I Outgrew my Church

When I was in junior high, I had a shirt that I adored. It flattered my hips and was a beautiful shade of pink. But one morning it didn’t fit. It was too tight and I was afraid that if I tried to wear it again, I would end up tearing it. I loved that shirt, but it no longer fit. I still have it. I still keep the memories of wearing it close to my heart. But I can no longer put it on.

For the past four years, I have tried to wear a shirt that was too tight for me. I’m not talking about clothing, though. I’m referencing the church where I first met and fell in love Jesus, where the book of Genesis and the Scriptures were first opened to me, where several mentors stepped into my life and patiently guided me until I could walk the path of faith as a follower of Christ.

In this letter I hope to testify what God has done at UBF … and also glorify God by also showing how that solid foundation on Jesus Christ as the one true God and on the deep respect for God’s word has been bearing fruit today.

First, a solid foundation on God’s word

My parents had divorced when I was twelve and by the time I was seventeen and a senior in high school, I felt my life was hopeless. At night I would pray to God with tears, “I just want a friend.”

God had heard my prayer and answered swiftly. In November, I started Bible study with Msn. Grace Koh from University Bible Fellowship (UBF) and God spoke to me through the very first lesson in Genesis 1. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

I saw that God created me. God loved me, created me for a purpose. I learned about Jesus Christ who loved me as much as He loved the sinful Samaritan Woman (John 4). This hopeless romantic fell in love with Jesus.

Through the gracious and patient love of a shepherd family at Western Illinois University, Dr. Jim and Jennifer Rabchuk, and another two years after graduation under the shepherding of Dr. Paul Koh, I learned more the grace of Jesus Christ and the Scriptures.

About a year before I married, my human shepherd demonstrated God’s love for me through 1John 4:10 in a way I will never forget … and has shaped my life as a Christian early on.

Second, God magnifies His love in my marriage

Through UBF, God blessed me to marry the best husband for me, Adam Kramarczyk, in May of 2006.

Here I should add: It was my responsibility to listen to read God’s word. Even at this time, there were red flags that Adam and I needed counseling, especially for me who needed healing and had an unhealthy need for compliments.

I don’t blame UBF for my weak faith. It is my responsibility to read the Bible and make sure what I believe lines up with the word of God.

But at that time, I believed that if I loved God, I would have money in the bank, a happy marriage, and a fruitful ministry.

Note: we don’t deposit our faith to earn what makes us happy. God is a Person, who wants to get to know you, love you … and wants to be known and loved too.

After five years of infertility, God revealed His love for me that wants me to be fruitful.

During this time, my faith was stretched and I met God who loved me like never before. By His miracle, I become pregnant.

Even after Barnabas was born in 2012 as our “Son of Encouragement” I went back to my life of pleasing my human shepherds to feel loved.

I decided to explore ways to fit in UBF while not fully participating in college ministry. I started to write letters to UBF chapters in the USA. I joined the hospitality ministry.

Outwardly, we had a happy marriage and I was teaching the Bible to college students and even serving UBF in creative ways. But inwardly I was depressed. While Adam trusted and obeyed UBF shepherds, I felt left out and abandoned. I was going through my second high-risk pregnancy and would be induced (again). We also ran out of money.

Up until this time I held it together okay … but all of a sudden the God I had grown to believe in at UBF was different than the God who met me.

Instead of the happy marriage and healthy pregnancies I thought I deserved from a loving God, I felt unloved, deserted, and suffered through two high-risk pregnancies.

With the foundation of faith in Christ and on the Word of God already established, I began to reach out for deeper healing and greater fruit to God.

The shirt I was wearing started to feel tight.

Third, the shirt gets too tight to breathe.

Since I had done all those things without getting the blessings I thought I deserved, I was disappointed in God.

