Take Your Hands Off Me Church

Only God knows how many mission casualties have resulted from the suburban value system’s grip on churches. One near casualty was the international ministry to Mothers of Preschoolers, MOPS. In the early 1980s some women in suburban Denver decided that they wanted to start a ministry targeting the mothers of preschool children. They felt strongly that the culture was giving moms who stayed home with their children a bum rap. From their perspective all the cultural kudos were going to the working women. They saw the Stay at Home Moms with pre school children as a target group to be ministered to. So, without much help or input from church leadership, they started the first MOPS, and it was very successful.

But the power brokers in their church didn’t like what they saw. During MOPs meetings the parking lot was full and cars spilled into the neighborhood. Ladies were parking in the pastor’s parking spot! The moms were tracking dirt into the building, plus they were creating numerous nettlesome housekeeping problems. And in suburbia housekeeping problems are deal breakers!

Also MOPS was not the brain child of anyone on the staff, it flowed out of the ministry passions of some “nobodies.” How dare a bunch of nobodies start a ministry that attracted mostly non church members and created housekeeping problems!

The power brokers were predictable; they began to clamp down on these nobodies who were creating so much havoc in their peaceful, comfortable and clean church. Soon the MOPS pioneers began bailing out of that church, (the first MOPS leaders may have been nobodies but they were nobodies with passion). Several left the church and took their vision with them. Fortunately, they were able to find churches that would embrace and encourage this great new ministry. The rest is history, today MOPS is a large international ministry reaching thousand of moms and their children.