Reflecting on the Kansas City Experience (2)

I’ve already admitted that my reasons for making the move to Kansas City were not totally noble.    Throughout my life I’ve wanted to be affirmed, looked up to and admired.  There’s nothing wrong with that unless it becomes the driving force in your life.  I’m afraid I got dangerously close to that in Kansas City.

While Ann was quite unpopular with many of the women, my experience was the exact opposite.  At that time Argentine was not the largest congregation in Kansas City, but there were probably not more than three or four Churches of Christ whose attendance exceeded ours.  I was being affirmed at every turn, and I’m ashamed to say that much of that went to my head.”   My church bulletin articles were well received and reprinted throughout the country.  A few secular newspapers even picked up my stuff.   I was asked to speak at several different locations, and flew to various places around the country to fulfill speaking engagements.  At each stop there was praise and affirmation.   The one place where I was getting less and less of it was in my home, and for good reasons.

On top of that I came to Kansas City with a pretty negative preaching agenda.   I thought my New York critics were liberal, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with that.   The mentality of many in the Argentine church was supportive  of what I now consider to be a harsh, negative message, and I gave them what they wanted.

Toward the end of my time in Kansas City, I began to have serious questions about my approach to ministry, my failures as a father, and a husband, and my misuse to scripture texts in the pulpit and the classroom.  Gradually that began to change, especially as I saw people being put down because of their failure to measure up to the standards that some wanted to impose upon them.  I began to change, and the leadership began to change, but it became increasingly difficult to minister in the environment that I had helped create, so we made the decision to leave Argentine.  But that’s another story, and it will have to wait for another blog. 

On the other hand, we developed some lifelong friendships with people we first met at Argentine.  They were and are some of the most Godly people we’ve ever known.  It’s amazing how God used this difficult time to enrich our lives by putting people in our path who truly loved God and wanted to follow him with pure hearts.