organicchurch.com

I've been invited to leave my local congregation (by members, mind you, not staff) at least 5 times since I started attending almost a year ago. Every time I voice any frustration with the institutional church (lowercase "c") or question a doctrinal stance, someone will say something like "Well, if that's how you feel, maybe you should leave. Maybe God is calling you somewhere else." I have been asked to "step down" from leadership in churches or ministried before for "taking things too far." When I asked for specifics, nobody could give me a verse or even a specific example of something I said or did that was "too far." Other times I have stepped down, and people always ask why I don't just stick around and try to work for some good from the inside. There's no way to win when division is our default mode.

But I think I need to answer the questions and concerns. The reason I don't leave is that I love the Church (Capitol "C")- warts and all. As St. Augustine once said about the church, "The Church is a prostitute, and she is my mother." I won't leave because Jesus called me to be a part. And he called all of us to be in unity. Not the same in thought or doctrine or practice, but unified in Jesus. We've become too focused on our differences to see our commonalities.

I'm a recovering inerrantist..

I believe that there may be inaccuracies in the text of the bible. I'm not even sure that I feel like Infallibility of the original manuscripts even matters since we don't have them. If Paul wrote something in one of his letters that was from his heart, rather than God's mouth, it wouldn't destroy the bible for me (for example, I think Paul makes it clear that he did exactly that in 1 cor 7:12,25).

Some people think this makes me less of a Christian or that I have a low view of Scripture. Personally, I've never had a deeper love for the Book or respect for what it says than I do now; especially when I believed in the necessity of inerrancy and infallibility.

Got this in an e-mail from my buddy Brack from College… He found me through the internet somehow a month ago. I’m glad he did because I was sort of an over-zealous religious ass to him in college a few times and apparently he’s forgiven me! Thanks, Brack. He’s a killer guitarist as well. But I digress...

The email was about DaVinci Code, and how it may be a threat to the church and Jesus and stuff like that...
 
Anyway, when I was thinking about this e-mail, and then thinking about recent conversations, then thinking about how cool I thought it was that my old church (which I miss and love) in Melbourne chose this book as the book for their book club, and how much flack they’ll get for it from people who never read it and don’t know anything about it, and then thinking about how crappy that is, and then thinking about how I feel about women in ministry (which has changed DRAMATICALLY in the last 5 years), then thinking about Jesus and what really matters and who I really am and who we’re really supposed to be and what we should really stand for…
 
Anyway- “stream of consciousness” Rob, that’s what they call me…
 
So I thought I’d respond and throw a few things out I hope some of you disagree with. If you’re in the area, I’d like to make the first Organic Live Bible Study on this topic… here’s the original notes I jotted down about it.

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I'm so stoked. I just got the Dictionary.com word of the day in my inbox- guess what it is:

crapulous

\KRAP-yuh-lus\, adjective:

1. Suffering the effects of, or derived from, or suggestive of gross intemperance, especially in drinking; as, a crapulous stomach.

2. Marked by gross intemperance, especially in drinking; as, a crapulous old [1]reprobate.

It's about time that "crap" got it's day in the sun. And what a perfect day it is. I've hated that I've had to try to defend the word from religious or legalistic people... but now that I can say it comes from "Late Latin crapulosus, from Latin crapula, and from the Greek kraipale;"  I get to taunt the legalistic people with an unnecessary pedantic exoneration of the word. Heh, I already started.

I think it's time for a theological look at the word "crap" with a little help from our friend, Mr. Biblical Text.

Read more for the action...

Today I was grumpy. I had another experience at church where it was the church machine in motion contrary to the relationships already formed and I was so pissed about it. It was like the more I reflected and the more I heard about the experience that I hadn't known previously, I got more pissed- it seemed to keep fueling my "Big church is Bad" fury.

I wrote an article to help get it off my chest. Didn't Help.
I got busy on a project around the house where I could use power tools and hammers. Didn't Help.
Got yelled at by my wife. Finally helped.