I’ve even heard people teach that elders and pastors will know your heart better than you know it, and even when you disagree with them, you should do what they say.

Let me say this as clearly as I can: Any man or woman who tells you they know God’s will for you better than you do yourself, proves by doing so that they are a false teacher. Flee from him or her!

At the heart of the New Covenant lies this reality: All of us get to know him and listen to him. He didn’t invite us to follow his book, follow his rules, or follow one of his designated representatives. He invited us to, “Come, follow me.” Anyone who gets in the way of that relationship hasn’t a clue who Jesus is or how he works in the world.

Yes, there are lots of examples of crazy people who claim God told them to do the most destructive and bizzare things. But some of those have even been members of the clergy. But even if others fraudulently and maliciously claim that God told them to do what he has clearly not told them to do, does not negate his desire to speak to you and lead you by his Spirit.

I was with a man last month in New Zealand who listens to God as well as any man I know. He has pastored churches and traveled the world for decades encouraging others to live deeply in Jesus. He told me, “I have never believed, even for a moment, that I can hear God for someone else more clearly than they can hear themselves.” He never presumed to tell someone what God wanted them to do.

That’s the kind of person I recognize as a true elder among the body of Christ. They don’t hear God for you; they help you learn how to listen to for yourself because they wouldn’t think of robbing you of the most precious gift God has to give–an intimate friendship with him!

What he said was, people create institutions in an attempt to pass on their contributions to future generations. Therefore at the outset they are an attempt to grasp an illusion of immortality by creating a system designed to perpetuate itself. For it to do that it has to offer an air of infallibility, so that its aims and methods go unquestioned by subsequent generations. In essence, our religious institutions by projecting immortality and infallibility actually become false gods that people are asked to serve instead of teaching them how to follow the Living God.

And like any false god, the institution will occasionally needs a human sacrifice to keep up the illusion. Challenge its priorities or methods and you must be ejected immediately and discredited so everyone else will be afraid to do so. If you dare to question those who feel called by God to manage such institution, you will be considered a threat and forced from the group. How many of reading this have been that sacrifice? Even formerly close friends will ostracize you and gossip about your “rebellion” or “bitterness” to make sure you are marginalized as an example to others.

It reminded of Israel’s desire for a king and God’s warning that putting power in the hands of a king would mean that he would take the best of everything that they had for his own benefit. God knew how power corrupts the human heart and anyone with absolute power would think he should have all the best for himself. He’d said their sons to war, steal their daughters for himself, and take the best of their crops and herds. Even a man with a heart like David’s thought himself special enough to rape Urriah’s wife and then have him killed in battle when he refused to come home and sleep with her so that he would think David’s baby was his own.

Notice how this entire process can begin with the purest of motives but still end up exploiting and manipulating people in a way that is incredibly destructive. I’ve seen it happen over and over again to people and those who think they lead the institutions have no idea how much it has disfigured them. While being otherwise generous and gracious people, they become hurtful and destructive in the name of protecting what they mistakenly to be God’s gift.

Do all institutions have to end up like that? Can people find ways to cooperate together without falling victim to an institution’s need to perpetuate itself? I believe it can, but in honesty the examples of that are thin indeed. Almost all begin by a group of loving people who want to share a vibrant life in Jesus, but over time become those more concerned with protecting their turf rather than continuing to love the way Jesus loves them.

And I’ve been with so many incredible people in the last two decades who became the human sacrifices the institution needed when they recognized it had look forsaken God’s priorities for its own. Maybe that’s why Jesus told us to love each other, not to create systems we think will outlive us.

One of the undercurrents to our time was reconnecting with old friends and reconciliation between people who’d been caught up in some painful conflicts. One of the couples that had been part of our painful departure from a fellowship in Visalia, which I’d co-pastored for fifteen years and from which I was “resigned” by what I thought was one of my best friends, while I was speaking at another fellowship elsewhere. This couple had connected with Sara and I before the weekend even began in hopes that their coming wouldn’t be awkward for us. We were able to work through misunderstandings and unresolved issues from over 17 years ago and were able to renew a friendship that had been lost. What incredible joy to find myself once again in the midst of a friendship that had been lost in those confusing days.

One of my favorite conversations of the weekend was on Sunday morning as we talked about betrayal by close friends, and the process by which forgiveness and reconciliation can truly happen.

Betrayal happens when a close friend decides to lay your life down to achieve something they want for themselves. They don’t mind hurting you to get what they want. It happens often in this broken age. When Jesus told us that there was no greater love than one laying down his life for another, he meant our own! Walking all over someone to get even what you think God wants for you is the darkest of deceptions. It is exactly the opposite of how he asks us to live.

Forgiveness is a unilateral process where we can truly take our foot off the throat of those we consider to have wronged us. Forgiveness does not exonerate the betrayer; it frees the victim from the ongoing pain of the other’s actions and opens the opportunity for us to find healing inside and the freedom to move on with what God has for us. But forgiveness is not just a choice of the will; it is a process where we bring out hurt and pain to Jesus and he works us through them to a place of true release and forgiveness. It may take a few months or even years, but don’t stop short of it being complete. Just keep it discussing it with Jesus as he untangles your hurt and leads you into a real forgiveness of others.

Reconciliation, however, is a bi-lateral process that can only happen when both parties are ready to sit down and honestly explore each other’s story with a spirit of compassion and humility. It cannot be forced and can only happen when all parties truly value the relationship over anything else. It recognizes that the most important thing Jesus asked of us is to love each other as we are loved by him.

Reconciliation, too, is a work of the Spirit to prepare each heart to truly listen to each other’s story, laying aside our own assumptions and judgments, admitting our mistakes, caring about each other’s pain, and resolving any outstanding issues by God’s grace and mercy. Reconciliation heals the relationship and allows a friendship to grow onward.

However, neither forgiveness or reconciliation requires us to trust the one who betrayed us. It allows us to love them again, but trust, once violated, can only be won back by the demonstration over time that the person values the relationship above his or her own self-interest. We are never told to trust someone beyond our conviction that they will lay down their lives for us in moments of conflict.

What a weekend this proved to be! When people have asked me if I am reconciled to those who were part of our painful departure from a church we help plant, my answer has been with all but four of the couples who were part of excluding Sara and me. Today, I can say all but three, and Sara and I now have the joy of another friendship, restored even more closely than it had been before those painful days.

Reconciliation is just the best! In the past four months I’ve had the blessing of being part of two reconciliations of important friendships that were cut off in days of pain and betrayal. Both lasted over 15 years and have now come to healing again. I wish it hadn’t taken so long, but this isn’t a process we control. I think broken relationships break our Father’s heart more than anything else that goes on in our world. It is the result of sin and competing for things the Father has not given us. What absolute delight it is to work through the pain, misunderstandings, and confusion that caused the disconnect, and celebrate the grace of God that triumphs in all of us, even in our failures and mistakes.

That’s what God has sought since the fall in Eden with each of us. It’s what he celebrates when his children find a way out of their pain and selfishness to reconnect in a renewed friendship.

Here are some pictures that capture a bit of our weekend in Clovis, California:

More than 50 people gathered with us over the weekend

Conversations that matter with people who care

As always, some of the best stuff happens in more personal conversation–the twos and threes.

I feel as lost as lost can be. Not in the sense of “saved” but in the sense of where do I go from here, what does forward look like? That sort of lost. Nobody calls anymore…they’ve “given up on me.” You see I refuse their “fellowship.” But all they offer me is the same stuff…get in a group and serve the “body.” But the body they are referring to is the machine that ate up my soul, the machine that refuses to question anything it sets out to do. The machine that consumes it’s own like some crazed animal that devours its young.

Is this machine, the one Jesus created when He spoke of His “church”? Nobody in the machine gives the one thing that is precious, time. If I’m truly wrong ,my actions (or lack thereof) then why can’t they spend a couple of days (if necessary) to explain my error?

The answer to that last question is that I have come to believe that they cannot engage in the conversation because they know , they will also have to repent and they will be where I am, a VERY HARD PLACE. It’s just easier to to say, “look at him, he won’t GO to church he is in error…” The definition of “church” is a narrow one…only they fit in it. However I don’t think this is the “narrow way” Jesus spoke of…

Anyway here I am… lost

I actually love where you are. I don’t see you lost at all. You’ve awakened to a greater reality than they can see from where they are? You may feel lost but you’re not. You’re just living out of a different framework that finds the old guideposts to be unworkable. I think of it is people being disorientated. The reality I see doesn’t fit into the relationships I have. That’s a tough moment in this journey, no doubt, but if you truly are awakening to a different reality than they can see, that is the result. You’ve known “fellowship” with religious people. Having rejected the religious overlays that you now know kept you from a deepening relationship with God, you are a threat to people who find their comfort in their religious performance.

How could you not be? And be thankful they don’t have the resource of time to give you, because you probably wouldn’t find it of much help. The one thing I love about religious performance is that it keeps those trapped in it so busy and exhausted that they don’t have much time or energy to infect others with it.

You will find the grace to live in God’s revelation to you and NOT need the validation of those who serve in more religious ways. But it will take time. For now they seem only to make you question your own insights. What you discover going forward is a whole new set of relationships that live in God relationally and then you’ll discover a depth of fellowship you have to date only hungered for. I guess I’m saying don’t look for the old relationships to move with you on this journey as long as they find security in their religious activity. You’ll find a way to love them eventually, but look for the relationships God is bringing to your life now. Just love the next person God puts before you and see where that goes. And keep doing it every day. And soon you’ll find your life full of friends, maybe not all will be fellow-travelers, but they people God loves and with whom you can find friendship.

A few weeks ago as I flew out of New England, the movie on the plane was the new Narnia movie, The Voyage of The Dawn Treader. I enjoyed keeping an eye and ear on it while I was reading some other things. I already referred to one of the lines in that movie that touched me in a previous posting.

I noticed another one this time around. It was advice given to the voyagers by one of their counselors on their journey.

“To defeat the darkness out there you must first defeat the darkness inside yourself.”

Why is it almost always true that when God shows us something about ourselves our mind first focuses on all the other people around us who should know this too? It is almost as if we use up our passion for what God says by trying to make others see it, before it has borne fruit in our own hearts. Is this why we are always seeking to remove the sawdust from someone else’s eye instead of taking note of the log that is in our own? Any time you’re trying to force your will on someone or convince them to embrace your insight, you might consider that you are taking on darkness in the wrong place.

When the light of God shines into your heart, embrace it. As long as I’m battered by doubts, driven by fears, and tormented by a false need to perform in my own righteousness, my freedom to help others will be limited. And that will mostly happen not by confronting the darkness in me, but embracing the light that is in him. The more preoccupied with who he is, the freer I become from the twisted places in my own heart. This is the joy of learning to live loved.

He first wants to take shape in us before we try to help encourage others. And what I’m finding is that the more he takes shape in me the less need I have to shape others. If we can’t let him defeat darkness in us, we’ll be of no use helping conquer darkness in others.