I felt (Notice all these “feelings.” Faith isn’t a feeling. Who knew?) that my Christian life wasn’t up to the standard that it should be. If I was trying so hard to teach the Bible to college students and I went to every church meeting, why was I hurting so much? (Notice here I didn’t mention anything about God’s word or about God Himself. But the fact that I used first-person pronouns three times shows where my faith really was.)  

The truth was I had outgrown the faith I had. (Remember that shirt analogy?) It wasn’t enough for me to know some Scripture. I needed to meet God who is really powerful and really good, who is holy and gracious.

I needed more than UBF could provide.

When I was pregnant with Silas and in this dark stage of our marriage, I met God through the study of Isaiah at Community Bible Study.

Through that year, I learned about God who loved deeply even as He disciplined His children, who let Israel suffer in her sin just to bind her back up. I was introduced to a God of holy righteous anger and steadfast patience. Most importantly, I heard God call me His.

But God didn’t want me to learn about Him. He didn’t want my faith to stay shallow. Little did I know that God’s design was to stretch my faith to the breaking point.

When Silas was born and God still hadn’t answered my prayer for deep joy, I was angry.

(Note, the subject changed. My focus finally came off me and turned toward God.)

And this is also the time I started to struggle on Sundays at UBF. By the end of service I was a sobbing mess because as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t measure up to UBF standards. I stopped teaching the Bible, stopped writing letters to UBF chapters, and focused on sharing my testimony on Friday at Loyola UBF.

I thought of this season in the spring of 2015 as a time to dig roots in God’s word and heal. I thought after a few months, I would get back to college ministry and make UBF shepherds happy again.

But once my faith started to grow, there was no going back. God had expanded my knowledge and my level of understanding grew all the more. I could simply trust God as I once did. I needed more, I needed to get messy. I needed to get real.

By the way, the tighter we hold on to our own expectations of God, the more painful the break.

God knew this about me. And loved me. He was with me when a drama script I had labored over had been rejected and again when a close friend left UBF.

These events had me turning to God like never before. It was painful. It was unfair. But it had me looking at God in a whole new way.

One-to-one Bible study and simply obeying wasn’t enough. I started writing for God through book-length manuscripts. I explored the idea of forgiveness through a series of blog posts.

Meanwhile, I was making deep friendships with women at Community Bible Study and in Classical Conversations (our homeschool group).

But I had a dilemma.

I couldn’t tell UBF shepherds what I was doing. Homeschooling and writing Christian Romance aren’t acceptable fruit to God.

For the next four years, I put on the too-tight shirt to sneak late into the worship service on Sunday morning, share a testimony on Friday night and tried to hide the rips in the seams during Bible study with Dr. Paul Koh on Monday night.

Fourth, God holds up a mirror.

When covid hit in the beginning of 2019, I no longer had to endure Sunday morning at UBF and only watched sermons from Park Community Church. The relief was evident. Without the guilt, I could read the Bible and listen to God’s word during Bible study.

I told myself UBF was my church and everything else was simply a supplement until I could get back to “my” church.

On a whim, I published two novellas. (What else is there to do during covid?) When we started attending Park in-person, I was amazed people remembered my name. I was becoming a leader at CBS. Barnabas was blossoming at homeschool.

Instead of making a choice, I squeezed into the shirt and all the while denied the obvious: UBF is where I met Christ, but I was bearing fruit everywhere else.

So, I kept the too-tight shirt on, even as it was tearing at the seams.

But the thing is, it’s not fair to anyone to straddle two churches. I wasn’t attending church at UBF, but I couldn’t fully serve Park Community Church either.

Not to mention I was exhausted.

I wasn’t being honest but didn’t want to tell the truth either. Monday and Friday I would squeeze the shirt back on and each time the seams would tear even more and become that much more uncomfortable to wear. And then from Tuesday through Thursday and during the weekend I’d strip it off to wear the much looser outfit of a homeschooling Christian mom, wife, and novelist, all the while feeling guilty that I couldn’t wear the slimmer shirt.

