrestling with God
“But...” She leans forward as if to argue, but plugs the thought with a professional smile. “You’re here because you want this relationship to work. Have you ever considered that it might be better if you parted ways?”
“It’s crossed my mind, yes.”
“Then why stay together? If you think there’s an agenda behind her love for you, then you have a long road ahead.”
I nod.
“Tell me then,” she says, this time more firmly. “Why not just give up?”
“Because I’m Jacob, and I’m still wrestling with God. Because she’s Rachel, and too lovely to ignore, much less forget.”
“And you think you can change her back into what you first fell in love with?”
“You’re not listening,” I say. “At her best, she already is all those wonderful things, those wonderful people. The beauty is there, waiting to surface. I can’t let go.”
She waits for me to continue. I don’t.
“You really do love your church, then?”
Surprise tears sting my eyes. “Very much.”
She clicks her pen, positions it over the paper.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m listening.”
The Rev. Van Meter is campus minister for the Wesley Foundation at Arkansas State University. This is an excerpt from his unpublished bookmanuscript. The full text of this piece is available at Eric's blog.
Eric Van Meter
“I’m afraid I still haven’t heard the problem,” she says. “You sound like your love for the church is genuine. When exactly did things start going wrong?” 
