The In-Between

We are currently church orphans. I guess that term is preferable to church shoppers, and it feels more emotionally appropriate because we left our church after discovering it was moving in a different direction from us. To be blunt, it felt like it had already left us, and we had just received the news.

This post isn't about our former church. We love our family there and the work they are doing in the name of our Savior in the city and world.

We just feel saddened.

Correction: Bob feels frustrated. I feel saddened. Deeply so. So I guess my deep sadness averaged with his frustration equals general sadness. Or irritability. I don't know. We're just grieving, okay?

When people ask if our choice to leave was a private matter, the honest answer is that it was not so much personal as it was based on personal convictions. And we recognize not everyone shares these personal convictions.

It's never easy to leave a church, and it's especially hard when there isn't a plan b. We weren't like those serial daters who identify their next prospect before they write the Dear John letter. So it would have been much easier to stay and see if things changed, making it clear we did not agree and giving disclaimers when we invited friends to church. After all, that was how we had been doing it before we learned the info that caused us to reconsider our attendance. However, our loving Daddy has our family in a path and community where that wasn't an option, given what we had learned. We knew that we were called to leave and trust that the next home would be waiting for us.

While I contemplated our current circumstance of living in-between, I began to see how our family may no longer fit in to many churches we once did. In the past, speaking from the pulpit about issues like LGBTQ rights, racism, and gender equality were a nice-to-have, but did not define where we would be planting our tushes each Sunday morning. Now, though, we are hungry for spaces that are intentional in diversity, that practice radical grace and inclusion and provide opportunities for all people.

A friend who had gone through a similar maturation in his faith once shared a faith development model with me. He pointed out that, as a person grows beyond conventional faith constructs, it can look to others like "backsliding" because it goes outside of established structures. He himself had been rebuked for his spiritual development, and he ended up leaving his faith community to find one that allowed him to keep growing.

I have been working on a project for the past year, interviewing people who have left their faith communities and listening to their stories. My friend is not alone in saying he feels closer to God than ever before but distant from the concept of church. This is where I feel like our human attempts can get in the way of divine relationship. We create rules and standards and practices to maintain order, but they can start to cloud out the Reason for gathering in the first place.

And so we have an endless flow of congregants moving from one church to the next in search of authentic community and potential for healing and/or growth.
And so we have house churches that defy the format which many are no longer responding to, welcoming the spiritually hungry with the hospitality of the home.
And so we have church orphans who are wondering if they even fit in anywhere.

As for my family, we have peace in the mourning. We have turned this into an adventure for the kiddos and are praying that we can create safe spaces for others who feel abandoned by human structures. Our prayer is that they - like we - never feel abandoned by the One who designed the Church, regardless of its flaws from mortals' interpretations.

I spent some time yesterday in nature feeling all the feels and being honest about where I am. I wrote about how I'm used to going through phases of doubt and trial, but then I know the reward that awaits me.  This one, though, is particularly puzzling. Part of that is because I recently came out of a year-long Dark Night of the Soul, which I am still piecing together...or deconstructing...or whatever it is you do with such a mind- and heart-altering season. The point is that I don't know what is waiting for me. I feel like I'm in a free-fall, and I know God is going to catch me - that isn't a question - but I have no idea where or how. Will it be underwater? Will it be on a spaceship? Seriously, that is how disoriented I am by all this.

Driving home from my respite, I tried to use voice command on my iPhone to pull up an encouraging song I'd recently heard. I tried multiple requests, but it kept pulling up some subpar instrumental rendition. I finally tried it one last time, using the name of the group. Instead of what I was requesting - "Through It All/It Is Well" - I heard the following song. I hope it will bless you, stun you, or reduce you to grateful tears as it did me.

Too Close to Define

You know that experience when you're so close to something you can't really say anything about it? When it's feels like you're trying to build something and discover you're using water instead of packing snow? When you're afraid a remark about it would only touch part and miss the whole?

I remember someone joking that if you need the definition of "psychology", you should [counterintuitively] ask the first-semester psych major, not the PhD clinician.

That is where I am right now: Too close to define.

I'm in the process of putting together an event called CAST (Coming Alive, Scheming Together) for women in the metro Phoenix area who are passionate for Christ. A friend asked who my demographic would be, and I couldn't come up with much more than, "Any woman who loves Jesus and is open to the movement of the Spirit."

Queue eye roll.

I admit it's vague, as are many of the goals attached to it. Every time I've tried to come up with measurable outcomes for CAST, it seems as if some cosmic gameboard shifts and the rules invert. For this strategic-planner, that is unacceptable. I like mission statements, I like five-year plans, and I like knowing what I'm asking people to sign up for.

This has been a humbling time of challenge for me, to say the least.

And yet I know it has been a project our loving Daddy has gifted to me, and I have no doubt He has his own plans for it, even if they won't fit in a binder with tabs and timelines.

