A Bit of Background

You may be wondering (if you don't already know): who are these people anyway?

Well, my husband and I started attending Milestone Church (then MorningStar Church in Keller) in February of 2005. We had left our last church because we felt like it was a bit directionless and were also missing being a part of a spirit-filled/charismatic congregation.

My sister was on staff with Milestone and relentlessly encouraged us to visit. She affirmed time after time so many thoughts and ideas that I had about how Christianity should really look. In retrospect, I can see that my radical, idealistic nature was leaning heavily toward the principles of the Discipleship Movement. After all, who hasn't been tired of being around "lukewarm" Christians who don't seem to be truly serious about God?

So visit we did. I went to the first service when my dh was out of town so it was just me and my two girls and baby. At that time we were meeting in a middle school cafeteria. I loved it from the get-go. I was surrounded by well-dressed people who seemed to already know who I was and were hyper-friendly. I heard great, contemporary music and loved listening to Jeff's message. I called my husband on the way home and said, "I think you're gonna love this." He visited as well and he, too, fell in love with it all.

At that time, we lived in Mansfield, which was about a 40 minute drive away. I think the second Sunday that we visited together, we said, "We would never want to move here. But let's drive around and look at houses just for fun." By June 1st of that year, we had moved into a house just a mile or two from the church. We knew that we had found our spiritual family and were so excited about living life with all the wonderful new people that we had met. It felt like the best decision that we had ever made.

Over the course of the next four years, we did everything that we could to be at the church whenever possible. We would cut weekend visits to family short so that we could return for Sunday services. We served in children's church, VBS, Victory Weekends, hospitality, moms' groups, financial classes, and my dh started the athletics ministry and oversaw that. He also helped out in a lot of planning activities with Derrick in the church office, which is important to remember.

So all in all, I would say that we were "third tier" leadership. Which means the senior pastor and associate pastor are on the top level. There are people under them like children's pastors, youth pastors, etc. And then there was us. Although during that time, we still had access to the "top tier" for things like marriage counseling (which we needed a lot of).

I say all of that to say that we saw things that other people did not see. We experienced things that other people did not experience. We heard things said that other people did not hear. We were trusted enough to see a bit "behind the curtain." And I think that's why we aren't there now. Because we eventually gained too much influence with too many people.

You also should understand the way that the church leadership paradigm worked. It was understood that you were to give proper "respect" to your pastor. He wasn't just another sinner saved by grace like you. He was a "big dog." You were never to refer to him without the title of "pastor" in front of his name. In fact, that went for every pastor on staff.

You also went out of your way to try to impress them to get "on the inside." At least, that was our experience of how things went. People took him on hunting trips, golfing trips, etc. It appears to me like being a king over your own little kingdom. Very appealling. And we played right into it. We revered and honored and adored our pastors and leadership in a way that, looking back, had so much more to do with our brokenness and need for a father figure than it does with Biblical leadership. That is important to remember because, reading this story, you might ask yourself, "But why did they look the other way? Why did they stay?" This is half of the equation.

The other half is that we deeply and sincerely loved (and still do) the people that we went to church with. Losing them out of our lives has almost killed us. I literally felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest during all of this. While there is a lot of pain and a lot of betrayal too, I cannot say that I do not still dearly love each and every friend that we had at Milestone. I think about them every day, cry sometimes, pray for them, and hope that someday we will be reunited again in a healthier place.

Now, on with our story...