I came to a frustrating realization while talking to Yoshi the other night; I miss the "ministry game." Now, don't get me wrong, I don't recant anything I've ever said about the wrongness of the strategizing and plotting and "warfare mentality" the church embraces. In fact, I'm still a good bit disgusted by some of the plots I've seen and even participated in in the name of evangelism. And yes, this mentality was a large portion of the reason I left the church. But the fact remains that a part of me misses it. Not misses the people - I can find just as many "ministry opportunities" by simply living life with love as the central value. In fact, since I believe wholeheartedly that love is the ONLY positive transformative power in this universe, this probably "works" better in the long run anyway. (The quotation marks remain because I can't get past the wrongness of seeing people as simply an opportunity to change them or a set of projects)

But, we were reminiscing over the late nights we spent trying to hold 6 different groups in relative harmony with each other, the contortions we went through to manipulate things to work how we wanted them to, the ploys to plays one group's weaknesses against another's in order to bring both to our ideal, the plottings to put us or people we "could trust" (read control) in power and I realized that those times were fun. Sure, they were largely one headache after another, but we both have a bit of a martyr in us. And yes, or assumptions about our right use people "for good" were seriously screwed up. No, I wouldn't return to playing that game for the world. But, that doesn't change the fact that a part of me immensely enjoyed being in cahoots with a small, select group who could pull off the tings we did. Maybe, part of what I miss is just being in the "in crowd", but, alot of it is the politics and the drama. And that's not a part of myself that I like staring in the face.