Even though I'm way too close to it, I'm going to attempt to describe here what He put in my heart a few months ago. CAST is meant to be an event where multiple women present (speak, sing, or perform) on a common theme during the first hour, and in the second hour the participants meet with the presenters and each other to pray, discuss, and dream together how to use their own passions and gifts to take action. It's what we as women do all the time, but don't often have the encouragement to follow through on it. It's an opportunity to come alive, to exit our isolation and enter connection, to engage in conversations on social justice and the global church and personal growth and serving and leading and the heart of our Lord, to be transformed and then do some transforming to expand the Kingdom.

Because we as women are powerful when we join together. Our Daddy knows this. He longs for us to be the healers, the dreamers, the activists, the advocates, the creators, the defenders, the warriors He designed us to be, and to have each others' backs as sisters.

As my planning team - yes, team! He has taught me to bring on a team, not just do it myself, which is so appropriate for this event about joining together - encountered yet another obstacle to birthing this creation, I spent an evening poring over scripture. I was feeling discouraged after yet another major plot twist in our saga, and I needed to know He would be faithful. And then He allowed me to stumble across this:

~So here’s what I want you to do. When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight... And no more than two or three speakers at a meeting, with the rest of you listening and taking it to heart. Take your turn, no one person taking over. Then each speaker gets a chance to say something special from God, and you all learn from each other. If you choose to speak, you’re also responsible for how and when you speak. When we worship the right way, God doesn’t stir us up into confusion; he brings us into harmony. This goes for all the churches—no exceptions.~
1 Corinthians 14:26, 29-33 (MSG)

Right. Between. The. Eyes.

To have this level of specificity without having encountered this passage anytime recently - that's the way the Spirit works, my friends! I'm still awestruck with a few lingering goosebumps.

So we press forward in faith and newfound obedience.

I find it a magnificent "coincidence" that my fast for Lent was from relying on my own resources, because there have been many times when I was so tempted to activate my superpowers to solve our problems. Of course, it wouldn't have worked anyway, but the decision to preemptively step aside and fully rely on Him and on others has taught me new discipline, trust, and interdependency.

As a result, when this is a success (by His standards, not mine), all the glory will be His. And that puts my parameter-craving psyche to rest.

Toeing the line

I don't know many people who are great at hearing the word, "No."
 
In fact, as I typed that statement, I attempted to tally up everyone in my mental Rolodex who could graciously accept a negative response, and no one popped up. There has to be at least one person I know who is gifted in that area; I just don't have them on speed-dial for it.

And as I typed that last paragraph, I realized there is a large portion of the population who would not know what I was talking about when I referenced "Rolodex" and "speed-dial". But now I'm just growing tangential.

So "no" is not a welcome word for most of us. Lately, my 3-year-old daughter has been exemplifying for me what I do when I hear it.

Moxie: Can I stand on this chair?
Me: No. Climb down from it.
Moxie: Can I sit on it?
Me: Yes, you can sit on it.
Moxie: Can I kneel on it?
Me: Yes, you can kneel on it.
Moxie: Can I squat on it?
Me: Yes- Wait! Now you're standing on it again!

She hears the no, but then wants to know how close she can get to the line without crossing it. Actually, in her case, she doesn't care if she crosses it; in fact, she believes I may not notice her crossing it and all will be well.

And then I think about all the times I've done that with God.
He says, "Tithe," and I ask if it's okay if I hold back when it doesn't look like I can buy all our groceries that week.
He says, "Don't lie," and I ask if omitting information is okay.
He says, "Don't have any gods before me," and I ask if I can just have this one habit that He doesn't get to have say over. Just one. And it will be little. He'll hardly even notice it's there.

And that line, no matter what it is, is always so tempting. And once we have it in our mind as something to stay away from, it is now ironically luring us toward it.

~...but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.~
James 1:14-15 (NIV) 

One of my friends did a sermon in high school - our youth group took over the church once a year and pretended we were the pastors for a Sunday - and he hit the nail on the head for a solution. I can't recall the context of this point, so pardon me as I just barge in with the gist of it:
Instead of asking how close can we get to the line, how about we look at what else we can be doing? How about we simply strive to stay away from the line?

For high-schoolers, of course this was referring to sex and all that leads up to it. And that's a discussion for a different day (Synopsis: We need to stop telling teens that premarital sex ruins their lives, and instead help them make good, informed decisions out of a personal passionate love for Jesus).

But even today I find myself asking those questions. When I'm tempted to worry, and I'm thinking, "Well, I could always just make a few plans, get some ducks in a row to help God out..." I need to take a breath and turn away from that delicious, gorgeous, magnetic line.

The Holy Spirit is helping me become more sensitive to my tendency to toe the line, praise God, and I'm usually catching myself before I get totally dragged away.
It also helps that I have a live-in little girl who reminds me how silly I look.