I understand their concern. They are excited about the fresh relational journey they are on, discovering how to live loved and are finding the institutional approach they are involved in to be counterproductive to the community they desire. Our first thought is how do we get others to embrace our journey and help us accomplish what we want. As noble as it may be, this approach never ends well. The moment we are trying to get someone else to see what we see, we become a manipulator of their journey, rather than a friend alongside them.

Trying to convince others that they should want what you want will destroy your relationships, not build them as this recent email exchange demonstrates. The writer was concerned about getting his wife, his neighbors and his faith community to embrace the journey he was on. Concerned that their own approaches would fail them he wanted to know what secrets I had to getting other people to see these things.

Here’s how I responded: Not knowing you or the others involved in this circumstance make it nearly impossible for me to know how to advise you here. It does seem like you’re a bit more anti-institutional that God needs you to be. Why wouldn’t you rejoice that your neighbor and his wife are opening the door to Jesus again? Don’t you think he is bigger than whatever weaknesses are part of the religious club they are now going to?

It is an impossible task to get someone else to come on this journey. That isn’t your job and others will only resent you when you try. All you need to do is go on this journey and in the going let God make you a better lover of your wife right where she’s at. This podcast may help you. Read Romans 14 and the first part of 15 in the Message about enjoying your journey but not imposing it on others. If she sees the journey you’re on as an added pressure for her to conform, it won’t be helpful. Even asking for her opinion on Transitions, she might well be recognizing as a pressure to listen to something she really isn’t ready to listen to yet. These are some things that have helped Sara and me on this journey. I hope they help you too.

He wrote back:

Thanks for your straight answer. Though I am not ‘militantly anti-institutional’, I am into life with Jesus being more than the 1/7 of the week in which we participate in dysfunction. Interestingly enough, our ‘church’ is having an intervention and we were given two suggestions to turn things around and I am willing to work as God requires of me to drive our community into more loving relationships with each other.

I read Romans 14-15 in NIV, and I believe I got it. It is not about getting others to believe what I believe we are free to do. I am currently listening to your unequally yoked podcast. I’ll have to listen to it a couple times. It is good. Thanks for sharing your journey via podcasts! I was approaching this situation with the wrong heart. Thanks for shooting straight.

To which I responded: But just so you know, you cannot “work as God requires of me to drive our community into more loving relationships with each other.” You can’t drive people into love, you can only invite them. And you can live with Jesus all seven days of the week whether they desire to or not. Changing them is not the goal. Living free will have far more impact on you and them!

And then he wrote back:

Oh man, so much to learn! It sounds like a simple thing, ‘living loved’. I guess, I can drive them if I invite them into my car . I’ve definitely started the journey. I don’t know if there is a lot to learn so much as ‘unlearn’. Man, isn’t it amazing how much has to unlearn over the course of time? I was saved 11 years ago, and things were so fresh and new and then I went to Bible College, and only a couple years ago have shed the bulk of Phariseeism, only to find, I still am a creature of habits that need letting go. Not saying that one has a final revelation of God’s love when they first come into that relationship, but it is so much more pure than what happens over the course of time when you get stuck in playing the religious games.

I wonder if you could give me some input as I struggle with the whole “church” issue? I’m no Bible scholar by any means, but I do get curious enough to look into this or that word. When I looked up the word from Heb. 10:25, “…not forsaking our own assembling together…” I discovered that it’s from a Greek word, “episunagoge” and means, “a complete collection; gathering together. It’s from “episunago” which means, “to collect upon the same place.” From your comments I wonder, do you feel then that this this kind of “collecting upon the same place” gathering is not necessary?

I actually have many really good, deep, Christian relationships, which I maintain with gratefulness to the Lord. But I also desire the kind of gathering that Paul described when he said, “When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.” Can you give me any input here? What is your thinking on this? We left the institutional church last October, and have been getting into the (Scriptures) and fellowship around the Lord together. It’s not that we desire to make or create a house church just to have a house church, as if that’s our goal. I see Jesus and the disciples spending time together in serving God, and I think that this is the real model for us to live by. So they collected upon the same place while Jesus was with them in His flesh. Also I was thinking that after Jesus’ ascension God gave gifts for the building up of each other, and that seems to present the “episunagoge” gathering concept.

My response: I love getting together with believers as well and sharing our journeys together as well as the gifts and insights God gives each one. It’s HOW we do that that’s important. House church can be a great tool, if people come to really engage God and each other. It can be a really sick substitute if people are committed to house church not other brothers and sisters.

So I understand your hunger and your concerns about Hebrews 10. But Hebrews 10 is not primarily talking about a meeting, it is talking about connecting in relationships and walking alongside each other in that way. And this was to a group of people who WANTED to do so, but were so afraid of the persecution that being together put them at risk. The writer is telling them that being together anyway is worth the risk for the encouragement it offers. That’s a far cry from being an obligation for Christians to get together.

Here’s what I know. Believers who love each other will get together. That’s what friends and family do. My kids and grandkids get together every week or two. We don’t do it because we have to, because we’re trying to form a family, or any other reason other than we love each other and enjoy being together. Community is like that too. When we have people we care about we will be together. What so many groups miss is that the relationship must take precedence over the meetings. Meetings are a byproduct, not the method or the goal. If we’ll engage caring relationships first and begin to find a common heart together over dinner and evenings together as friends, we will find time to gather together as that network expands. I think it’s backwards to start a meeting first and hope friendships grow out of that. They can, but rarely do. I’ve been to many home groups where people meet together regularly but it is obvious they don’t really care about each other, spend time with each other beyond the meeting, or are truly friends in Christ. Believe me, that’s pretty empty.

I don’t know how God will accomplish this in you and your area, but I know as you follow him, he’ll begin to connect you to people when he is ready and those connections can become a link into real community. We’ve got a group of folks that are just beginning to link up here. We’re not, however, starting a weekly meeting, just encouraging people to build friendships and then see how God might want us to gather. It may be sporadically and spontaneously, or something more set. It’s really up to him. We’re more focused on just sharing the journey…

Wow! Thank you very much!! I feel that what you are saying is so profound in our day and time, and I could sense the Holy Spirit in me bearing witness to your words. I’m so grateful as I’ve been wrestling with the “church issue” to read your wisdom, that I almost feel like crying. You have put a clear light on it for me, and I appreciate your kindness so much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

But as I wander about the planet I notice there are people who are quite relational, willing to engage people around them in conversation, to travel to meet new people on this journey, and are intentional about opening the door to new friendships by taking the initiative in arranging times to get together. Then there are those who wait in hopes that friendships will come to them. The former have lots of people in their lives, the latter have very few. Until we become the friend we want to have, we will stay rather isolated.

I know this is scary for some people, but honestly, relationships won’t come to you; you have to go to them. All our coping mechanisms of the flesh isolate us by making us defensive around people we don’t know and don’t trust. If grace does anything in us, it makes us more relational people, willing to take the risk to engage others in conversation, even if the relationship goes no where. Spiritual growth makes us willing to risk an evening just to get to know someone, and even rejection if in the end they don’t want to know us better.

If you want the conversations of community you have to go looking, sampling scores of relationships to find those half a dozen that become the most meaningful to you. When I travel around I meet lots of people on this journey, and often the room is filled with people the others don’t know. During the day, I meet lots of people in that room I’d love to know better if I only lived in that area. But what amazes me is how little contact between those people goes beyond my time there. Obviously they were there only to meet or hear me, when there were so many other treasures of God in the room that they could be walking with now if someone would have taken the risk to provide an opportunity to grow the relationship.

What seems to be true is that people are either content with the friendships they have, or they just don’t want to risk their comfort zone to get to know others better. I even find people when I travel who would like to schedule time with me personally if they can, but don’t want to come to a gathering of people they don’t know. Usually they have some kind of excuse, but deep down it’s just that they are uncomfortable coming to a strange home or finding out the arrangements. I’m afraid our comfort zones will always isolated places to dwell.

If you don’t make yourself available first, you will have little to choose from because most people are not going to initiate it with you. It’s never easy to take the risk, but the rewards are worth it. Just don’t think you’ll connect with everyone. You won’t. But those that do become friends are well-worth the search. It’s like looking for a job. You wouldn’t sit home hoping one comes to you. You have to go look, to interview, to be turned down, maybe forty or fifty times in this economy to find a job. What if that’s true of friends? Are they worth investing some time and intentionality?

If the body of Christ is going to connect in our day, it’s because God transforms people to having a greater relational priority than to simply do their jobs and chores each week. The greatest treasures in this earth are people. That includes our neighbor next door and the person in the cubicle across from us. If we just start loving the people around us, whether or not they are on a similar spiritual journey, we will eventually find ourselves overwhelmed with friends and fellow-travelers and maybe people who don’t know God yet, who might see his love in us.

I refuse to give into the notion that some of us are relational and some of us aren’t. I agree that it may be easier for some and more of a risk for others, but that’s usually because some have been taking the risk for so long they are no longer uncomfortable with it. But I am convinced that finding God’s love will free you to love people more freely.

If you want the conversations of community, realize they are the fruit of living relationally. Not every contact will produce community, but it is certainly true that if I’m not growing any relationships, I’ll never find it.

The language of real community is real and compelling, far better than any kind of contrived entertainment. That’s why I react so when well-meaning people jump on the language of obligation to describe the relationships and gatherings of believers. Obligation is the language of religion. It wallows in the selfishness of “what we need” instead of inviting us into the irresistability of real relationships and passionate dialog. Only in the conversation of community can people really discover what God has already put in their hearts and be real enough to ask whatever question they need to ask and be challenged in their thinking beyond the status quo.

Here are a couple of examples of what the conversation of community triggers in people. The first I received after returning from a recent trip by someone who was part of our conversations:

I want to know you better–to meet your wife, to experience your world, to hear more about your journey. I love the way you challenge me and the way I feel safe wrestling openly in your presence. I want to learn more from you, experience more of Him beside you, ask more of you, and share more of my life with you. I want to celebrate more of what He’s done–and is continuing to do–among & through us. He blows me away every day and I’m drawn like a magnet to others who are passionate about discovering Him and worshiping Him together.

There are people in my life that I feel that way about as well. Being with them is never an obligation; it is an absolute joy and the fruit of it is to go back to life and live with a greater grasp on the Truth and greater freedom to live in grace.

Here’s another letter I published years ago from someone in Texas who was waking up to this reality:

It’s OK to question what I need to question, ask what I need to ask and struggle where I struggle. I’ve learned that I am not rewarded for pretending to be better than I am, but that experiencing the life of God means that I am loved through the ups and downs, hurts and joys, and doubts as well as triumphs. Instead of exploiting people’s shame or need for approval to try and make them better Christians, I encourage people to go to God for healing and restoration from shame so they can experience for themselves the love of God. Instead of loading others up with a list of `shoulds’, I tell people that God is working by “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” and his greatest desire is to communicate with them. I talk about learning “how to” listen to God and follow what he puts on their heart even if that means they make a mistake doing so. Instead of trying to change people I urge them to get to know Christ as life because it’s so much fun (and far more effective) watching him change them. Instead of manipulating others to do what I think would benefit me and my definition of God’s will for them, I’m learning how to trust Christ as my resource for what I need.

