Blaine was working at his store one day when a customer came in asking for help with a photo he wanted framed. It didn’t take long for the Lord to reveal that this man was more than just a customer. He was a faithful brother in the Lord, a dedicated servant of the Gospel and he was destined to become a life-long friend. He was also someone who had been hurt and disillusioned by a church split and was spiritually disabled and in a sense ‘out of commission’. He was like a ship without power, just drifting along without a sense of God’s purpose or direction in his life. Blaine reached out to his new friend and I am happy to report that Blaine’s responsiveness to the Lord to reach out and befriend Tristan has resulted in a great friendship and a very powerful addition to the ministry team at his church. Tristan loves his church and is very active but looking back Tristan can too easily recall when things were not good for him in his church experience.

 

 We often like testimonies that are about victory and success in the church. We want to tell how the church is good and wonderful and that if you get into church you will find all the answers. In the end, this is about all of those things but unfortunately it is also about church failure along the way. Actually, Tristan went through two church splits. But the story is not so much about the failures it is about a man who went through two church spits and still managed to come out of these experiences with his faith intact, his love for the Lord stronger than ever with a strong sense of mission and direction in his life.

 

   If you have every been let down by a church; if you have ever watched people you respected and admired fail and let you down, please, take the time to read Tristan’s story. I am sure you will be blessed to see that the same light that he found at the end of that long dark tunnel, is there to help you navigate through to joy and peace again as well. Tristan has learned how to do some things that many believe to be impossible by processing his experiences in a way where even the negative examples serve as positive instruction in his life. He has learned to process his life experiences as a man of God firmly grounded in God’s word and not on the whims of fickle emotions. He doesn’t brush things away and say they don’t matter; things DO matter. He doesn’t excuse wrong conduct as being inconsequential or trivial. He has learned the secret rather, of seeing wrong for what it is and not letting other people’s failures nullify the truth in his own life. The failure of other people, or even our own failures can never disqualify Jesus as Lord of Lords and King of Kings. May God be found true though EVERY man a liar. (Romans 3:4)

 

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   Many people come to Jesus at a particular point in time. They have a single moment that they can point to where they were on one side of the line and then stepped across to the other. Others have a more incremental, step-by-step, conversion; Tristan is one of those. He remembers going to Vacation Bible School as a little boy growing up in the Philippines. He enjoyed the Bible stories and games and felt like the seeds of the gospel were deeply planted in his heart through the things he learned in those days. He didn’t really take the message too seriously at the time but he felt like there was something there that felt right and good.

 

   The Philippines is a very intricate mixture of many languages, cultures and people groups. Most of the people call themselves Christians, but for the majority, it is only a name. They are born as 'Cultural Christians’ and never really think about it except as a ‘cultural identity’. The idea of being truly ‘born again’, Bible believing, knowledgeable followers of Jesus, is not very common and in some cases, can bring on severe persecution. Tristan was born into a very typical Philippino family. The family was nominally Christian but that was all.

 

 Tristan went along through his early years with those seeds planted in his heart but it was not until about his second year of high school that they started to really take root in his heart. While his mother and father were not Bible believing Christians, his uncles, aunts and cousins were. They used to secretly take him to church on Sundays and the Lord began working on his heart. He began to see his need to make the gospel message HIS own and receive Jesus personally. He knew he was saved. He knew he had been born again but it was not until he entered his first year of college that he really felt like his faith blossomed and began to bear fruit.

 

   From that time he took his church activity very seriously and began serving and helping out in a wide variety of ways. He was asked by his pastor to be a youth ministry leader. He agreed and took the role very seriously and he began to grow and mature as a man of God.

 

   He did not grow up in a particularly close family. Although they did not hate each other and there were no big family quarrels. But the family was just not bound together strongly. He did however, have a strong love and respect for his mother and as his faith grew, his sadness also grew for those of his family who were still not born again. Tristan and his sister (who is also a born again believer) felt very sad that they could not get through to their family, and especially to their mother.

 

   One day he got word that something had happened to her and the whole family rushed to help. But by the time they got there, it was already too late. There was nothing they could do. She was already gone. It really bothered Tristan and his sister to think that she may have been lost for eternity. They found out at the funeral however, that a local girl who often came to shop at their family market, had been sharing the gospel with her regularly and was convinced that she had asked Jesus into her heart and been born again shortly before she died. This was a great relief to them. The death of a loved one is always painful but the pain is a great deal worse when we don’t know for sure that we will see them again in heaven.

 

  Perhaps only slightly less painful than the death of a loved one is the pain of seeing the people who have mentored you and in a sense ‘raised you up’ as a beginner in the faith to a mature man or woman of God-turn away from the truth and fall into moral and ethical sin. Maybe in some respects it hurts even worse than the death of a loved one because, we all expect to die someday and we all know that our loved ones will pass away someday as well. We can prepare for this and brace ourselves since it is an inevitable fact of life. But men and women of God are not supposed to fall into disgrace. They are supposed to maintain moral and ethical purity and live up to the things they teach others to do and be. (And most, by the grace of God, do.) Hypocrisy is without a doubt the single thing that Jesus preached against above all else, precisely because of the pain and damage it causes to others.

