How It Started For Me: Kevin Davis

I grew up in the church. I love the church. I've hated the church.

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.

Stop Pretending - Start Submitting

So I was reading this great article about race and church, in response to yesterday's CNN article (read it here) - which is a topic that must be discussed and figured out for tomorrow's church - but it brought to light an issue that is a great starting point for this blog. The article, by Sondra Shepley, ended with this statement,

"what might be the greatest challenge to whites who want to lead on church integration – if you want to lead you are probably going to have to learn how to follow and serve. We progressive types may even have to learn the radical implications of terms we do not often use, like “submission." Yet this is the way of Christ modeled through his earthly incarnation." (original post here)

Here’s what hit me, if we are going to discuss areas of the church that need to be fixed, like integration, political involvement, practical theology - whatever, we must start from a position of submission. This blog is dedicated to discussing and refining what could be and what should be for tomorrow's church. None of us have it figured out, neither do you. So stop pretending and start submitting. Life is not just black and white - nor is the bible. There are vast grey areas that we must navigate ourselves through. So for those who write, those who read and those who leave comments - we must all humbly recognize that we don’t' know everything, otherwise we wouldn't be taking part in this blog. And our submission is to the greater cause, to the Kingdom of God - my perspective of theology and church will vary from yours, but together we can refine, exhort and better one another. Together, through submission, we can take this simple blog idea and dream about bettering this human institution and making it more on earth as it already exist in heaven.

Please do not pretend that your view on politics, church methodology or church planting strategy is the end-all, be-all. Humbly remember that the reasons you believe something is true are probably the exact same reasons another thinks theirs is true. It is our collection of experiences of church, the joys, the pains and the dreams that make us united. We have all been frustrated by the church, changed by the church and all want to see the Church of tomorrow be what she should be - a loving, moving force in this broken world.

Please join me and the other contributors on this journey.