The conversations of community lead the most awesome engagements on this planet, be it with a mature believer or the newest member of the family, or even someone still lost in the world. Where people aspire to grow in grace and truth, and have the freedom to discuss it without fear or the need to manipulate others, the possibilities are truly limitless. Participating in them is not what I need to do; it’s what I simply refuse to live without.

“No one heals himself by wounding another.” Ambrose of Milan

Every thing we do in this world has the potential to do immeasurable damage to people or bring immeasurable healing to them. The most dangerous among us are those who think they have to hurt others to get what they think makes them whole. The problem is the act of wounding may do even more damage to the one doing the wounding than it does to the one wounded! You don’t find healing by tearing down others, you just find more pain.

The world generates enough damage of its own with out those of us who are seeking to follow Christ adding to it. Live loved and love others the same way he loves you.

BodyLife has now become “Living Loved.” It’s still the same newsletter but with a more accurate title to go with the content. We will still deal with church issues and concerns from time to time, but the newsletter has always been about so much more.

The title of this issue is, The Church Jesus is Building, and it examines the question, “What will the church look like in ten years?” And while it may not be the answer you’d want to hear, it will help you sort out how to follow Jesus these days in the search for real community, rather than being seduced by those who want to create movements or new systems in their hope of recovering New Testament community. The body of Christ is certainly a time of transition and it will be fascinating to see how Jesus continues to build his church. You’ll also find letters that will encourage fellow-travel

You’ll also find letters that will encourage fellow-travelers, announcements from Lifestream Ministries, including new a new book we have coming out as well as two other recommendations.
Read It Online | Download Printable PDF

He has just released a new book called The Remarkable Replacement Army, that I think many of you will enjoy. Following up on his earlier book Custom and Command that posed the question of whether our participation in our current Sunday morning institutions is a command of Jesus we are to follow, or is it just a custom that has grown up over 2,000 years of Christian history, his newest book is a protracted metaphor presented as a prophecy of the church in our time and for the future.

I love much of the content of this book and recommend it to everyone whose contemplating the nature of the church today, especially those who no longer feel connected to a traditional congregation. In it, Stan describes a time of transition between the traditional congregation as we’ve known it and a more relational networking of passionate believers that he says will define church life in this century. It will challenge many of you. It will encourage others of you. And it will help many of you who think how you can live more effectively beyond the traditional congregation.

That said, there are also things in this book that give me pause. Portraying it as a prophecy is problematic for me and unfortunately may discourage some from mining the incredible content here. I’m convinced Stan believes that it is, and I respect him for saying so. At the same time I’m not sure I agree with the value of getting people to see this transition in prophetic terms, knowing it can appeal to a fleshy desire to be in a significant movement. Certainly, the institutional patterns of the past are losing their grip on people and God is inviting many people outside those conventions to discover more relational ways of living and walking alongside other believers and touching the world. That’s a reality. but it may not be a shift in God’s priorities or methodologies so much as it is that our religious systems have grown so complicated and manipulative that they have choked out the life of the Spirit in many places and people have gone looking elsewhere for Truth and life.

God’s Remarkable Replacement Army uses an extended metaphor about a “replacement army” in Norway during World War II to resist the Nazi occupation and preserve the wishes of their king while he was in England helping to overthrow the German invaders. Stan has gleaned much insight from that period of history and uses it to share some of his observations about people who no longer fit into the religious systems they once did. As with all metaphors it can be pushed too far and draw people to the wrong conclusions. And, in this day of religious conflict around the world, I grow increasingly uncomfortable with military language to describe God’s church in the world. The title immediately was off-putting to me, but as you read the book you’ll understand why he chose it. I appreciate that he wasn’t calling believers to arms, but inviting them to live in service to their King.

Finally the former school teacher can’t resist telling us how to read his book and it does bog down at times when he lectures us about what we should read, when we should read it, and how it should be read. Get past those bits. They may seem a bit tedious, but theirs veins of gold running through this little book that will encourage and enlighten you. I don’t write these things to discourage you from reading the book, but to warn you not to take the exit ramps from his incredible content and miss the greater truths that Stan shares from his life.

This is an older brother sharing his most profound convictions. Many of you will know well what he means when he writes:

Up until about fifteen yeas ago, my wife and I were staunch church-members, always fully involved in the activities of a local fellowship, wherever we happened to be living. We had even spent nearly two decades in “full time service”, when I was a “pastor” (or “minister”). Slowly but surely, however, we had come to this conclusion about church life, which I have been describing—this conviction that the existing church system was no longer the way forward for our discipleship. It become clear to us that, in spite of the past, we could not continue to be “church goers”. We knew that our action would cause raised eyebrows—to say the least—among our relatives and close friends. Because of our previous extremely-church-oriented lifestyle, the fact that we had stopped “going to church” would seem , to those who knew us, very odd indeed—if not downright heretical!”

In the third section of the book, Stan gives some practical guidelines for thriving in the King’s purpose outside of those congregational structures. There’s really genius here if you don’t take this as a how-to book of methods to implement in your life. Stan warns us against doing so. But many of you will appreciate, as I did, his ideas on “cross-my-path-care”, intentionally socializing with others, and how the Scriptures and the Spirit work hand in hand to show us the Father’s purpose. I’ve used some of these things in numerous conversations already to help people see that living relationally is not less intentional, if anything it is more so or you may find yourself feeling empty and isolated, when you don’t need to.

Here is an excerpt:

I prophesy that the exiting regiments of the Army of the King of Kings (the various denominations) and “streams’ which currently make up the Church are going to disintegrate, sooner or later, during the 21st Century. Already I see many signs of that. Furthermore although there are individual churches and groups of churches, which at this moment are, to all intents and purposes, “fighting well”, I suggest that even they, in the long run, will all but disappear from the scene. I prophesy that the days of the Institutional Church are drawing to a close. I do not believe, however, that the King of Kings is discouraged—even though the army of Christians view the deteriorating situation with dismay. …There is no way that he will leave himself without a body of “soldier of Christ” to further his cause on Earth. My prediction is that, as the 21st Century unfolds, the King of Kings will come to be represented by an Army of a radically different style from the army that has previously represented him. I prophesy that he will replace his formal army (his formal church) with an informal network of dedicated believers—a veritable “resistance movement” of committed Christians.

Problems aside, this book is one that people thinking outside the religious box need to read. It comes from the depth of a man’s heart and wisdom that has lived these realities for years and you won’t want to miss the powerful insights that fill this book.

You can order the book from Lulu.com. Paperback, 320 pages. Or you can download a free PDF version here.

Absence of conflict is not evidence of love.

Wow! Is that ever true. But a perpetuation of conflict without the opportunity to humbly discuss, reconsider, and reconcile would be, I think!

We are trained professionally to plan, organize, strategize, evaluate, implement, and re-evaluate, but we have been learning through various experiences that when we rest in Him, He generally brings forth something miraculous. When we let something die, He brings new life. It’s humbling and freeing, all at the same time.

I think the challenge for those of us who have been so trained is to learn how not to grab hold of Jesus’ working around us and try to control it. Real elders in this family help facilitate what he is doing rather than trying to shape it to their liking as many people will press them to do. It is fine line to be sure, but when we live loved there is nothing in us that wants to control Jesus’ work or his gifts. However, where we live in our fears there is all kinds of internal and external pressure to do so.

The essence of the new covenant is that we cease from our labors and live in his unfolding purpose and work. That’s what Hebrews 3 and 4 are all about. I find that that it does not take less wisdom or work to do so; it’s just a different kind of work. It is much harder to live in the moment and respond to what Father does than it is to strike out with our own best wisdom and best efforts when we’re driven by the fear that he is not doing anything, or at least isn’t doing what we want him to do.

The latter leads to exhaustion and only shallow fruitfulness and actually takes us down side trails where it is easy to lose sight of what he’s doing and our prayers beg him to bless what we are doing in his name. Responding to his work in each moment will not only lead to enduring fruitfulness and fulfillment, it will also keep us in the frame of heart that makes it easier to see and follow him.

The freedom in following Jesus comes from no longer trying to get him to do what we want, but to revel in his desires and his working.

I’m wondering what any of you might say about the concept of “fellowship”. People in (my old fellowship) ask me about that often, as in “are you getting any?” Obviously the wording makes me smile. But what I’m wondering is this: I’ve asked Father about it numerous times, asked him to please put people in my life for connection/fellowship etc.

So far in the past couple years I haven’t noticed any big change. ??There are lots of people in my life. I do not live in a cave—my family near and extended, my work colleagues, my various friends—but I would not say that any of these is truly “like-minded”. Of course what I’d like is a group with whom I can identify and agree together and pat each other on the back. Like (my old fellowship had). That is pretty comfortable. ??
But where Father has me at this point is precisely not there. I am depending on him for most of my warm fuzzies. I keep telling Him I really want somebody/ies with skin on, and it just ain’t happenin’. Which must be ok. I am wanting to be content with whatever he gives, yet often feel guilty because I am not content. ?

Sophie from Indiana, another lady on the list responded with a wonderful story of what God is doing in her and her family:

I have walked through the valley you’re in, and can understand where you’re coming from. I waited and waited for “like-minded” people too. And I can’t say exactly how long it took, but through that time of “just Jesus and me” I began to see God (or the image of God) in everyone, including those who’re not “like minded,” or even knew Him at all.

I began by accepting the people in my life as “the fellowship” that God has provided for me. It’s funny how Jesus has answered my heart’s desire to be more like Him. I thought in order to achieve this goal, I needed to be around people who are more like Him (in my own judgment, of course), but instead He brought me to be with people who weren’t at all what I had in mind and taught me to see them as He does. Obviously, I’m not all the way like Jesus, but certainly I now can relate to other people more like Jesus does. I’d always wondered how He is “a friend of all,” and now I know, or have a better idea than I did before. I now can be comfortable and “fellowship” with anyone.

And just when I finally got to the point where I could say, “OK, I don’t need to be with people who see spiritual things like I do” God started bringing “like-minded” people into my life. I enjoy time with “like-minded” people, but I no longer have a dependency on them like I used to when I was in the IC. I now see this whole concept of needing to be with people of like mind as another one of those IC concepts I needed to be freed from. And I think this freedom was what God had in mind for me when He took me into that lonely valley.

The great fear people have in religious settings is that people will prefer isolation to fellowship. They think people have to be obligated to their responsibility to be part of the community of believers, otherwise it is so boring that folks won’t participate. But I find everyone who knows God as Father has a deep desire to connect with other brothers and sisters. Real community is not an obligation it is irresistible. The key is letting God bring that about in his time, and not just looking for “like-minded” people.

Yes, he knows how important it is for us to have others with whom we can share our journeys, and there are many ways to do that. An important thread in some of this discussion is to let God control that as we just remain open and responsive to him. Guilt about not finding it yet, doesn’t help. Keep your hunger before God, love those he has put around you and see how he will bring people into your life. Yes, there are things we can do to connect on-line, and with others locally that might share our passion for a relationally journey. But if that isn’t happening at the moment, enjoy the people he has placed in your life. You never know what might come from it.

