Under the Grace

Peace of heart that is won by refusing to bear the common yoke of human sympathy is a peace unworthy of a Christian. To seek tranquility by stopping our ears to the cries of human pain is to make ourselves not Christian but a kind of degenerate stoic having no relation either to stoicism or Christianity.

~A.W. Tozer

The stated purpose of most pastors I’ve known–including myself–is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. This requires no elaboration. But lost in the noise of a typical institutional outfit is the centrality of Christ. “Where are you guys going to church?” “How was church this Sunday?” “We have a really good church…” blah, blah, blah. Process over content.

I’m seeing how too much of my church experience has been process oriented. I’ve focused–with my brothers and sisters–on peripheral issues. Enshrining process over content does not a soul save. I’m wanting to move to a place where Father’s love is at the center of my conversation.

This is part of the detox process… getting the institution out of my soul and Jesus in.

Another thoughtful post from Adventures in Mercy called Letters To An Abused Soul: When Love is “No”:

And when, because of your own warped view of what it means to be loving and gracious—perhaps even a view that would be perfectly healthy if you were dealing with a healthy spouse or a healthy church or a healthy friend—you knew that something was wrong, something didn’t feel right, yet, because you thought that love never stopped giving, you let it happen again, and then again, and then again, until it became so normal that you forgot it wasn’t.

I think you get away from that spouse or that church or that friend.

For some strange, self-serving purpose, church leaders think they have permission to make all the rules. When I was doing some of my hardest church detox work I came to realize that my pastor would lose his temper and then say I didn’t need to be hung up on the issue anymore. It was over. Easy for him to say. It was okay for him to get crazy-angry but it wasn’t okay for me to question it. Such is the insanity of all kinds of abuse.

I found resolution in leaving that situation, in making my own choices, and in remembering that pastors are people too… even when they’re coercive.

One of the first things my first pastor/employer told me prior to hiring me at age 22 was, “You’re going to have to forget everything you learned at college.” At the time it made perfect sense. It was yet another step foreword in the guilt-ridden religious system that surrounded me and that I had embraced.

This small, yet powerfully manipulative man, was preparing me to follow him in a practice some might identify as a kind of grooming. I was to listen to him and follow his lead. I would have to forget everything a liberal arts and biblical education had taught me. It’s one of those things that must be said if you’re going to brainwash someone. To an outsider it sounds odd. Forget everything?

On my long commute home I was pondering this demand. It’s been about 14 years since he said those words. I was impressionable, highly motivated to please, and desperate to please God by policing my behavior and listening to leaders. I began to ask a few questions of my own. Was I to forget the friendships forged in laughter and prayer? Was I to forget what I learned from a list of honest, godly, and seasoned professors? Was I to forget four years of hard fought maturity? Obviously, no.

I’ve decided that I won’t forget those things. I’ve decided to make them a part of my life again. They belong in my daily experience. They are apart of the tapestry Father has woven into my life. Those years in service to the machine, the authoritarian leader, and the cold, cruel law have caused a new kind of yearning. I long for grace. I long for freedom. And the only place I know to look is to Him. His mercy is new every morning, noon, and night.

Not too long ago my wife and I watched a documentary on Jonestown, which chronicled the experience and mass suicide of nearly 1,000 people in a religious personality-cult. While our experience was far less intense and not remotely deadly we both felt we could relate to this small band. We had some idea of what they had experienced. This is what happens when a community allows an individual to reside in the place meant only for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Jesus is enough. I can stand alone… together with Him. And trust that he’s going to bring people to our side who share our desire for His sweet presence and the un-coerced leading of the Spirit. So tonight, it’s enough just to trust in Him.

It’s amazing how much life has changed over the last few years. I have experienced a monumental shift in perspective. I’ve come to define church by its members and not its location. I am no longer employed as a professional clergy. I see myself as a small part of a greater body.

I was so inspired by the role of pastor I decided to become a psychologist. And even through the schooling phase of life I’m discovering labels have little to do with spiritual identity. I’ve got no desire to be a James Dobson, Bible answer-man type. Wherever we land, I want to serve Jesus humbly. I want to listen carefully to what others are saying so I don’t mischaracterize them. I want to represent the spirit of Christ by loving Father with all I am.

I’ve learned that outside institutional control, the smile covering rage, and the dark fog of “truth” is freedom. And in glorious freedom is another kind of monster. If you don’t have a dictator pushing everyone around you must begin to listen to Father. Outside the box is the freedom to give yourself freely to Father through the Son.

From Frank Viola’s What is an Organic Church:

By “organic church,” I mean a non-traditional church that is born out of spiritual life instead of constructed by human institutions and held together by religious programs. Organic church life is a grass roots experience that is marked by face-to-face community, every-member functioning, open-participatory meetings (opposed to pastor-to-pew services), non-hierarchical leadership, and the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ as the functional Leader and Head of the gathering.

