It's time.

It's time to lay it all out there.

I grew up going to church as often as I could. We didn't have a vehicle, so we usually had to depend on others for rides, but we did the best we could. I remember attending a spanish church for a bit. My fondest memory though is of a bible study that we had in our apartment when I, if I remember correctly, was about 6 years old. I'm still in contact with some of those folks to this day (that's 34 years) and I have wonderful memories of that time.

In highschool I had friends who would go out of their way to give me a ride each week and I was even able to be part of the youth worship team. Great memories again... that season definitely makes me smile.

Then my church attendance was sporadic during college. Late nights, floor devotions, class devotions and school wide chapel three times a week... ya know... made sleeping in sunday mornings so doable.

Every time I missed church though, whatever the season, I always felt guilty. I knew I was absolutely supposed to be there. That's what Christians do.

As married adults, we found an amazing church with amazing people and amazing hearts. Seriously! We happened to visit when a missionary was speaking, returned the next sunday for a regular service and immediately knew it was exactly where we needed to be. We were fully committed. We only missed church when we were sick. Together, we helped with nursery duty and other children's ministry classes. We attended life groups (cell group, community group, small group lol... whatever you like to call it). We attended men's and women's book studies. We taught sunday school, attended sunday school, leadership retreats, and women's retreats. Served on the financial team, the fellowship team, and sang, played, organized and led on the worship team. We made sure our kids were a part of everything new and old and in between. We set the example of good leaders like they asked us to. We said yes to everything we could, even to the stuff we didn't really want to do. Consequently (and ashamedly), I definitely looked down on people who skipped all the church related stuff for pretty much any reason. And I, like most people in my community, equated church attendance with following Christ.

Then about 10 years ago, the hubs and I were challenged with, and convicted about, some things and so we changed some things. I guess you could say we had a bit of a paradigm shift away from the nominal christianity we were living, it was the moment of "taking responsibility" of our faith. We started making different decisions about little things and big things and all the in between things: our finances, our house, our activities, our time in other contexts, etc... we were more purposeful about letting go of some cultural norms and chose to run after a Spirit-led picture of Christianity. For me it was like The Grey Havens lyric, "His grace cut through me like a sword and came out like a song". It was a life altering gift to my soul to be challenged by the way others were living their lives. A beautiful awakening of sorts. A bigger picture of the global Body of Christ and I wanted to be a part of it!

Fast forward another another 5 years... we started recognizing some unhealthy patterns in our church. Some that were pretty much there all along, others that were new. Not anything blatantly terrible, which of course made it hard to pinpoint; but the patterns were becoming more visible in the leadership, in the overall culture of the church and even in our own responses to these patterns. We had fallen into the pattern of just hoping things would eventually realign with scripture. So we began to examine and ask questions of ourselves, and naturally we began to examine and ask questions of where we were spending the bulk of our time... at church. At the time, I felt like I was reading about one Church and living in another. I was reading current stories and testimonies that actually looked like and lined up with the early Church! The Church of Acts wasn't just something of the past, I could see that it was very much still alive! I kept thinking, "Something's missing", and I would grieve each Sunday as I sat in my seat, sometimes through tears, sometimes through anger. There was this burning desire taking root in my heart for our church to answer the call to repentance, to a renewal of covenant, to a metamorphoses so to speak. But the general consensus in our part of Texas is that "no church is perfect cause it's full of imperfect people" and so, because of that mentality, many are content to live with the way things are, because that's just the way things are.

But that's a lie. It's complacent and it's a lie!

It's a lie that we have to keep the system going and don't have time to stop and examine and change things. It's a lie that things are the way they are because they are the way they are. They're the way they are because we shape them that way and allow them to stay that way and we strive to keep them that way at all cost. But we absolutely MUST stop and take a look and allow the Lord to open our eyes to see how we have allowed harmful things to continue within our churches, within our families, within ourselves.

Why is it that some of the most impenetrable forms of hierarchy, segregation, preference and position are still strongest in the very place that was called to be a beautiful picture of Unity?

"For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

We have each been clothed with Christ. We have each been empowered by the Holy Spirit. We should not exalt one person over another. We should not prefer one gender over another. We should not glorify one kind of personality over another. We should not utilize one gift over another. Why do we continue to disobey this beautiful and necessary part of the church? We are all given spiritual gifts to strengthen the body IN those gifts, not to be positioned for them. We are all to be teachers, evangelists, prophets, shepherds, and apostles... those who are gifted with each one are there to equip all the rest in those giftings, and likewise all are to grow in the gifts received from others...men, women, young, old and all people groups alike! And all of this beautiful, counter-cultural community is meant to burst forth from our very being and breathe. The living, breathing, growing Church is far greater than four walls can possible contain.

