About the Response
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
LOVE OVER LITURGY?
The Response is an unknown journey towards Jesus and away from all we've added to him. It's asking hard questions, fighting for love over liturgy, humility over nobility, and protecting people rather than the steeple.
It's believing that the roots of love and relationship are still out there and still strong. And so very worth returning to.
Transformation?
Or to put it another way, "is what we're doing actually producing fruit that looks like Jesus?" Few ask it, and even fewer are willing to face the truth of it. Jesus said that the evidence of being his followers would be that we'd be known for our love. So, are we?
In this vein, The Response is also about questioning everything that doesn't lead to living and loving more like Him.
About
It can be exceptionally challenging painful to question what others want you to leave alone; to suggest that maybe the way we’re doing things isn’t really the way Jesus wanted them.
And it’s not just hard because it’s not what people want to hear, it’s also hard because you’re processing something in your gut that you may not be able to explain or provide context for yet.
And who is gonna listen to that person? Who is gonna sit in that space long enough for someone to chase those feelings, to express the vulnerability of that process, or find the words that speak beyond “what if,” “something’s off” or even "that's wrong."
All in all, it can be a very lonely place.
This—The Response—is my way of responding to that arena of life, and hopefully, to encourage those of you who are asking your own questions and wrestling through your own conflicts to keep moving forward in your response to the struggle.
Whether it’s labeled deconstruction, reconstruction, a crisis of faith, doctrinal examination, structural scrutiny or whatever, I just want you to know you’re not alone and there is still beauty. It's just in different places than it used to be.
Despite what many say, I know the questions are not because you don’t care, but because you care so deeply that you can't just let go.
In David Brooks' How to Know a Person he describes our tendency to write people into a simple narrative and a clean category, but shares that it's never an accurate picture. Nobody is always greedy or always generous; always joyful or always angry.
This is the context I think best conveys me.
I spent a good part of 20 years in “professional ministry” where decisions were made from a good heart with good desires. But I also made decisions there that came from pain, pride, selfishness, and ambition.
Part of my heart is very pure. Other parts are still fractured or healing. I still do things I wish I didn’t. But I also have matured in ways I didn’t dream possible. Just in the last year, even.
At the end of 2023 my wife and I walked away from the predominant Western church model and I knew we would never go back. I was filled with questions but very few answers. I was hurting and afraid, but still possessed a little bit of courage and a great deal of hope and I still loved Jesus passionately.
We joined a home/simple/micro church that would have no leader—only peers where everyone was equal, and we would approach our time as such. Questions were invited in any context—even questions that would challenge others in the group. All of this was welcome with one pretext: relationship is more important than being right.
Over the next year it would become the healthiest thing I’ve ever been a part of. It would bring healing and freedom to my soul. It would begin restoring what I had lost, filling in what I never had, and it would lead me to become someone I really liked; someone who was learning to love in meaningful ways, and really seeing people in the incredible ways God sees them.
All of that, and the group still has no name, no hierarchy, no rules, no clear format. At this point, more people think of it as family than they do "church".
But wasn't family the plan from the beginning? I wouldn't be me today without this group of people, and the effects of our journey together will be found in much of what I write here.