And as if to illustrate the point further, I got this email this morning from Karen in Minnesota about some recent goings on in this arena for her and her husband:

We celebrated or 25th anniversary on a cruise to Alaska last week! Not bad for having been unemployed for almost a year, huh!? We heard of a last minute deal on Wednesday and drove the next morning to Seattle to catch the ship! On the cruise we made two life-long couple friends. One is a couple who love the Lord and we shared amazing free fellowship. They are Catholic. Again, years ago that would have been a deal breaker. We connected so much with them they invited us to share their motel room when we got back to Seattle and we did! We all went to Mt Rainer together and to the Seattle market. None of us wanted to say goodbye. The other couple has a passion for life and photography and each other. We love them for who they are and have no agenda for them. How liberating! They are Jewish.

We have become great friends with our tattooed, pierced, living-together neighbors (at home, too). Not too many years ago we would have been too judgmental for that to ever happen. We have found such joy and freedom in recognizing how loved we are and allowing that same freedom to others. As an aside, this couple has recently come to love Jesus with a refreshing passion so now we share Him too.

When God gets to be in control of our relationships, and we grow increasingly secure in his love for us, some amazing things can happen way beyond our expectations.

One of the things I appreciated about my time in Mississippi is how people open up when they find a safe place where they know they are loved, have the freedom to be where they are on the journey that day, and aren’t manipulated into agreeing with other people’s perception of truth. They can notice what they need to notice, question what they need to question and struggle where they are struggling. That’s where real learning, real growth and real transformation happen.

That doesn’t happen immediately, especially when someone like me comes to town. It takes a bit of time to dismantle the “author pedestal” and help people find freedom from the need to posture, impress, or simply not look foolish when talking to me. But when they finally feel relaxed enough to drop their guard, real community can happen.

I would that all of us could find such friendships, or at least offer it to others from their own life. It reminds me of the description of a safe place in Bo’s Cafe. If you haven’t read this story yet, you might want to check it out.

“I’m not sure.” I shake my head back and forth while crossing my arms. “I don’t get you guys. You talk about this being a ‘safe place,’ but neither of you two seem very safe at the moment.”

Carlos put his fork down and pats his hands on his knees, like he’s realizing the need to change his approach.

“I guess that depends on what you mean by safe, huh?” he says. “See man, if safe is just nice and sweet, where everybody’s smiling at you and nobody’s ever dealing with nothing, that’s not safe. That’s a retirement home. I like nice. Even Hank likes nice. Push come to shove, nice wins. But nice ain’t enough for safe. A safe place isn’t a soft place.

Safe is a place where you can get out the worst about you and they don’t run you off, talk you down or head for the hills. It’s having someone to stand with when you start to face the shameful stuff, man. It’s where you can be a jerk and still have a place at the table the next day…where you don’t have to hide or fake or pretend or bluff. Safe is being loved more for revealing your crap, not less.

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

Philippians 2:1-4 – The Message

The biggest disappointments I’ve had on this journey are the brothers in Christ I got separated from in various conflicts and disagreements, especially those with whom I’ve shared some season of sharing the Father’s gifts together. Love is easy when everyone sees things the same way, but isn’t it really tested when we don’t? If it’s love it endures the pain and seeks a course that serves each other’s interests. Scripture records many moments in the life of the early church where disputes and violent disagreements pitted brother against brother and the outcome wasn’t always glorious, so I’m not surprised when it happens.

Nothing is more painful than a close relationship that goes awry, especially when a former friend thinks they have more to gain by turning on you than honoring the friendship. Even David felt it’s pain as he showed us in Psalm 55: “If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it; if a foe were raising himself against me, I could hide from him. But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend, with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship as we walked with the throng at the house of God.”

Love isn’t easy over the long haul, which makes me appreciate my relationship with Sara over 35 years all the more! We have found a way through ever disagreement, every struggle and every hurt to continue to forge an enduring relationship that means the world to both of us. We have found our way to ‘us’, mostly by following Paul’s counsel above. Notice it doesn’t take much of any of those things Paul lists there: “If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ…, if his love has made any difference…, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything…, if you have a heart…”

From the smallest bits of love and grace any friendship can be restored. But both parties have to take that risk. I got an email recently asking how much do we have to do to make reconciliation happen, especially from those who had made harsh judgments against them. I told her there isn’t much anyone can do until the other party wants reconciliation. Forgiveness is one-sided, reconciliation takes two soft and willing hearts. I told her all she can do is keep her heart ready to respond in love when they open a door.

I guess I have a hard time with those who toss aside friendships so casually, or trade it away for more temporal objectives. Real open and honest friendships are some of the greatest treasure we get in this age. I guess I won’t every understand those who chose betrayal and division over healing and reconciliation.

Sara and I went to visit he and his wife a two weeks before he died. He had been busy meeting individually with all his children and grandchildren sharing the things from his hospital bed that he wanted them to know, and owning in confession some of his less-than-stellar moments when he’d tried to manipulate them with his religious passions. By all accounts everyone was deeply touched and much healing came to that family. One granddaughter said at his funeral that Buck had taught her how not to fear death when it comes, but embrace it as an entry into the fullness of God’s presence. That was pretty cool.

Our last day with Buck was equally triumphant. We shared about his journey and how much we had meant to each other. We all prayed together and God’s presence powerfully came into that room. A couple of hours later he was visibly stronger and said he felt better. I wondered if Father had healed him and that his symptoms would soon recede and he would have some more years to be among us. But it was not to be.

A week later his son told me that his father’s health was rapidly deteriorating and they didn’t think he’d make it another week. I was surprised and prayed again for Buck. Since he was only 69, I thought it would be great if God could have extended his life a few more years.

The next thought that crossed my mind shocked me in both its clarity and its content. “I already gave him fifteen more years than he was supposed to have.” Over the days that passed that thought continued to come to mind and somehow it brought peace to my heart. As I drove up to his funeral I thought about it again. I knew he’d had a heart attack at some point years before, but didn’t now how serious it was because we were living far apart at the time and weren’t really in touch with each other.

When I got to the service i asked his son how long ago the heart attack had been. He thought it had been 13 or 14 years. I asked him if it had been somewhat routine or if he’d come close to dying. He told me that the doctors were shocked he’d survived. The heart attack was severe and he was in a remote area. They airlifted him to a hospital that could care for him as a desperate attempt but no one expected him to survive. He ended up making it to the hospital and had a touch-and-go quintuple bypass. Everyone was amazed that he had lived through it.

At the funeral I shared what I felt God had said to me as I prayed for Buck, that he had extended his life by fifteen years. I was watching his wife at the time as she nodded vigorously and mouthed the words, “That’s right!” i went on to share that God had already extended his life as a gift to his wife and as a gift to Buck. There are things God wanted Buck to know about him in this life.

A few years after Buck’s heart attack, they moved to Ventura County to live near Sara and me. At the time he was depressed over some vocational hopes that had soured. He was angry at God feeling like God had not come through for him as he hoped. Over the next eight years we learned to walk together in the love of the Father. His circumstances were not proof that God didn’t care about him, but that God was working in the midst of those things to draw Buck closer to himself. Those eight years were a real gift to both of us, as we sorted out God’s love together and learned to live in it even with the uncertainty of the future. Buck and his wife moved back to Northern California to be near family. At the hospital I had seen the fruit of learning to live loved. Even in the valley of the shadow of death and in great pain, Buck was fully confident of God’s love for him and looked forward to being in the fullness of his presence.

After the funeral I stole a few moments with his wife. “What do you know about those fifteen years?” I asked her.

She smiled. “When I brought him home from the hospital after he’d survived his heart attack, I knew God had done a miracle. At the time I thought God had told me he had given her husband another fifteen years of life.” She’d never told anyone, not even Buck. This past November was the 15th anniversary of his heart attack, and she said she thought at the time that he would probably would not live through the next year. So when he died, she was not surprised.

Wow!

She will still miss her husband greatly, as will I, but there is something about knowing God’s hand is behind all of these things that brings joy even in the midst of sorrow. I was wanting God to extend his life, not realizing he already had. He’d allowed Buck to live long enough to embrace a depth of his love that he would never have known in this life without it. He had given us all a fifteen-year gift, and Buck too.

I so appreciate Father making that revelation clear to us. It is always so much better to celebrate life as it is than to live frustrated with what might have been. I’m confident that Buck now knows what we long to see. I’m equally confident that he has a hope and a purpose for his wife in days to come. He is still at work, this amazing Father!

So, that brings us to now: we are both at a point where we are really realizing the emptiness of the church we are in. We have not heard one sermon in our 4 years of being there about the heart of God, the character of Jesus, abiding in Christ, or really walking in Him and the life that can be found in Him. It’s all about how we can change our world, impact those around us, the need to walk in the spiritual disciplines, etc…

(These are) all good things, but it’s like asking a tree to produce fruit with no root and soil.

So for two firstborn, overachievers, more performance-based preaching actually feels like weed killer on the little seeds God is trying to grow in our hearts. But we’ve had a hard time making the break from the church, and at times feel a bit crazy for even thinking about doing so, because of the friends and involvement we’ve had. However, what we keep coming back to is the joy, life, and love we’ve both been experiencing in a way that 20 years of living in the Christian community has never brought us and that our effort to follow Jesus with all our hearts has never brought us.

Staying for friends is one of the best motives for hanging in there. But if the seeds of your hear are being consumed by the performance-based environment, then that isn’t even a good way to love them. In time it only traps people in the same emptiness. But find your life in him, and there’s no telling where he might lead you and you can keep on loving your friends in the meantime and still seek out relational time with them.

The problem with institutionalizing life, is that the life gets killed. I love that people are finding the courage to look beyond the emptiness of religion and making the choice to find life instead of staying safe. It is a choice we all have faced or will face in time.

I have a question for you. Do you still believe in Church leadership and Church discipline? How are those things to operate? Does a loving Father still chastise? Just some questions I have had for a while, I really like what you teach and was wanting your advice on these things. Thank you so much!

My response: I absolutely do, as the early church experienced them, but not how we’ve encased them in our institutional, shame-based caricatures of the church organizations today. Leadership is about equipping and facilitating, not managing and manipulating. And discipline is about loving people into wholeness not shaming them in their sin. We have twisted these things until they no longer reflect the intent of our older brother, Jesus!

Q I’m curious about what happened between Crystal Cathedral founder Rev. Robert H. Schuller and his son Robert A. Schuller. The younger Schuller no longer appears on the church’s Hour of Power Sunday telecast. Do he and his father still speak?—P.K. Sharpe, Tampa, Fla.

Apparently not. The family rift that caused the famed 83-year-old televangelist to remove his 55-year-old son last fall, about two and a half years after naming him as his successor as senior pastor of the California megachurch, seems deep and bitter. Leadership has passed to Robert H.’s daughter, the Rev. Dr. Sheila Schuller Coleman. Interestingly, the telecast is now led by one of several ministers, including Rev. Coleman and her father.

Now I’ve never been a fan of the whole mentality behind the Crystal Cathedral, but I nonetheless find it horrific that a father and son would end up no longer talking to each other over their differing views on whatever they think that fellowship should be doing. Is doctrine that important? Management style? Something else?

