And I want your book!!!

From how you write the rest of your comment, it seems that you are pursuing God with all of your questions and explorations of faith expression. How could that not be meaningful? Take courage and press on, your comments are encouraging me (and others, undoubtedly).

I’m glad you’ve found a place in institutional Christianity with foundations that are trustworthy for you, and that feed you soul without injurying it. People can, and do, find matches like that. Other people don’t. And that’s the wonder about postmodernity — there’s a place for both of those truths to exsist side by side.

My audience here of late has been primarily readers who are not able to find a healthful match for their spirit in the institutionalize church — or at least not in the instutionalized churches available to them. (We are so fortunately to live in spiritually diverse cities, aren’t we! So many people don’t–I continue to find this surprising as it’s so different from my own experiences, culturally.) This group of folks –which is hard to define because it is still emerging–is underserved resource-wise. So my work is to support and serve them as much as possible — giving them a place to tell their story, validating their experiences, helping them name what has happened to them, and giving them space to imagine what could come next.

My approach–as a litrugist, theologian, and practioner–has always been what the late Dr. Robert Webber has called “ancient-future faith”: that is, staying connected to our heritage and roots, while paying attention to our present, and casting our vision forward into the future. Leonard Sweet uses the metaphor of sitting in a swing. To move on a swing you must both lean back (into history and tradition) and reach foward (into future and creativity). Without both, you don’t get to soar.

Remember, everything that is now a tradition was once new–even in the oldest forms of faith.

Thanks for the ying-and-yang thoughts.

-Rachelle

I remember Jim as a really nice and smart guy, but I think there are many ways to interpret “build the church you want to go to.” For one, it presumes in a way, that the church we want or the church that would be good for us doesn’t exist without our input. That’s very human oriented and smacks of flavor-of-the-month and relativistic BS. It’s too easy to take it and go further down the splintered Protestant church road, adding even more to the confusion of church options. So I think caution is good.

I think it is courageous to try things differently for awhile to find your place. I also think it is courageous and worthwhile to be honest about God and yourself in a place that has a well worn path. Those places exist! And I’m not talking about the last 10 or 20 or 50 years of some postmodern thinkers blazing a new trail. There are paths out there in Organized Christianity with real foundations that are trustworthy.

Just felt I needed to offer another view to help the balance.

Have the conversations and scare people off. Lean towards the people that want a new expression of faith. It’s okay. The others can go back to the instutitional church if they want to stay inside the old paradigms. Honest. There are a lot of them out there to choose from.

And conflict is okay too. It will suck sometimes, and people you want to stay will leave, and you will do the wrong thing on occasion — but in the end you and the people with you will be better for it.

Your numbers, have NOTHING to do with the spiritual health of your group–or with your call as a pastor/hostess/guide, or with your own spiritual health. That is church growth bullshit and I give you permission to let it go. None of the old growth charts apply. We are on the moon now…this is new ground.

At Monkfish Abbey in the first few years we saw two really marriages break up (and it was for the better); gave a couple of people our best cheer as they slipped sideways into agnosticism and atheism. (have to try stuff on if you’re going to find out what fits.); completely stopped tithing; and didn’t have single baptism/conversion. In fact at least one person just sort of added Zen Buddhism to their New Kind of Faith.

The result? People were talking honestly about God; living lives that matched up with what they actually believed instead of trying to force themselves into beliefs and patterns of living that were not true to thier souls; and visibling relaxing away from shame/guilt/fear-based living.

As a pastor, I’ve never been happier.

Try stuff, and be okay if it “fails.” Failure is your friend. It tells you what not to do again for awhile. And, in the words of my mentor, Mr. Jim Henderson, “build the ‘church’ you’d want to go to.” You can pretend to be all tow-the-line with the ‘proper’ church/community planting theory, but it the end, if you hate pastoring/hosting/facilitating it, it won’t do anyone any good.

All the messages you’ve heard about denying yourself and providing programming and making sure there’s worship set-sermon-prayer time can be turned off. Push the stop button as many times as you need to, then press play and get some new affirmation tapes rolling in your head. Here’s some we used:

“Conversation _is_ prayer.”
“I can grow a theology that can look people in the eye.”
“God is big enough to handle my anger.”
“Err on the side of Love.”

You can totally do this. You are already on that way!

After a discussion about music last Sunday, some of us sat around and chatted and I just happened to blurt out that I really didn’t see a point to the songs we sang at (our) church. They all seem stupid and not meaningful, one of the other girls piped up … really? you too? me too!!!

The only conversations that are safe to have are the conversations (questions and answers too) that were safe to have the in the institutional church. We don’t want to scare anyone off, be rude, disagree, have any conflict … If anyone has a thought that is outside the box, they’re scared their Christianity will be called into question. How do you move to a new expression of faith in the institution? Can you? Even our little church, that doesn’t want to be part of the institution … IS. We don’t know any other way to be. And while most are wanting to find new expressions of faith, others don’t. How do we talk about the new with them? Or do they just not fit into the equation?

Our growth as a group (in numbers) seems to be the only thing that signifies that we’re living faithfully.

It’s almost like I can’t get away from it. I don’t know how to be otherwise. So your post resonates with me and I look forward to someday reading your book. :)

Sometimes I feel like the Body is on the verge … :)