It's a complete misnomer to say that it's about perfection. It's about holiness. Holiness is not earthly perfection, it's a call to relationship. It's a call to purity. It's a call to love. It's a call to mercy and grace and compassion. It's a call to suffer. It's a call to obedience. It's a call to rest. It's a call to release and entrust. It's a call to unity. It's a call to give. It's a call to die. It's a call to live in Christ!

So... after some time, we saw two paths before us, one that was continuing in the way it had always been, and the other was moving towards what we saw as a progression of growth, the next level, the removal of certain things and the addition of others... essentially it was leading into the great unknown for us... because here in East Texas, no church = one of two options... either you're on an "understandable sabbatical and will start visiting churches soon" or "you've left the faith" and we were neither of those.

duhn, duhn, duuuuuuhnn.

It's been 2 years now. I've processed a ridiculous variety of things in that time. Like, ridiculous. It feels like forever and yet it feels like I've barely scratched the surface. It's been an interesting time for sure. I share all of this because I felt as if I had to hide it all before. I felt like I couldn't be honest about what I thought as I was thinking it, but I don't want to perpetuate the idea that asking questions and speaking up and wrestling with things out in the open is wrong or harmful or divisive or rebellious. It's not leaving the faith, it's not moving backwards, it simply is. People asking questions is a good thing.. it means they care enough to ask and not just give up and move on.

The whole process is obviously still ongoing. It's all been a strange mix of guilt, doubt, confidence, freedom, loneliness and community. It's the most paradoxical season ever, full of beautiful revelations and ugly truths and I wouldn't trade it for anything. It's afforded the opportunity to dig deep, to think, to lament, to forgive, to heal, to grow, to stop hiding behind church activities and duties... to come face to face with myself and with who God is.

So there's no nicely wrapped summary of everything, cause I ain't dead yet... but I will say this... It's time.

It's time to stop looking back. This is my closing paragraph on this particular chapter. This is me declaring that I no longer carry the burden of having to explain or defend or make excuses for our decision to leave a church building and not go to another right now, or ever. I release all of that. The chains of what I'm afraid other people might think or assume about me are broken and gone. The following encouragement was posted in a group this morning and it could NOT have been more timely.

September 9th 2019: Ok, let's look at a major deal breaker in our walk with Him this week....letting go of the past! Let's set something in stone at the beginning....IF YOU CAN'T LET GO OF THE PAST, THERE IS NO FULFILMENT OF YOUR FUTURE! We can be in the Kingdom absolutely, we can love God that's for sure, but we can't fulfil our true purpose in Him if we keep dragging ourselves and others back to things that have gone! We all have a past, it's full I am sure of beauty, ugliness, truth and nonsense, love and hate....the whole shebang! We cannot EVER change that! It is gone, it is what it is! The only thing we can do, is press the eject button, not keep pressing the play button! The past has to be deactivated from any emotional attachment to us, that is what drags us back into a mentality and memory that alters our present grasp of reality. There just comes a time when we have to get so fed up of just reliving the old life! It's like getting the home movies out every day and not living in the now! The truth is, keeping the past alive in our emotions is selfish! It has no value for others as it is locked inside of us, but the effects on others can be significant as we lose track of reality! Today, let's look at our relationship with the past, do we enjoy that play button for whatever reason, or are we able to press eject and live in the now? #weregardthepastnomore! #whatisyourreality?

Church gatherings, like marriage, careers, hobbies, spending, like every choice and aspect of a Christian's life has to absolutely be surrendered to the Lord first and foremost. That is literally what defines us. Not our nationality. Not our denomination. Not our gender. Not our personality. Not our gifts. Not a big church building. Not the bible translation we use. Not a political party. Not the form of worship we embrace. We put our faith in Christ and we entrust ourselves fully into where the Spirit leads in every part of our being. Everything gets filtered through the great I AM. Everything, everything. The Eternal God is the only constant through all the ups and downs and bumps and bruises of human history. Even the systems that have been established for the benefit of HIS creation are changeable and shapeable for HIS purposes... they absolutely cannot become more important than He is. HE is the priceless treasure. We are His temple. We are the Church.


*If any part of this resonated with you and you need a safe space to talk about it, I'm here and I'm willing to listen. Even if it's that you totally disagree. I want to hear your heart. Me "closing this chapter" doesn't mean I won't still learn from it or discuss it, it simply means it isn't going to be at the center of my daily thoughts like it has been the last two years. It isn't going to weigh me down from moving forward anymore.*