I know of nothing more powerful to destroy close friendships than religion or love of money. I’m always amazed how even families who profess God’s name can be torn apart over an issue of church management and end up distant and bitter. I feel bad for the Schuller’s and pray God will work a better reconciliation in their family and the wider body.

But it is an old story to be sure, but unless we put relationships of love ahead of every other consideration, even where we think we’ve been wronged by others, the body of Christ will continue to leave a wake of damaged and broken relationships in the world. A close brother and I got separated years ago. It remains one of the biggest regrets of my life, not just that the friendship ended, but that people weren’t willing to fight for the relationship against all enemies!

I’m sure glad God thought nothing more important than relationships of affection with his children and fought for it even putting his own life on the line. At the end of the day, that’s what has to come first with us too. The world has had enough division between brothers and sisters. It doesn’t need one more broken relationship.

I realize that isn’t always our choice, and despite our best efforts and our most passionate pleas, it only takes one person given to selfish ambition or vain conceit to throw away a friendship. Friendships are just too precious to toss away any one of them, so as much as it lies within me I’ll always fight for a friendship above anything else. I just that sometimes I realize I end up fighting alone.

I have once again been inspired by its (So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore) contents and spirit. i am a pastor but feel just as you obviously did when you stepped into a real expression of living the life, and would love to do the same sort of thing as i see the future along this path. So my question is: how do you make the necessary money to live?

Here’s what I wrote back:

Honestly, I think the need to “make the necessary money to live” is one of the first false responsibilities God liberates us from in this journey. So much of church life has been shaped by someone’s need to make an income or meet a budget. Looking back, I know there were many times as a pastor when I didn’t follow what Jesus wanted because I couldn’t figure out how my salary would get pad or how the “church” budget would be met. Institutions have to put such things first and money easily becomes the overriding source of survival.

Watchman Nee wrote some like, if a man is not willing to trust God for his finances, God will not entrust that man with his people. I didn’t like that when I first read it. It scared me. Now, 15 years of watching God provide for me without a fixed salary or income stream and sometimes in very bizarre ways, I look back knowing how real that is. I think two things have to be separated. What is God asking me to do? And, how does he want to resource me?” Surprisingly those are not the same question and they weren’t for Paul the apostle either. He saw no conflict between sharing the kingdom with people and making tents while he did it.

Growing up in ol’ the Puritan work ethic, those those things have always been one in the same for me. Now they aren’t. Now I see the work God has prepared for me in the world and him providing for me as two unconnected realities. And I don’t measure the value of the work he has asked of me by how much income in generates. Often the most significant things he has asked me to be a part of have generated no income at all. Over the last 15 years he has provided for me in incredible ways—through writing royalties, through speaking honorarium, through the generous gifts of some dear friends who wanted to see my life available to others, through painting a friends’ house, through the education consulting work, and through some really weird miraculous events that were completely unexpected and never again repeated.

God has a million ways to provide for his people. But I know that comes in the reality of God winning our trust, not people acting in independence hoping God will drop money in their lap in some magical way. I do know many people who have tried to “live by faith” by just pursuing their ministry or creative passions and have ended up financially ruined. This isn’t that. This freedom to live in his provision grows over time and the opportunity God gives us to help others on this journey. It is an organic reality won in our relationship with him, not an act of hoping God will take care of us.

I’ve seen many, many brothers go down this road and God has provided for them in so many diverse ways. Working for a salary that is tied to “our ministry” is one of the most restrictive environments in which we put ourselves. Our loyalties get divided. It is difficult to hear him when we’re always focused on how what it means for us financially. And trying to make ministry pay for itself often leads to twisted ways we distort the Gospel, manipulate others, and create dependency on our ministries that only belongs to the Father of all. When one is set free from that you can’t believe the clarity of insight and the simplicity of his leading that follows.

But I know the journey to that reality is not easy. I pray you have the grace and courage to follow him as his purpose unfolds in your life. It just may be that God wants your life and gifts available full-time to help equip others in this journey, and if so he will provide for that in some wonderful ways. That will usually come when the opportunities fill your time, rather than raising support so that you can fill your time with ministry. Ministry grows organically and I find when people are needed full time to help others, they already have a resource to help them do it, even if that is the generosity of friends who see what God’s doing in your life and they want to help give it away to others. If not, just remember that the value of your gift isn’t measured by whether or not you get to do it full time.

This is a refreshingly honest look at Sunday morning religious gatherings. You can read the whole thing at Patrolmag.com or click on the picture above.

I realize this isn’t true for everyone, but does this guy ever nail it. Someone sent me a link to this article today and I thought I’d like to share it with you. Don’t read it as church bashing. It isn’t. It’s an honest look at the dysfunctionality of looking at the church as theater instead of a real-life engagement with other people who are seeking to live loved and transformed in the life of Jesus.

And, yes, I do struggle with his terminology. The church is not boring! The church of Jesus in the world is the most wonderful of realities. Religion is boring. Religious services are boring. And I find it incredibly sad that this is all some people think of when they hear the word church.

But he does describe the church accurately in the article, those involved in incredible conversations with other fellow-travelers in a variety of venues. I just spent two weeks in South Africa with the church and came away inspired, encouraged and awed by the amazing work of God in the world. I just spent last night with part of the church around our dining room table, laughing, sharing and holding each other before Jesus. And that’s great stuff.

I really don’t know who Chris Rice is and haven’t read any of his books, but someone sent be a blog of his this morning shortly after I arrived in South Africa that I want to pass it on to you. It’s especially poignant for me since I’m currently dealing with some broken relationships of my own with a couple of dear brothers who have been a significant part of my journey. The attempts I’ve made to get together and risk relational reconciliation have been spurned. That’s probably why this article touched me so.

I just don’t understand those who so easily walk away from relationships when they grow uncomfortable or difficult, instead of working through those whatever issue might exist to a greater grace and freedom. This article expresses so well God’s desire to make our relationships with others more important than ‘being right,’ and gave me focus for my own life and prayers today. I hope it is an encouragement to you as well.

And I know we’ve already missed Chris’ Grace Day for 2009, but couldn’t every day be Grace Day?

Celebrating “Grace Day”: From Trying Harder and Doing More to a Culture of Grace

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful” — Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being

Twelve years ago yesterday, I was born again … again. After 17 years of intense church-based racial justice and reconciliation ministry in Mississippi, my gospel had largely become a matter of trying harder and doing more. And things I held dear began to fall apart.

At the same time that my African-American colleague Spencer Perkins and I were traveling the nation preaching about reconciliation, we could hardly sit at the same dinner table together at home, where our families shared daily life in an intentional Christian community called Antioch. Our long friendship and ministry partnership was on the verge of breaking up. We each held tightly to our “lists”—“you did this to me,” “well you did that to me.” The final straw was when I shared that my wife and I were considering leaving the Antioch community. Spencer blew up, accusing me of being a deserter to the cause….

Read more >>>>>

I get in a lot of discussions with people about the practicality of finding real community among flawed brothers and sisters. Certainly we are all in a journey of transformation, but community need not demand perfection, just the resolve to live inside relationships. Everyone wants community but mostly for the benefits, and that can’t happen where people are not also willing to pay the cost.

The cost is this: one must put the priority of friendship above any other consideration, including how right I think I am. This is what Philippians 2:1-4 and other passages encourage us to do. The problem is, so few people I’ve met in this life can either live that or sustain it for any length of time. The moment community is about something other than friendship (finding our ministry, promoting our own happiness, or satisfying our coping mechanisms), it will always break down into a competition as to who has the most power to get their way.

The problem with any structure we would seek to use to guarantee this kind of life eventually fails. Subtly the structure replaces relationship, as people think the structure (the fact we belong to the same group) guarantees a relationship. But it won’t be long before most people will exploit the structure for their own self-interest or preferences. And most of those will mask their selfishness by claiming God led them to pursue they things they also happen to prefer the most. The biggest disappointments of my life have come when people get involved in a friendship only for as long as it met their needs and desires. Then they easily tossed aside the friendship like a piece of junk mail. They wanted the benefits of friendship, but had neither the responsibility nor integrity to contribute to the friendship beyond their own gain.

That’s why real community remains elusive. I read something interesting this morning that provoked these thoughts. I am reading
His Excellency George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis. It’s a fascinating read and this particular paragraph really leapt out at me.

During the war Washington had learned, the hard way, that depending on a virtuous citizenry was futile, for it asked more than human nature was capable of delivering… Making voluntary sacrifice the operative principle of republican government had proved to be a romantic delusion. Both individual citizens and sovereign states required coercion to behave responsibly.

I realize he is talking about fallen humanity, but his conclusion perhaps applies to the redeemed community as well. Since we’re all people being shaped by Jesus in various stages of healing, community cannot rest on perfection. Asking people to prefer relationship over self-interest is to ask what human nature is incapable of delivering. Without an ongoing transforming work of the Spirit, which goes on in the whole of our lives, community is impossible.

So I guess I’m back to where I began. Real community is found in friendships, not structures. And even there, they may be transitory at best. Enjoy them when God brings them across your path. Share his life together as long as there is grace to do so. You can structure around it when a group of friends are sharing the life of Jesus together, but no structure will guarantee or secure that life for any period of time.

So here’s what I hope to do: Love everyone. Recognize those relationships that go deeper with a sense of mutuality and sacrifice. Enjoy sharing the journey together and fight for those relationships more than anything else. In real community, being right with each other is more important than being right about any issue. But don’t be too shocked or devastated when some of them go south. Some people don’t have enough maturity yet to live inside their spiritual nature in the moments when relationship costs them something. The endurance of community asks for something that human nature isn’t capable of providing. That doesn’t have to be a cynical conclusion, just a practical one.

As I’ve said often, community is a gift God gives not a mandate for us to manufacture. Always extend it to others. Revel in it for those seasons where others extend it to you as well. And let’s all look forward to the day when all our vices and selfishness are swallowed up in the fullness of Christ.

It seems all of this stems from the fact that we really don’t trust that Jesus is capable of building his church—that he cannot give rise to the reality of his family if we don’t “start something”. It’s as if living loved and loving just won’t be enough to let him do all he wants to do.

Here’s a passionate brother who is anxious to start his own church and my responses:

Mike: I just found out about you and what you are doing because my daughter sent me to your web for information about how to start an open church at home. I am just a new born baby, about 4 years now, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit about 3 years ago and I have been preparing myself to follow God’s plan for my life. I am considering going to a Bible college this September and the Lord spoke to me and asked me to start an Open Church with some of my family members and friends. I have read some of your articles regarding Church and think have helped me tremendously on how to approach the Lord’s command.

My response: I’m pleased to hear of your passion, but I don’t have any advice on how someone should approach starting a church, except to tell them not to. People who start a church end up basing it around their vision or gifts and it will either bog down or simply become the outgrowth of one person. I am convinced real church emerges as an organic outgrowth of relationships people are already sharing. So the question is not, how do we start a church, but rather, how do we facilitate people caring for each other and growing spiritually together and see over time whether or not church life emerges from that reality? I really don’t think we need to start churches. Jesus started the only one that matters at Pentecost 2000 years ago. We just need to live in that reality instead of starting more institutions that only further divide the body. That’s probably not what you wanted to hear, but I honestly thing the way God works is very different than the way we do…

Mike: I guess I used the term CHURCH incorrectly, because what I want to do is getting people… friends… family and share with them my experience, to try to have them become true Christians and then share our love with Jesus. I love your honesty. God bless you.

