Hello there, today I want to share with you the story of me living in a church- what led to it, what I learned while there, and eventually why I left. Let’s get into it.
When I went to university to study graphic design in 2010, I had a hard time. While I met some of the best people there, some of whom I am still friends with today, I was miserable.
I was not focused on school at all. My grades in a lot of subjects were failing.
To give you a little background, I grew up in an Asian household, where my sisters and I were buried in books and school notes and competed academically our entire childhood. But for the first time in my life, I did not have a handle on that aspect of my life.
I was overwhelmed by the sudden freedom.
I was 7 hours away from my family. College classes often had an auditorium-full of students that it was easy to skip class unnoticed, and there were no parent-teacher conferences.
In other words, no one really had to know how I was doing. So, that’s how it was. No one asked, I didn’t tell anyone.
Whenever I received my grant check at the beginning of the quarter, I hopped on the city bus and went straight to the mall. In an attempt to flee from my student responsibilities, I developed a shopping obsession. I had never worked before, so I didn’t know the value of earning money. I was in college completely paid for by grants and financial aid.
One day while waiting for the bus back to campus, I was sitting in a waiting area at the transit downtown, surrounded by my shopping bags. Lost in my own world with headphones on, a group of Filipinos, a mix of adults and youth, carrying guitars and tambourines and pamphlets, approached me.
Of course, I always got excited whenever I came across fellow Filipinos in America.
We had instant connection. I took their info card, and went on about my day.
A few days passed. One day, while trying to distract myself from the school work that piled on my desk, I saw that info card sitting on my shelf.
I picked it up and texted the number. It was early in the week, so the earliest I could attend was their Bible study that Wednesday.
I didn’t drive at the time, so they drove a half hour and picked me up.
Just like our first meeting, I was met with some of the warmest, happiest group of people. I was kind of a loner, lost and confused during that season of my life.
Here, I felt right at home.
If you didn’t know, the Philippines is predominantly Catholic, so I grew up attending mass. Of course I was a kid, but I never felt anything when I went to church. We recited prayers, uttered hymns, but I remember Sundays being mostly to see if I ran into any of my classmates there.
To be honest, sitting here in my college dorm, I was hesitant to attend this church’s bible study. I imagined it to be an awkward encounter: people sitting around in their white plastic stools holding their bibles and talking about passages with creepy smiles on their faces.
But when I walked into their sanctuary that Wednesday evening, I remember feeling blown away. It was beautiful and lively, with moody lighting, neat rows of pews, and gorgeous wooden pillars that framed the space.
What caught my attention the most though? The music.
Their band members, mostly youth, were tuning their instruments, practicing their strums and keys and testing their mics. When they started playing for the service, I was instantly hooked.
This was nothing like any of the other churches I’ve attended, I thought.
And so from that day on, I was all in.
I attended every service, absorbed every preaching, every verse that accompanied their talking points, took pages and pages of notes, and felt prayers deeply in my bones. I often cried during praise and worship, and definitely during prayers. You could say I drank the kool-aid…More like chugged it haha.
They made me feel like a family.
When I dropped out of college a year later, I found myself in a predicament- I didn’t know how to tell my family.
I came home that summer, with my family thinking I was just there for break, not realizing I had no campus to go back to that fall.
I was too scared and ashamed to tell them.
I let it play out.
Time’s up. School was about to start that fall, and I still hadn’t told my family. Now, I found myself packing my stuff, heading to the airport, back to the city where my college was.
Only this time, I wasn’t going back to school.
I had nowhere to go. I was literally homeless…
But of course, I wasn’t. I had a family I could call.
So that’s what I did. Without even skipping a beat, when I asked for help, they took me in- no questions asked.
I’ve never felt so cared for and loved by complete “strangers”.
The head pastor there was a young female, probably ten years older than me. She lived downstairs from the sanctuary, where we held lunches and other social events for the church, and she usually had a Bible student assigned to live with her and assist in her pastoral duties for a year, and then they rotate.
And so, there I was, living in a church.
I became involved in all the services and events. By this time, I was a member of the praise and worship team, which seemed to be the dream ministry for anyone who craved relevance and the spotlight.
Let me tell you, that stuff gets into your head. I’m not “all that”, don’t get me wrong, but now when I see emerging praise and worship leaders in different branches of that church, boy could I tell from a mile away when the ministry is bloating their ego.
I guess it takes one to know one.
I formed a strong bond with my pastor, who became like a big sister to me, but also a mentor in my spiritual journey.
I developed my singing skills, even learned to play the guitar and photography, and mastered public speaking.
Soon thereafter, I was a Praise and Worship Co-Lead along with my closest friend there, and during my last year in the church, I became the lead guitar player for the band when the former left to attend the Bible school.
With her guidance, I was also entrusted by my pastor a few times to deliver messages in service, including Sunday worship, when she had to attend out-of-town conferences.
Even though I felt like a failure for being a college drop-out, within these walls, I felt relevant. Important. I had value. I even felt special.
Never mind that my family was completely oblivious to the new life I was living. While they were aware that I had found a church, much to my mother’s disapproval, expressing her concerns of the church giving her ‘culty vibes’, they were still under the impression that I was attending university, so they didn’t mind it too much.
I only lived in the church building for about four months, eventually finding an apartment with a roommate who also went to the church, but I was a member of that church for nearly 7 years.
Eventually I told my family about dropping out of school, which felt like such a huge weight lifted off of my chest. They definitely blamed my involvement in church for distracting me from my studies, which, they weren’t wrong. But it was also my choice of distraction.
I continued living in that city, worked different jobs, and in those 7 years I “backslid” from the church a couple times (they called people who stopped coming to church “backsliders”).
While I will always be grateful for everything they’ve done for me, all the skills I’ve developed through them, and the friendships I’ve made, ultimately, I no longer aligned with their teachings. In fact, I knew I didn’t align with them early on, but I stuck it through for whatever reason.
Being there for as long as I did made me see a lot of things, on which I have quite some opinions, and started questioning their practices.
And so… I left.
Just like that.
I didn’t burn any bridges. In fact I still communicate with many of them, even after all these years. I just decided to quietly work on myself and eventually, joined the military and never looked back.
[PS: If you want to read about how and why I joined the military in my mid-20s, you can read it here.]
In this blog entry I wanted to give you a glimpse into how I ended up living in a church, how my experiences there shaped me, and eventually why I left.