For the past four years, I felt bad. I felt that I let God down. I felt that I wasn’t bearing fruit to God. And I was attacked by Satan in all these things, that I wasn’t good enough, that God didn’t love me, that I wasn’t worth anything.

Either I had to shed some weight so the shirt would fit or I had to replace it.

As God is apt to do, He had me look in the mirror.

This came in the form of a UBF summer conference I hadn’t registered for. The thing is I never intended to. I wasn’t participating in UBF, nor was I attending on Sunday. I hadn’t fit in UBF for a long time.

The shredded shirt became glaringly obvious.

Fifth, a larger shirt for greater fruit yield.

I agree that college ministry is critical in raising the next generation of leaders. Unfortunately, I haven’t been to the college campus in years. Also, my life has gone in a different direction of homeschooling and writing. I tried to fight it, but I’ve come to realize that God is bearing fruit through me in other ways, in His ways.

I wish I could attend every testimony sharing meeting, but physically I’m limited by my need for sleep before work. I want to sit in Worship Service on Sunday without doubting God’s love for me. I wish I could be content to cultivate a tiny garden of my tiny family and tiny apartment, but God made me a storyteller. I wish I was content to serve in the background, but God made me a woman of heart who suffers with the doubter, the disappointed, the heartbroken.

UBF is so valuable to me. I will always be thankful for UBF because through God’s servants I met Jesus Christ and received Him as my Savior and King. Even today, I personally believe that UBF is the best ministry for deep and life-giving Bible study. I met Christ here. I love and respect my spiritual fathers and mothers who have poured out their lives for me for years.

But UBF is not where the fruit to God is being produced.

At the marriage retreat put on by Park, God reminded me that He brought us together (through UBF) and God has a plan for our family (based on the foundation of God’s word through the patience and love of UBF shepherds).

This year in Community Bible Study, I learned through the study of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers that God is holy. I repented that I had been lax in obeying His commandments and decided to stop working on Saturday night so that we could attend Worship Service on Sunday morning at 10am again.

When I started writing for God, I kept writing. Every story dives deep into the word of God I learned first in UBF, but the fictional characters navigate by learning about this glorious God who isn’t stuck in a box. The characters persevere through hardship until God glorifies Himself. Three books are now available on Amazon.

For four years, I purposefully didn’t serve at Park Community Church. I didn’t talk to people, invite them to coffee, get to know anyone. But God brought relationships to me through moms who joined CBS and Classical Conversations (our homeschool group).   

This month I hung up the shredded shirt that no longer fits me as I officially moved on from UBF.

I’m especially thankful to Dr. Paul Koh, who has taught me Resurrection Faith through running with me after I graduated college, who revised my testimonies again and again until I could believe that God’s word is true, who came to my apartment to teach the Bible to me when Barnabas was an infant, who prayed for me, gave to me generously, loved me as his spiritual daughter.

I’m also thankful to Pastor Ron Ward, who was Adam’s shepherd for a long time, but also loved me and pointed me to repentance and to faith in Christ. Pastor Ron introduced me to Adam, baptized me into faith in Christ, and established our family.

Recently I donned on the far larger and looser shirt as I committed to Park Community Church.

I will forever be thankful of the foundation of God’s word and faith in Jesus Christ I received from UBF.

I thank God for every Bible study and every time I meditated on God’s word until it impacted me. But my life doesn’t fit in UBF.

That doesn’t mean I’m no longer a Christian, but simply that I need to move on.

Spiritually-speaking, I grew taller and wider, and I need a shirt big enough to fit my enlarged faith.

And that’s a great thing! Because the point of any Bible study, any church, any congregation who believes in Christ as Savior, to grow in a broader knowledge of God, a deeper understanding of Scriptures, a more robust obedience to the Great Commission.

And I praise God to see how my faith now has room to grow, the space for the fruit that can be produced, and the capacity I now have to work for God’s kingdom and salvation work.

The work He has been doing and, I believe, will continue to do.

Will you praise God with me?

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