 

   Tristan recalls feelings of frustration, disappointment, and deep sorrow when he learned that the church leadership he had been serving under had gotten involved in things that were simply, wrong. He says that he doesn’t need to get into the specifics of the sins involved because the sins themselves are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that it resulted in the church being torn apart. Some went this way and others that way. The chaos probably made the devil’s day. Some wanted to support their leadership and exercise forgiveness, others insisted on disciplinary measures, others just gave up on their faith altogether while still others like Tristan were just confused in their feelings and didn’t know what they wanted to do.

 

   The experience was like being spiritually punched in the stomach. He ended up at the conclusion that, ‘Jesus didn’t sin. Jesus didn’t betray him or let him down. The words of Jesus are still true and the Gospel of Jesus is still true. All of the changes in his life were true and real. He would still believe and love Jesus but he just didn’t feel like going to church and dealing with ‘the human element’ again.’ Thus he stayed out of church for more than a year, even though he still continued to maintain him personal relationship with the Lord, he was just not ready to risk being hurt again.

 

   His college training was in marine transportation and computer technology. He was working for a shipping company and spent much of the year out at sea where he usually had to ‘make church for himself.’ There was not a lot of Christian fellowship on the ships and he learned how to keep his own devotional life strong and resist the temptations to follow after the sinful distractions that were all around him. But deep down he knew that God did not intend for Christians to be ‘islands unto themselves.’ We are created to be the body of Christ and this requires interaction with other believers.

 

   Eventually, he knew that it was better for him to leave his life at sea and settle down. He ended up marrying and in time took a job in Alaska following his wife who had moved to Anchorage ahead of him as he tied up loose ends in the Philippines. He moved here and they were soon blessed with a baby boy. He started attending a new church again and started to feel really connected. He has a natural leadership quality and does everything with zeal and dedication. It was not long before the church leadership began to take on more and more responsibility in the work at the church.

 

   Everything was going fine and then it happened again! There was a big division in the church and it began to split into one-side verses the other. He was incredibly disappointed and saddened at the thought of going through the whole ordeal again. He began to question himself, “Are ALL churches like this? Is this kind of thing NORMAL!? How do I always seem to end up in dysfunctional churches!” He still continued to attend the church in an effort to work through the difficulties and help foster a spirit of reconciliation and peace between opposing factions each seeking power. He kept himself above the fray and refused to take sides. But he was nearly at the point where he was about to just forget the whole thing and going back to ‘being a Christian on his own’.

 

   It was about that time that he took a picture of his old ship into Blaine’s store to get it framed and he had what one might call a ‘divine appointment’. Tristan’s ship is now going forward full steam ahead and on course. He has a sense of mission. He is plugged in and is a tremendous source or inspiration and joy to all those around him. Blaine may very well have been the last person to have seen Tristan when he wasn’t smiling and radiating the love of Jesus.

 

   He serves on the usher crew at his church. He also is involved in cross-cultural ministry. He has a lovely wife and son with another one on the way. He works at Fed-ex and likes his job very much. I guess you could call him a Christian victory story. But I am sure it is only the beginning. I know the Lord will use his life even more in days to come.

 

   When asked what he felt was the most important thing in his heart that he wanted to get across to others he said this, “I want people to know that we must tell others about Jesus. We don’t need a special occasion or a special time. We must always be ready to share our faith.” When asked what his favorite scripture passage is, he replied, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.” (Romans 8:26,27)

 

   Too often I have met people who have had bad church experiences. They often become bitter and self-righteous. They become cynical and hardened. They speak words filled with venom and a spirit of retaliation. They are easily offended are simply hard to be around. Tristan on the other hand, was hurt more than once by very negative church experiences. But instead of processing those disappointments in a destructive way that adds nothing to his own life or to those around him, he has learned by God’s grace, to process his experiences in a way that helps to propel him forward in his walk with God and to be a source of joy and inspiration to those around him. Tristan is conspicuously devoid of an hint of the spirit of bitterness- how refreshing!

    I believe that the Lord in His goodness and mercy has sent a missionary FROM the Philippines to Anchorage Alaska to teach us how to simply walk in the joy of the Lord and live for Jesus.

   I thank the Lord that Tristan was able to meet a person like Blaine who was discerning enough to drop his own agenda and see that the person before him was more than a customer but was really a soul in need of a word of encouragement. This story may very well have had a very different ending if the Lord had not directed him to reach out and help Tristan to process his disappointment in a way where he could get past it and go on. If you are a Tristan, pray that the Lord sends a Blaine into your life to help you navigate out of the rocks into open waters. If you are a Blaine, pray that the Lord makes you sensitive to know when a Tristan is standing in front of you needing a word of encouragement.

  If you have been stung by a bad experience in Church, you must always remember that a person or persons failing to live up to the truth they preach does not mean that what they were teaching is not true. If a person says stealing is bad, and THEY get caught stealing; it does not mean that they were wrong to say stealing was bad. It IS bad! They didn't live up to that truth but it is still true. I wish I could guarantee that church will from now on be a good experience for you and that you will find leadership that is free from all hypocrisy. It would be nice but unfortunately it happens sometimes. If you do encounter a situation where a leader falls into immorality or a church split develops out of a inter-church power struggle, realize that such things are NOT NORMAL and far from usual. Also realize that Jesus has never ever been a hypocrite and has never once endorsed such things but has repeatedly rebuked them. Keep your own heart from bitterness and trust the Lord to guide you into a new church experience where you will once again grow and thrive and be effective in His service with others. What he has done for my friend Tristan, He will certainly do for you as well.

Note: You will also soon be able to read Blaine's story in this section of the website as well.