My response: I’m sure Father will lead you. If I could encourage you in anything it would be to share your life freely, but look to come alongside someone else’s journey. Once we try to get people to have the experience we have, we’ll manipulate them instead of serve them. Jesus just wants you to come alongside folks and give them truth as they are ready for it. Once we start trying to manage people’s spirituality, people will run from us. God will show you. I love your heart and passion, but church leadership has done this wrong for a long time and its why people are fleeing from the church instead of finding God in her.

Mike: Thank you Wayne, I understand what you are saying. Please tell me in your opinion then what I should do. How do I try to tell people about how wonderful Jesus is, about eternal life, about relationship with GOD. I am so new at this. I am a 71 years old newborn baby so willing to do good. Any advice will be incredible for me.

My response: What should you do? Follow him. If you don’t know what that means yet, just live in his love and love others around you. In time it will be clear what he wants you to do. If you don’t know now, other than to follow someone else’s form, then maybe you are moving ahead of him. I’m really serious about this. We’re just asked to love like he loves us (John 13:34-35), to proclaim the gospel as we have opportunity and to help others follow Jesus who want to follow him (Matthew 28:19-20). We are not told to plant a church, for he said he would build his own. He’s good at this. He knows what to do. Just help others as God gives you grace. Don’t try to start something. Don’t try to ‘get people’ to do anything. Live your life before them until they are hungry enough to ask for help. Then help them learn to live loved and follow Jesus. And the gospel will spread…

* * * * * *

When I last heard from Mike, he seemed to have captured what I was saying. We must not forget that the ‘early church’ did not arise out of a plan to get people to do anything. The early church emerged out of a revelation of who Jesus is, and hungry hearts responded who wanted to know God and live in his life. There was no recruitment campaign and no strategy to manage people through a hierarchical system. They lived as a family and grew to discover how they could embrace his life together and live transformed in the culture.

I actually think when we try to ‘start something’, we’ve already made a step away from his reality. It’s not that God won’t go with us and that our efforts won’t be fruitful at some level, but they will never help people discover the depth of relationship and transformation that comes from a relationship with him. Unfortunately, for many, the thing we start will be come their substitute for knowing God themselves.

Somehow we have to think differently—that our calling is not to build the church, but to present an authentic demonstration of the Gospel in how we live and what we say. Then, we take the time to equip those who want to know him, how to live in a relationship with him. As a pool of people discover how to live loved and love, then the church can take on a variety of forms and expressions in various times and seasons.

Our focus will remain on him and what he’s doing in the world, rather than sustaining our institution, be it in a building or a home. Then we have a shot at the church of Jesus Christ being known in the world as a people who are being transformed by him.

To great sections of the Church the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the ‘program.’ This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us.

Tozer was definitely a man after God’s heart, with a passion and unbridled honesty that still resonates today. We have absolutely destroyed any meaning to worship in our day when we think that it is anything we do on a Sunday morning involving songs, vocalists, instruments and light shows. Worship is how we live our lives in Father. How we love our husbands, children, the obnoxious person at work and strangers on the street is closer to real worship than anything having to do with songs.

Don’t get me wrong. Singing and making melody in our hearts to God together is a special thing to. We can call it adoration if we want. But calling it worship, destroys the real term that belongs in every-day life, not something we do once or twice a week.

While I agree with many of the observations you and Mr. Young make with regards to institutional church (and I’m only a first generation Christian) – I am troubled by conclusions I’ve drawn (rightly or wrongly – and this may be where I could use some of your help) with regards to So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore. I think that it is a no-brainer to say, “Let’s stop going to church. Let’s, rather, just be the church.” I’m with you on that – I’m tracking. I guess where I get hung up is that I believe that deconstructionism isn’t enough – it isn’t enough to say, “Sunday morning doesn’t work” – even if I agree with most of your points on this argument. To turn your own phrase, “Who wants to be on that side of the argument?”

Do you really want to be known as one of the guys who convinced people not to go to church on Sunday morning? Forgive me if this sounds cliche or preachy or even judgmental – but is that a conversation you want to have with Jesus – that a central contribution of your life was to deconstruct Sunday mornings?

What would you have us (your brothers and sisters) construct? It seems to me that it is too easy for any one of us to step away from Sunday morning because it isn’t working for all kinds of reasons. The truth is – we need your help to construct a different looking Sunday morning – to continue to ask good questions and critically examine what we are doing as a church – but to also build with us.

Here’s my response:

I’m not sure you’ve drawn the right conclusions. My answer is not a simple deconstruction of Sunday congregations. In fact, I’m often in them to share the life of Jesus. I’m for deconstructing the religious veneer that we shroud our gatherings in. For some of us that means getting out altogether. For others it might mean being part of a process that recovers a more grace-filled tone, and a less passive environment in which the life of Jesus gets shared. I’m all for looking for ways to do that with what we already have.

As to those who find that environment no longer works for their journey, I don’t want to construct anything for them to pursue. I do think that’s Jesus’ job. “I will build my church…,” is how he put it. The reason church life grows stale is because we’re looking for institutional solutions, not relational ones. If we equip people to live loved of God and live as lovers of people, the church will spring up all around us. It probably won’t be contained in a specific meeting or building but will grow wild and free and bear fruit in the interconnection, collaboration, cooperation and submission of brothers and sisters who are being changed by Jesus. That can look like a hundred different things. But once I begin to describe some of those things, I know our tendency as humans to prefer replicating a model to following the Head! We love to construct things, not build up people. The New Testament points us to building up people in Christ and seeing what expression that takes. I don’t think it works the other way around.

So the process in or out of those systems may be deconstruction of religion and ritual, equipping the saints to live inside the love of the Father, facilitate connections that stimulate cooperation, collaboration and submission and people follow Jesus together, then see what HE builds out of that.

I am convinced that’s the process we are in. Having another model to shift to will only shift the problem into a new shell. We’ve got 2000 years of church history to say that can’t work. And I’m happy to help on all sides of that process as Jesus gives me grace. But I don’t think anyone who knows me will think the central contribution of my life to deconstruct Sunday mornings. The central passion of my life is to help people live loved of the Father and love on his behalf with increasing freedom. To the degree that our institutions do that, I’m thrilled. To the degree they don’t, change is in order.

What kind of change? That’s up to the Head himself.

I’m only a bit player in this unfolding drama.

Yet, on a topic as temporal as politics the emotions ran high in most of the 72 comments (and counting!) that were posted. Some included heavy judgments against others, and some felt judged by those who disagreed with them. I know I joked on the podcast about doing this post to “thin the herd,” but that was only in fun. I knew it would be provocative but I wanted to see how people would respond to it and to me. To be honest I was shocked at the scale of the response, not the diversity. I expected lots of people to see this election different than I did, but I was most saddened by the oft-repeated spirit that demanded others see the election as they saw it or have their Christianity or their intelligence questioned. Certainly every comment wasn’t like that, but enough were. And these are just the public comments. I’ve had many more private emails, some applauding what I wrote as they had voted similarly but were afraid to admit it, and some promising they’d never visit this site again because I was obviously a hypocrite or was dumb enough to be deceived by the Great Deceiver.

But this does express why the body of Christ is having trouble finding each other and living in his life together. Many see conformity on these kinds of issues as a requirement for fellowship and respect. On the one had, that’s just passion and I understand it. On another, it derives from a a mistaken worldview that everyone who is serious about Jesus will have the same conscience I have, and if they deviate from mine I have to set them straight or reject them. I’m going to call that what it is—incredibly immature spirituality. The apostles of the early church saw the individual conscience as the arena in which God makes his will known and that the larger community did not have the right to trump that conscience or marginalize a member because they saw it differently, even if you regard me as a ‘weaker brother’ for voting as I did. See Romans 14-15 or I Corinthians 8.

Every gathering of the body of Christ faces this issue, whether it be eight in a home group or hundreds in a larger gathering. If we all have to think the same politically, or even theologically on minor issues to share our brother and sisterhood, then someone has to decide what that standard is. That’s why many people think we have ‘leadership.’ And they would be wrong, because all that leads to is multiple groups who all gather with those who think just like them and reject those who don’t.

If the body of Christ is going to demonstrate herself today in the corporate majesty of her collaboration and cooperation then Jesus will have to be our only focus and loving others will be our motivation, not a demand for conformity. We can be honest in love and no one will get hurt. But we can’t be honest in judgment and hope to demonstrate anything to the world except how empty the cross is, or how irrelevant God’s power.

Jesus asked us to love as we follow him; he didn’t ask us to agree. If we have to agree to love, then what hope have we? If a group has to all think alike to have fellowship then they have pitched a tent at some stage of the journey and will not grow on to know him. In most groups I’ve known, conformity has been the goal. Someone needs to set the standard for the group and people either go along or go away. Neither leads to the reality of Christ expressed among his people.

So here is the problem today. Too many people think they alone are right and anyone who disagrees with them is a threat to their world. And it only takes one person like that in a group to destroy its ability to live, love and grow together. Until we have enough brothers and sisters that have a passion for truth that does not outrun their calling to love others, the body of Christ will continue to be fractured and impotent in the world. And they’ll have to have enough love to lovingly stand up to those who would be divisive among the family by demanding everyone think like they do.

But where we can differ in conscience and still love; where we celebrate the individual acting in accord with their conscience even if we disagree, then we’ll discover relationships that will demonstrate his glory in the earth. I’ve noticed this over my journey, those who are most settled in God’s truth feel no compulsion to conform others to it. They know truth has a power all its own and that a generosity of spirit will open people to it faster than bashing them with their opinion ever will.

How I yearn for the day that enough people understand that so that the body of Christ can gather not based on the false unity of human conformity, but on a love that is greater than all our disagreements and a humility of spirit that allows our differences to be discussed openly without others being loved.

Then we won’t need so-called leaders to police the peace or make us act like we are of one mind, because we will have Jesus’, in ever-increasing abundance. And then the world will see that Jesus was the gift of the Father and that they too can share in his glory.

It’s true that there are a lot of wonderful people who attend traditional congregations, but as many have found it’s also not easy to build relationships there unless you’re involved in all the programs. Even then, it can be difficult when people already have their friendships and very little time or energy for more. And if you ever leave a congregation because you’re exhausted by the behind-the-scenes politics or because the pulpit messages are laced with guilt and performance, you’ll find just how shallow those relationships are. Many of your so-called friends will forget about you or exclude you because you’re no longer part of the same work. Then what do you do?

One of the difficult realities people face when they leave a congregation is finding ways to connect with people. But that’s only so because we’ve always expected others to provide the fellowship opportunities for us. Some look for a nearby house church or think of starting one, hoping to draw others into a similar task, but that can also replicate the same problem. The good side of this is that people who find traditional congregational life unsatisfying, don’t do so because they’re loners. They actually want friendships that rise out of a common passion for Jesus and are looking for ways to walk with other believers in a deeper community.

