Except for a few, my greatest experiences in life have come through the church. The church carried my family through divorce and cancer. The church gave me a place to heal and an opportunity to become a leader. The church saved my life. I had always been passionate about experiencing God and I wanted others to have those same experiences. And though some of my greatest pains have been experienced in the church community, my life in a large part is due to the people from my church who walked along side of me as I grew.
But two unique things happened to me that made me want to separate from mainstream Christianity and church as we know it in North America.
1st - I got fired from my first real job. I was a youth pastor right out of college and had gone back to the church I had grown up in. I thought it was where God had called me to serve for the rest of my life. I was living my dream - at least I thought. But then through some crazy turmoil in my life, my marriage and the church leadership - we left. It was then that God gave me a dream of a third place. It was the first time I was missing the third social avenue in my life and I realized that being a youth pastor wasn't my dream, but a stepping stone towards it.
2nd - I worked for 4 years at Chili's Bar & Grill. This time period connected me with dozens of friends who not only didn't share my faith, they looked down upon it. I became good friends with several of them and could never connect why our friendship worked, but our faith could not. I have those relationships in mind when I discuss the church. I want the church to regain its power as a movement of love and not a hypocritical mess of judgmental conservatives.
Now I'm no longer tied to a denominations perspective on how church should be. I don't have to convince my self to believe something because my denomination did. I've had the chance to revisit the things I believe and question why I believe them. I want to be a part of the answer for my generation - I want to connect people with the living God and our Savior, who otherwise would not. I want to push aside the peripheral doctrines of the church today and focus on the essentials of the gospels. I want to live the life God designed me to live and do the same for others along the way.
My genesis into pursuing a missional, organic, third place church model was birthed out of a lot of pain and a very real need. I still have a lot of questions, but that is what this is all about.
Questioning, refining and finding answers for my generation. But maybe it can’t be changed, or maybe it’s just my need not the worlds need, maybe I’ve just gone to church for too long or maybe it is just my non-traditionalist mindset wanting something more? But that’s what this journey is for me.
1 comments:
I think that we probably all have our reasons as to why something is not working for the traditional church. But I also think that churches are starting to figure that out and work on new trends and ways of reaching people.
There are so many changes that need to be made though. I think that the major change is not to be traditional, but rather be reforming. We should constantly challenge ourselves as to what needs to be changed in alliance with Scripture first of all, but then culture as well. A couple great books are "Breaking the Missional Code" (I think the authors are Stetzer and Punman, I could be way off though) Then I am reading one by Larry Osborne right now that is really changing what I believe about my own spirituality and that is "Contrarian's Guide to knowing God." I would definitely recommend that to all of you as a tool for understanding your own spirituality as well as what the church needs to change in its teaching.
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