We were visiting a new church on Sunday, beautiful building, wonderful music, a great sermon, but we left with a really bad taste in our mouth. It was a fairly small church, we were the only family visiting that day, and we are by our own admission not a conventional looking family - a boy with cerebral palsy in a wheelchair, boys (several of them) in skater attire, one young girl, an artist, a little avantgarde, one young man, with many tattoos, and piercings, two middle aged gray heads, a baby that looks like he is from Indonesia (grandson, who is part Indonesian) anyway, that isn't even all of us, but you get the picture, we are a beautiful example of a great mixture and texture for a family. Two of my boys went out of the church ahead of us, we were visiting with a friendly member of the church, they, the boys came around the corner just in time to hear two couples talking, one saying to the other, "yea, I saw them and thought please don't sit by us, please don't sit by us," Now we don't know if they were talking about us, but we were the guests, and if they weren't it still was the wrong attitude to have toward anyone at church. They looked over and saw the boys and moved up to another level to talk. It really made me sad, church people need to be welcoming and loving, not hoping someone dosent' sit by them. By the way the friendly church member that did take the time to talk to us, was the only one who spoke to us.
Comments (3)
That's very sad, Stephanie. I'm glad we serve a God who loves diversity and the colorful tapestry your family weaves. It's sad when His "people" don't get it.
On behalf of non judgeing Christians appearance shouldnt matter..sorry you had to go thru that..now if they were all in the buff...lol different story!
Oh my... that is a sad story of what a day in the church is like. I'm so sorry to hear your family had to go though it, but hopefully by you sharing the story with others... it will remind us to think before we speak and about how we act.