I want to offer this kind of relationship to others and participate in the simplicity of relational faith. I still feel a dull ache of institutional church loss but I’m glad for the promise of relational life. And in this phase of life it feels only like a promise. I suppose if Abraham can do it, so can we. I’m no Abraham but I can follow his lead and live by faith.

We’ve unplugged from the Sunday morning go-to-meeting thing for the time being. The straw that broke the camel’s back (a.k.a. “my personal back”) was a sermon we were subjected to about three weeks ago. We had been attending a local gathering off-and-on since moving to our present location. The pastor is somewhere in his thirties and is a very humble and sincere guy. We were impressed by the friendliness of the congregation as a whole and thought we’d give it a try.

So on this particular Sunday an elder gave a message that we quickly discovered was motivated by anger and an apparent frustration with the results of the last election. His prophetic-charismatic worldview seemed to skew the biblical message. We walked out somewhere in the middle of his talk. I didn’t want to condone what he was saying by being present.

When I listen to preaching I want to be reminded of the love of my Father in Heaven. And of Jesus who sent his Spirit as a deposit of what is to come. We preacher-types should remember that anger is never a good apologetic. The only thing anger reveals is our inability to manage ourselves or our circumstances.

I confess that I’ve been attending church out of religious obligation. It appears to me that western Christian culture holds Sunday morning up as the primary means of procuring God’s favor. Sure, part of that is about “not giving up the assembling” which has less to do about fellowship than it does with a 30-minute worship concert followed by teaching. Sunday morning has become the gateway to Christian living. It’s a pity that some of us have replaced the risen Lord with a meeting.

My struggle comes back to authenticity. I want to relate with honesty to Father and my brothers and sisters in Christ. I want to share more than a meeting with the saints. I’d like to get into spiritual conversations that exalt Christ. I’ve expended too much energy being angry at sinners when I could have been enjoying my Father’s love. And I pray that He will help us commend the gospel by our words and deeds.

Today I got into a friendly exchange about submission with someone very close to me. There is a general feeling in the evangelical world that Christians must submit to every other Christian (particularly leader-types) regardless of the consequence. “God blesses our attitude” they say. I grew up thinking my opinion didn’t matter, that I should submit to leadership and hang on for the ride.

But what about discernment? What about listening carefully to Father’s voice and making an informed, responsible choice? This evangelical-quandary reminds me of Jim Carry’s upcoming movie “Yes Man” in which he apparently says yes to every request and gets himself into considerable trouble.

The point my friend was making is that we should do everything we can to maintain relationship with people who may even be abusive. While I agree that Christ promotes generosity, forgiveness, and grace he also wasn’t afraid to say “no.” What does forbearance really mean? Does it mean that I agree with everything leaders say? And what place does classical church “leadership” have in the kingdom of God anyway? Have we grossly misrepresented the nature of church leadership? Is there any place to set boundaries and invoke personal choice in this Christ-life? I sure hope so because that’s how I’m living now.

As I read the gospels and observe the life of Christ I get the distinct feeling that the current pastor-lay power model has little to do with the nature of relational faith. I left the power/control/manipulation model a while back and it’s been the most liberating thing I’ve ever done. I feel free to love my Father, his kids, and his future kids liberally. I don’t have to worry about converting anybody. I just love them… to the best of my ability.

So submission is one of those things that I watch closely. Mutual submission based on individual submission to Christ? Yes! Hierarchical submission based on somebody’s interpretation of a few proof texts? Maybe not.

A heart-felt post from Adventures in Mercy. I’m in awe of how beautiful are the folks who’ve walked through the fire and come out the other side full of grace. The grace of our Father is wonderfully deep.

Shawn Groves wrote a wonderful little song called “Twilight.” Here part of the lyric:

Oh Lord, paint my heart a solid hue the shade of You
Oh Lord, break this dreadful in between inside of me
Oh let it be morning.

“This dreadful in between” is me today. I’m between…

1. careers
2. homes
3. number of children (we’re expecting kid #3)
4. the institutional church and the church to come

And, quite frankly, I wasn’t completely prepared for this. I attended church for several years longing for something more authentic and relational. And finally I made the leap. A leap toward a new vocation and a new approach to faith.

And quite frankly I’m a little lost. But that is the nature of this life journey. I’m trying to learn how to live with tension and a lack of understanding… with humility. I’m not very good at it.

Father, let my eyes rest on your goodness and love while I can see. Teach me how to thank you for spiritual realities. I ask you for the blessing of peace. Amen.

Take This Bread - Sara Miles on Steve Brown Etc.

Our churches want to be clubs for the right kind of people and all Jesus really cares about is the wrong kind of people.

Wonderfully engaging interview… very challenging to a pseudo-evangelical.