For the past several months, I have been making a weekly contribution to a blog called "Castle Church Door" - a blog devoted to "all things church." I agreed to do so out of a deep love of and a deep concern for Christ's church. I shared writing duties with several other pastors who are friends, colleagues, and in some cases both. Over time, I found that I was no longer blogging here, a fact that I found concerning. Now I am in no way cocky enough to think that what I say here is so important that my failure to blog was somehow a loss to anyone reading. What concerned me was the reason I was no longer blogging here. It seemed that after reading and writing about "all things church" I really didn't feel at all like talking about faith and spirituality. To steal a phrase from a friend and one of the CCD authors, writing about "all things church" was threatening to "beat the Jesus out of me." That reality spurred me to take a hiatus from writing for CCD. It also breeds in me a deep sense of grief. To be blunt - if just writing about "all things church" can beat the Jesus out of a person, what does that say about the church?
The truth is that many people have abandoned the faith, declared themselves to be "spiritual but not religious," agnostic, or even atheist because of their experiences with what we call "the church." In the past year, I have truly begun to understand that trend. As the denomination in which I serve has struggled with controversial decisions that have spilt the denomination, congregations, and even families, I have witnessed and experienced behavior on the part of individuals, pastors, and congregations that in no way can claim to be consistent with Christ's church. It is just this type of thing that drives people - and pastors - out of the church.
Many of the issues on the denominational level revolve around issues of theology, ecclesiology (how the church is structured/governed), and the lenses through which we read and interpret scripture. Those types of issues and our means of dealing with our differences concerning them give the institution of the church a massive black eye.
On a smaller scale, local congregations and individual Christians have their own issues which lead to differences and impossibly unChrist-like behaviour. Watching it occur in the congregation where I serve has made me question whether I really want to be a pastor at all.
SO I return to blogging here as a pastor, theologian, and child of God who feels both called and compelled to speak and write of the marvelous works of God, the grace we have in Christ Jesus, and the new thing that God has done in ushering in the reign of God with the incarnation of Christ. At the same time, I return to blogging here as a child of God and theologian who has deep doubts and concerns about the ability of the institutions that we think of as "the church" - whether on a congregational or denominational level - to make the inbreaking reign known.
What I hope to accomplish - for myself - is to keep awake to the ways the God continues to be at work in the world and discover "the church" in the people who are actively participating in that work. They may not meet together in a single assembly. They may not look they way "church people" are expected to look. But when I keep my eyes open and expected to be surprised, I trust that I will discover the marvelous works of the Holy Spirit happening all around me.
Finally, I hope that I discover that my life can be a response to the gospel concerning Jesus Christ that bears witness to that gospel outside of my "official" capacity as a pastor in ways that offset the ways that "all things church" threaten to beat the Jesus out of me.
I hope that you keep reading. I hope that my journey, my struggles, my questions, doubts, and stumbling in the dark toward the light of Christ may shine just a little of that light into your struggles, doubts, and struggling.
Still blooming -
PK (+)
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