If you’re new to this journey and have found your old friends pulling away from you, first know that you’re not alone. Almost all of us know what that’s like. We know the loneliness and the desperation that can set in. But the loneliness can be a great tool to draw you closer to Jesus. We often try to fill the God place in our life with others and thus miss how he wants to do it. So literally put him first. Find your life in him, not in your friendships with others. Learn the joy of waking up in the affection of Father each day, even if it takes months to learn.

As you learn to live in that freedom, ask him to give you away to others during your day. It is the task of the Spirit to set us in the family, not ours to find out what we think is best for us. That said, Sara and I just don’t wait on the couch expecting someone to come to our door and ask for fellowship. Instead we’ve been pretty proactive each day about looking for opportunities where our lives can intersect others.

In the last 8 years Sara and I moved twice to localities where we knew no one, and both times we just started loving up on our neighbors and others we met through work and other community engagements and watched a new network of friends develop. We followed those distinctive nudge in our hearts to go meet some believers in a congregation, fellowship groups, mission settings, and other local ministries. . Even though we didn’t join any of those things we met people there with whom we have maintained relationship and watched friendships deepen. We’ve volunteered in community projects and made intentional efforts to be a friend to our neighbors. Not all we met in our new surroundings were (or are) believers, but we have eventually found our lives so full of others, some to love and some to journey with, that we felt our lives quickly filling up.

Live loving toward others near you where that is possible, taking an interest in them whether they are believers or not. See where those relationships go. Don’t try to “build relationships”, because that puts an agenda to them that will drive people away. Desperate and clingy destroys the hope of organic relationships. Just love others and let relationships take their course. Some will deepen and grow, others will just be a passing moment. If God leads you to engage believers in places where they gather, feel free to go. You can be alongside others even in congregational settings without having to buy into all the baggage and without disaffecting them from what is meaningful to them. This is not an exact science, it is a journey and God knows the friendships that you need and how to bring them into your life.

Stay in touch on the web with connections God seems to make there. Travel a bit to meet others to whom God is bringing a connection. Resist the urge to treat relationships as a convenience and make some sacrifice to engage others. Everything about our world trends away from relationships and so will we if we get so overwhelmed with life that we only have them when its easy or convenient. Friendship is about laying your life down for others knowing that Jesus is always laying his life down for you. Friendships will grow best when we’re not trying to control them or trying to get others to act according to your expectations.

In the long run, it is trusting that God knows how to bring you into relationship with others and show you the way forward. It is out of that trust that real relationships can begin and grow.

[A personal note: To those who have been praying for my Dad, he got home Saturday from nearly 3 weeks of surgeries and re-surgeries and his home, healing, and grateful. Thanks for your expressions of prayer and love for us during this time.]

We have been in this area for about 9 years now. I really felt strongly that the Lord had spoken to my heart about coming here back in 1998, and we made the move in 1999. I always assumed it was to start a church or to be on staff at a church or something along those lines. I’m not saying that God still won’t use us in a way to minister here, but wow, how our view of things has changed. I think it was about relationships, all along.

My biological dad (who did not raise me, I had no contact with him at all) contacted us shortly after we had decided that it was God’s will for us to move to this area. I agreed to meet with him, probably early in 1999 before we moved. I always had a dad growing up, so I didn’t resent him or anything like that. Turns out he is a heck of a nice guy. Anyway, he lives about 30 minutes south of where we live now. We have developed a great relationship with him and many of my family members that I never knew growing up. He told me later that him and his wife had been praying for years for our relationship to be restored.

Here I was thinking that God sent us here for some great ministry, but all along He was answering the prayer of a father wanting to get to know his son.

We’re always so conscious of trying to get God to answer our prayers, that we rarely think how we might be an answer for someone else’s. Maybe what’s going on in your life isn’t about you? Maybe God is making you a gift for someone else…

And on that premise, true community thrives!

I received an email the other day with some quotes in it from Barbara Brown Taylor who has written an autobiographical book called Leaving Church. She’s come from a very different tradition than I did—as clergy for the Episcopal Church. But she didn’t find it to be all that she expected it to be. Now I haven’t read her book yet, but I loved the quotes that were sent to me. I’m not sure how quickly I’ll get to read the book, but thought I’d share some of her insights with you.

The first quote is about people who get stuck in church meetings but never engage God as a personal reality:

“(For some) God was the boundless lover, but for many people God was the parent who had left. They still read about him in the Bible and sang about him in hymns. They still believed in his reality, which made it even harder to accept his apparent lack of interest in them. They waited for messages from him that did not arrive. They prepared their hearts for meetings that never happened. They listened to other Christians speak as if God showed up every night for supper, leaving them to wonder what they had done wrong to make God go off and start another family.” (Leaving Church, pp 74-75).

And then this from a collection of her sermons entitles, Home by Another Way.

“So if you want to know who today’s Pharisees are, here are some of the questions to ask. Who are the religious people who follow the traditions of the elders, and who – on the basis of that tradition – believe they can tell the true prophets from the false ones? Who are the guardians of the faith, the fully initiated, law-abiding, pledge-paying, creed-saying, theologically correct people who can spot a heretic a mile away?

According to John, these are the people to watch out for, because they think they can see. Furthermore, they think they can see better than other people, and they are not shy about telling you that you are not really seeing what you think you see, or that what you are seeing is wrong. They do not do this to be mean, either. They do this because they love God and maybe even because they love you too. They are doing it to protect you from believing the wrong things.”

One of those brothers had been reading a book of letters by Swiss theologian Karl Barth from the 1960s. I loved what he was saying about it and he made me a copy. This was in response to a seminary professor who wanted to send Dr. Barth some questions on behalf of Christianity Today. Now I haven’t read Karl Barth in years and am not even sure what his particular theological bent was that riled up the evangelicals in the States. So, this is certainly no defense of his theology, but it is celebration of his wisdom for dealing with criticism. Not all who criticize are looking for truth, and you don’t have to fall victim to the ‘orthodoxy’ crowd that it is only interested in proving a point and not growing in the Truth. I thought others of you might enjoy reading some excerpts from it:

Please excuse me and please try to understand that I cannot and will not answer the questions these people put.

To do so in the time requested would in any case be impossible for me…. But even if I had the time and strength, I would not enter into a discussion of the questions proposed.

Such a discussion would have to rest on the primary presupposition that those who ask the questions have read, learned, and pondered the many things I have already said and written about these matters. They have obviously not done this… But I cannot respect the questions of these people from Christianity Today, for they do not focus on the reasons for my statements but on certain foolishly drawn deductions from them. Their questions are thus superficial.

The decisive point, however, is this. The second presupposition of a fruitful discussion between them and me would have to be that we are able to talk on a common plane. But these people have already had their so-called orthodoxy for a long time. They are closed to anything else, will cling to it at all costs, and they can adopt toward me only the role of prosecuting attorneys, trying to establish whether what I represent agrees or disagrees with their orthodoxy, in which I for my part have no interest! None of their questions leaves me with the impression that they want to seek with me the truth that is greater than us all. They take the stance of those who happily possess it already and who hope to enhance their happiness by succeeding in proving to themselves and to the world that I do not share this happiness. Indeed they have long since decided and publicly proclaimed that I am a heretic, possibly the worst heretic of all time. So be it! But they should not expect me to take the trouble to give them the satisfaction of offering explanations which they will simply use to confirm the judgment they have already passed on me.

…These fundamentalists want to eat me up. They have not yet come to a “better mind and attitude” as I once hoped. I can thus give them neither an angry nor a gentle answer but instead no answer at all.
Karl Barth (From Karl Barth, Letters: 1961-1968)

After a few hundred emails, it is pretty easy to tell those people who have serious questions and concerns and want to engage in honest dialog, and those who demand a one-sided conversation to defend their views and mischaracterize mine. I love dialog with the first. I think dear brothers and sisters can disagree about a lot of things and find meaningful and graceful dialog through those differences.

The second, however, act just like Pharisees, always straining at the smallest issue while missing the bigger picture of God’s grace and love. They don’t listen to others but act as prosecutors to prove my knowledge is deficient to theirs. I like Barth’s approach here. You don’t have to engage that conversation, for it will not bear fruit in either life.

Ingrid, the church gossip, and self-appointed monitor of the church’s’ morals, kept sticking her nose into other people’s business.

Several members did not approve of her extra curricular activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence.

She made a mistake, however, when she accused Frank, a new member, of being an alcoholic after she saw his old pickup parked in front of the town’s only bar one afternoon.

She emphatically told Frank (and several others) that everyone seeing it there would know what he was doing.

Frank, a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just turned and walked away. He didn’t explain, defend, or deny… He said nothing.

Later that evening, Frank quietly parked his pickup in front of Ingrid’s house, walked home, and left it there all night!!!

You gotta love Frank!

Today I had a bit of a break and went down to see the parade ground where Hitler held his public rallies. We toured the museum there and learned how he built his power over people by marginalizing, excluding, and even exterminating anyone who didn’t show a passion for his rule or tactics. It was sobering. So much of the language we heard was similar to what’s going on from those inside organized religion who want to challenge anyone who dares to question its authority, methodology or effectiveness of teaching people how to live in Father’s love.

What I have enjoyed about the trip is not only those in their 50s and 60s who have found fresh life in Jesus, but also the number of young people here who are passionate about a greater life in Jesus. They are not so much burned out by the rituals of religion as much as they are hungry to know an authentic life in Jesus that they didn’t find there to begin with. In every meeting I’ve been to there has been young, hungry, engaged men and women who are looking for what life in Jesus is really all about. It has been so encouraging. The Spirit is calling to a new generation to come to him in the freedom of simply learning to live as the Father’s children in the earth and not get lost in the religious activity of generations that preceded them. Amazing!

This is what we must encourage not discourage. If you care about God’s church in the earth you will discourage them or try to bring them into conformity with our tired religious practices. Interestingly enough, I received this email over the last couple of days from Becky back in the States that seemed to address this very thing:

I’m a 23 year old Christian who left “the box” 2 years ago. I was raised in church and after witnessing 3 pastoral affairs and 2 church splits, I threw up my hands and walked away. If that was God, I didn’t want Him. I didn’t know what to do. My decision to leave the church was against everything I’ve been taught here in the Bible Belt, but at the same time it was a decision that felt as right as choosing God in the first place. Interestingly enough, I had my first real and authentic conversation with God after I left the church. Although it was mostly filled with anger, it was the first time I allowed myself to be real with God. I spent my entire life in this passive aggressive state because all the formulaic prayers and activities didn’t lead to the life the Bible talked so much about. It seemed no matter what I did, I couldn’t feel alive and whole like the Bible said….

Reading The Shack last year changed a lot. I have never felt such a sense of relief after reading something. If that God is who God really is, THAT’S a God worth worshipping! I no longer had to be someone I wasn’t in order to love Him. What a relief. And although I feel confident in my decision now more than ever, I still often struggle with it. If this mindset is true, then why is it a 23 year old in 2008 was the first to figure it out? And that’s where you come in…. I’m starting from the beginning on your podcasts and plan to listen to them all. I just have to say thank you. It’s nice to know people older, with much more wisdom, education, and experience feel the same way.

