Sunday
Several of you have asked how my Sunday blabbering went and the answer is, it didn't go at all. I announced on Wednesday that I wasn't going to have anything and everybody was cool with it (which may tell me something). I've never before hit a wall like I did last week where I just absolutely could not come up with anything and the harder I tried the worse it got and the worse it got the angrier I got at living in a world where I was scheduled weeks in advance to have something worth saying on a given Sunday. So I didn't say anything. It was great. I should do more of that.
Sunday also happened to be our last as a part of the larger network we've been with for the past couple years. I've spent a lot of energy lately thinking about/working on a rather lengthy discussion of art and Abstract Expressionism and what this Next Step is going to look like to people and what it really is (like any of us know) but by the time that's finished and I'm happy with it the ratchet may have clicked again and What's Going on Now will be old news. So do with this what you will, but here's what's going on with us at the moment (as best as I can remember it). ;)
I had a serious meltdown (is there another kind?) back in the winter--I think it was Superbowl Sunday--sitting in my pew trying to reconcile what I believe with how I was spending my Sunday mornings. That day it hit me harder than it ever had before that I was trying to live in two different worlds (which you can call "having the best of both worlds" if you like it, but which to me felt hypocritical and dishonest). I wrote and fired off a long (for me,) profane (for someone else,) and heated e-mail to my friend Ken who has a long history of making things better. I think I told him I was tired of cringing. "There are a million churches in the world," I remember saying to him, "and that's fine, but there has to be a place for people like me--and we are legion." He suggested that maybe the time had come for Whatever Comes Next for our little group and so as of this past Sunday we are embarked.
There will be people who want to call it a church plant or a house church or an intentional community or some such, and while none of those labels are, strictly speaking, inaccurate, neither do any of them quite capture the nuances and subtleties of What's Going On. As best as I can tell (and I suppose I'm speaking mostly for myself) near heart of it is as an honest a pursuit of Truth as we're capable of (and Ken spoke downright eloquently on this subject Sunday) and a conviction that Jesus didn't come to start a religion. Not sure what it'll end up looking like (to anyone) and maybe that's part of the point. At any rate, now you're pretty well updated on my stupid little life.
Sunday also happened to be our last as a part of the larger network we've been with for the past couple years. I've spent a lot of energy lately thinking about/working on a rather lengthy discussion of art and Abstract Expressionism and what this Next Step is going to look like to people and what it really is (like any of us know) but by the time that's finished and I'm happy with it the ratchet may have clicked again and What's Going on Now will be old news. So do with this what you will, but here's what's going on with us at the moment (as best as I can remember it). ;)
I had a serious meltdown (is there another kind?) back in the winter--I think it was Superbowl Sunday--sitting in my pew trying to reconcile what I believe with how I was spending my Sunday mornings. That day it hit me harder than it ever had before that I was trying to live in two different worlds (which you can call "having the best of both worlds" if you like it, but which to me felt hypocritical and dishonest). I wrote and fired off a long (for me,) profane (for someone else,) and heated e-mail to my friend Ken who has a long history of making things better. I think I told him I was tired of cringing. "There are a million churches in the world," I remember saying to him, "and that's fine, but there has to be a place for people like me--and we are legion." He suggested that maybe the time had come for Whatever Comes Next for our little group and so as of this past Sunday we are embarked.
There will be people who want to call it a church plant or a house church or an intentional community or some such, and while none of those labels are, strictly speaking, inaccurate, neither do any of them quite capture the nuances and subtleties of What's Going On. As best as I can tell (and I suppose I'm speaking mostly for myself) near heart of it is as an honest a pursuit of Truth as we're capable of (and Ken spoke downright eloquently on this subject Sunday) and a conviction that Jesus didn't come to start a religion. Not sure what it'll end up looking like (to anyone) and maybe that's part of the point. At any rate, now you're pretty well updated on my stupid little life.
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