I hear this so often from people. Who am I to think that these systems might be leading us astray? Wouldn’t those who are more intelligent or more experienced see it before I do? And if people don’t put that on themselves, those who set themselves up as leaders will do it for them. I can’t tell you how many people have faced a dismissive attitude from an elder or pastor with the same comment: “Who are you to think you can hear God better than me? If God were speaking those things today, wouldn’t he say it to me first?”

My answer to Becky would be, “Why not you?” Why not a twenty-three year old girl who simply wants to know Jesus? When Jesus was here he was excited when the simplest people captured the vision for his kingdom. He greatly rejoiced before God at such moments, grateful that God had revealed himself not to the wise and learned who were so busy trying to keep people under their authority, but to common people and children.

Wouldn’t we want to ask ourselves why our so-called leaders discourage what Jesus so blatantly affirmed? I wonder.

So, why not Becky? She is his—beloved daughter of the Most High God. He knows where she is and how to bring her along to where he wants her to be.

Why would God show her what others have missed?

Maybe it’s because her simple heart is unclouded by the need to build a group of people into an efficient organization. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t draw her salary from the success of her program and ideas. And maybe her vocational success isn’t tied to corralling a group of people under her control. If the truth be told most of those leaders who discourage people like Becky one day began with a heart just like Becky’s before it got confused by the obligations of building a Christian organization.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather rejoice with Becky and encourage her to keep going. Keep coming to him and follow him as best as you can see him. Feel free to make some mistakes in the process and he will teach you how to live in his freedom and his glory.

Why not her?

Why not you?

I have been reading some of your books and listening to some of your CDs and they are really making a difference in my journey with God. Last night we had our new Assoc. Pastor, Scott, over for dinner and we got to talking and “accountability” came into the conversation. In fact, he evidently left his last church because they refused to deal with some people who were in obvious sin. I had heard you say in one of your teachings that you dislike the words accountability and commitment. That they are not used in the Bible. That is true, but what about passages like Matt 18 and Titus? Is that not accountability? Or, is that not what you are meaning when you use the word accountability?

Here’s how I responded: No, I don’t dislike the words, my point is that ‘commitment’ to an institution is not New Covenant language. My commitment to Sara, and my commitment to other brothers that I labor with in any given season are incredibly important to me.

My issue with accountability is that Scripture never uses that word in our relationships as brothers and sisters. We are all accountable to God. That is clear. We are called to love each other deeply, not hold each other accountable. That said, I don’t ever see love ever separated from truth. Matthew 18 and Titus (and many other passages) are simply about believers walking in love and truth with each other, not allowing blatant sin to become embedded in their midst. Love always speaks the truth and tries to rescue people caught in sin with gentleness. It does not delight in holding people accountable. So that kind of honesty for me is not accountability (which is an institutional word), but a relational reality of loving God and others with his life and truth.

Thanks for replying to this. It’s kind of sinking in. I realize my accountability to God is much higher than any accountability to other believers. So dealing with blatant sin is more on the level of pointing out truth in a loving manner and turning them to God for accountability. Is that close?

It is!

People who think they have to hold others accountable have misunderstood the passages on New Testament church life and do not know the power of love and honesty.

One final note: I just wish our sense of ‘blatant sin’ included religious arrogance, greed, and unloving actions toward broken lives, not just the sexual sins we’re so fond of despising and judging!

A few months ago we were able to respond to the crisis in Kenya that resulted from tribal violence following a contested election. The circumstances have quieted and many people have been able to return home. But the brothers and sisters God linked us with in Kitale are still taking care of about 400 families who cannot return home. Their food and supplies are running low. I received this from our friend there this week:

Greetings in holy name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Thank you very much for your prayers and for more concern with your team towards our brothers and sisters. We would like to appreciate very much for your great (giving) towards our brothers and sisters. The Lord is doing a new thing. More of our affected people are returning to their places. This was started this week on Monday. Around four hundred families still need our help because their areas are not secure to be settled and they have camped in the churches and in the houses of our saints and for good Samaritan.

It may be 8 months before they can resettle. Our team has worked out to visit every family and to write the details and domestic needs. It has taken a long time to complete the list we have send to you for brothers there to continue praying for these people. The last support you send our team managed to support those who were worse than others which is about 30 families as you may see in the list. After the interviewing they reached an agreement of supporting each one of the 3200 so that they may have a place and to buy what they needed.The usefulness of the money, divided among 30 families. We still need your prayers. Everything here is so expensive and if God opens a way we could use some more support. If we can get 70 bags of maize, it will save other children and those who are starving with old age.

May the Lord bless you so much for your with the entire team there for standing with us in this hard time where our country has experienced for the first time. we are still praying for you, and we know that God is in control.

Over the first three months of this year we were able to send almost $15,000.00 to help in this crisis. I am simply putting the call out there again for any who would like to pray for them or send money to help with this great need. Every dime sent to us will go directly to those who need it. Nothing will be taken out for administration on this end or that one. If God puts it on your heart to send something, please go to our Invoice Page and click on the ‘Pay Invoice’ button. You can then list “Donation for Kenya” and the amount you’d like to give. If you use the ‘Donation’ button you will need to also send me an email letting me know you wanted this to go for Kenya and not for Lifestream. All donations to this cause are tax deductible.

Or, if you prefer, you can also send a check to Lifestream • 7228 University Dr. • Moorpark, CA 93021.

Thank you for giving this need your time and attention.

And then I wanted to share this letter with you. For many folks the combination of a few of the following: The Shack, He Loves Me, So You Don’t Want to Go To Church Anymore, The God Journey and Transitions has been a bit of a ‘perfect storm’ to help them catch the reality of living in the love of the Father. I am so blessed by that. Because the reality isn’t really any of those things. We try to describe it in various ways in each of them, but it is in knowing him and how he works in us and in the world that helps us discover how to live in him, not just talk about.

A couple of weeks ago I received the following email from a sister in England that captures that perfectly. More than anything I don’t want people reading or listening to my stuff, but finding the freedom and joy of just living in the Father’s reality every day and watching him make a difference in them and through them every day, wherever they happen to be living, working or playing. That’s the gospel!

Thank you so much for Lifestream – and thanks for the Jake book and the God Journey as well. And The Shack of course.

My husband and I left our charismatic (originally a house but now an organisation) church after 18 years there, being in church leadership and both of us on staff in responsible positions in the past. You don’t need to know the reasons but it was a very painful process involving betrayal and control. I never wanted to go near a church again – but thought (now I see erroneously) we would be in a dangerous place if we had no “covering”. So we tried a few but for some reason God seemed not to give the green light. Instead we bought a small flat by the sea and spent our weekends and Sundays walking the cliffs and on the beach, listening to worship, reading books (Christian and otherwise) and enjoying each other’s company. We also invited friends down and once a month had a get together when we ate together and just rested in God’s presence for a couple of hours.

However, I still felt guilty that I hated the organisational church, loathed the thought of house groups, never wanted to darken the doors of a conference ever again, and enjoyed good teaching on the web but only as long as I closed my eyes and didn’t watch the church bit. After all the Church was the Bride of Christ wasn’t she – so really I shouldn’t hate it. Guilt… Guilt… Shame.

Then extraordinarily (well not, of course) two things happened. My husband went to Spring Harvest 2 weeks ago to man a stall for work (not to go to any meetings though, no way man!) and he discovered the book The Shack. He is not a great reader but he could not put it down and he wept his way through a large part of it.

While he was away I discovered So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, read it on line in one sitting, found it totally liberating and then discovered the podcasts and the other stuff on your site. And of course saw the link with The Shack.

So when he came back I read it, also wept, and something has happened to me – I have been taught about God the Father and Daddy God until I know it inside out in my head, but the penny has never really dropped in my heart. Reading The Shack made the connection for me between the two but I didn’t realise it at the time until I emailed a friend and my jaw dropped when I realised I was talking about what Daddy wanted to do. I have NEVER felt comfortable referring to Father God as Daddy before although my husband found that heart relationship about 2 years ago. What a miracle. What freedom to know that all I have to do is let Daddy love me, and from that I will be able to love others. I DON’T HAVE TO PERFORM ANY MORE!

It is clear that God is shaking up organisational church all over the place. When praying the other morning he gave me a picture for the church I left (since then many others are exiting as well) but which I think is applicable worldwide. He showed me a glass beaker punched all over with holes and water was pouring out of the holes. But what was so amazing was that as the water landed on the table it did not remain in little droplets separately but it made a pool which was held together by the surface tension. If more water came near it and joined it then it became one with the first lot of water so you could not tell which was which. God is far more interested in the contents than the container and those contents do not need a structure to keep them together. (emphasis mine).

Gotta love that last line! It really says it all! God is more concerned with people coming to know him than he his preserving our religious institutions. But that is nearly impossible for those who manage institutions to understand. They are used to sacrificing individuals for the good of the whole, thinking that is God’s heart. If only they could see…

First of all, thank you for the encouragement you have been to us in the last year. We left the institutional church a little over a year ago and honestly do not think we can ever go back. Your blog, book – So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, Transitions and The Shack have been both freeing and refreshing to us.

Secondly, not asking you to critique or anything but how does your belief system differ from the organic church movement? We read Pagan Christianity and it really opened our eyes. We don’t want to start a house church because we think that can be just moving the institution to the home. If you are willing to give it, we would like your opinion on the whole apostolic house church movement.

To answer your question, In my view the organic church movement, is not very organic. How can it be when they give you all the models to follow? And I’m never thrilled with movements. They always seem to have too much of a touch of man’s plans and human efforts behind it. People create the illusion of a movement for many reasons. Some might be sincere, thinking they are providing a valuable resource for God’s people, though that is rarely the result. More often they end up only trying to validate people that they are part of ‘something special’, or to sell them their books and seminars. God just doesn’t work that way. He moves freely in the earth inviting people to him.

The apostolic house church movement is also too man-driven and program-centered for my tastes. Body life rises out of brothers and sisters who simply want to learn to share Father’s life together as friends and to have his heart in reaching out to others in the simplicity of living their lives. People doing that will find the life of the church springing up around them. It can’t be imposed by implementing any system or model, which only teaches people to play church instead of really living as it.

Thus, discipleship (learning to walk with Jesus) precedes any depth of real community together. So learn to follow him. Encourage others to do so. Follow what God puts on your heart to do together in joy and freedom and you’ll find yourselves being the church. Set up a weekly meeting with a mini-ritual and soon you’ll feel like its just a routine you’re going through. Because it is. But let God connect you with people who want to share a journey, and your life together can take on a myriad of expressions in different seasons as best serves his purposes in the community in which you live.

God wants to give us real frienships with others and teach you to share his life together. We’ll get to experience that simply if we don’t try to put something else together on our own first. Then we’ll just end up with another substitute, not the real deal.

He can do this in you. Ask him to show you and just follow what he puts on your heart each day as you learn to live in the reality of his love…