Yesterday was NOT the day to fly. When I arrived at LAX the security line was over half a mile long. No one was allowed to take any liquid or gels through security. Even bottled water purchased inside secure areas of the airport couldn’t be brought on board. My flight was 25 minutes late leaving Los Angeles and I only had a 26-minute layover in Las Vegas before connecting to Minneapolis.

Fortunately my flight from there was delayed as well because the security lines in Vegas were taking people an hour and a half to get through. So I made my connection with about 10 minutes to spare. Amazingly my bags did as well. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t make it, but they came spilling off the baggage conveyor to my absolute surprise. Sometimes the airlines really get it right…

This is my first time in the Minneapolis area, so I’m having a ball meeting a whole new group of folks at various stages of the journey. Many have been on my websites for months and have been reading some of my books, so this should be interesting.

A couple of things are weighing heavy on my heart these days. Recently I’ve heard from a couple of dear people who are abandoning God in their disillusionment over the failures of religion. I guess that’s why I hate the forms of religion so much. Some people will have served the forms for so long believing them to be God, that when religion finally fails them in a critical area (as it always does), they won’t be able to separate the reality of God from the falseness of religion. Tragic!

I’ve also heard from others who have worked religion pretty well on the outside, only to see them crash onto their own brokenness, with hidden addictions that finally ravage their life and devastate their family. While I’m always glad when such things come to light, I am always saddened by how much effort they put into working a system that only betrays them in the end. I hate that too! If we do not introduce people to the life that is in Jesus, they will only weather religion for so long, and then it will collapse on them. Hopefully they will see God beyond it.

That’s my prayer. I hope these moments are just the middle of chapter, where God has yet to complete what he has set out to do in them.

Nadia, a reader in Russia, is translating So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore into Russian and we will be posting chapters on our website as she makes progress. If you know readers who speak Russian, you are welcome to forward the link on to them. The first chapter is up and others will follow as they are completed. For those reading it in Russian, if you have an editing suggestions, please send them to us and we’ll forward them on to the translator. Nadia is doing this as a labor of love.

On a side note, we will also be posting soon a complete French translation. Also a German publisher, Glory World, is translating Jake’s book into German and will be publishing it in book form at a date to be announced.

I love what Jesus does to transform people from the onerous burden of religious obligation, with its requisite demands for performance and overwhelming guilt. I got this email the other day from a mother who was part of a time I had with a group of believers this summer. The ‘bit about the cross’ that she refers to was the teaching of the cross that is very similar to our Transition series. This is the freedom that he wants us all to find in him. I’m so blessed at what this woman took to heart and how God is working it into her.

That bit about the cross, so simple really, but so hidden and so huge. The week before I left for (my time with you) I was talking to my husband about going on Prozac again. I was sick of battling all the shame, bitterness, and hurtful thoughts. I’d prayed prayers of confession and forgiveness. I’d rebuked everything I could rebuke. It seems like in an instant all of that chatter was finally quiet. For the days following my simple life of mothering tasks had new color.

I’ve had some bouts of anxiety too. Not tied to anything specific. I think I’m trying to learn to skate away from the wall and I’m afraid I’ll fall. God asked me to quit my job and to spend a Sabbatical year with Him. My good husband is behind this year completely. It’s the first year of my life as long as I can remember without an agenda. Wayne, I think I’m still afraid I’ll screw it up!! Lord I believe help my unbelief.

I assured her she would screw it up at some point. We all do. The joy comes in knowing we can’t screw it up so badly that he can’t make himself known in it and use it for his glory anyway…

I was with a group of believers not long ago in a time of song and praise, and I noticed something curious during one song. I didn’t know the song but in one of the verses there were two lines about things that need to die. The first said something like “where religion dies.†Every time we sang that line it got great cheers and whooping from the crowd.

The next line was about our pride dying as well. It didn’t get the same cheers. In fact, it didn’t get any. Interesting… It’s easy to want religion to die. It is outside of us and doesn’t cost us anything. Pride is inside of us and we all know what that might cost us when it dies. I get it, but it made me sad nonetheless. In fact I mentioned it to them a bit later when I spoke. Why don’t we bring the same passion to God’s work transforming us from the inside as we do the work he needs to do on the outside?

That may be why so many people who have seen through the bondages of religious systems hve yet to find great freedom and life beyond it. It is easy to cheer for the destruction of things that have hurt us. I get emails like that all the time, cheering on things I’ve written about the ineffectiveness of religion. Some of those I know who call out the loudest for the destruction of organized religion as we know it are sometimes the least transformed personally to reflect the compassion and character of God to people around them—especially to those still captive in the system.

Interestingly, I do not get the same cheers back from people when I talk about letting God rework us from the inside and what needs to die in us if we’re going to experience the fullness of his life. If we could only see that our pride and independence are even more destructive, especially because they live with us every day. Real transformation doesn’t happen out there in structures and systems, but first in those who are willing to let him transform them at the most broken places of their lives.

And if you’re not ready for that, then you’re just really not sure yet how much this awesome God loves you. Keep exploring that until finally your joy at his dealing with your pride is greater than your hope at him blowing up religion. Then we’ll know we are well on the path to his life!

——-

On a personal note, we are on the road this weekend in Central California and our office is closed until Wednesday. Books and CDs ordered this weekend won’t be shipped until then. I apologize for any inconvenience this causes…

I just got back from Kansas and a week with New Jerusalem Mission which is spearheading the conversion of a hospital into a care facility for the homeless and for those afflicted with HIV/AIDs. How this came to be is the an incredible story about a woman loving her ex-husband through his death with AIDs, that I told on the opening segment of a recent podcast. I also told her story in the book He Loves Me. That’s Penny Dugan in the picture leading some people through the hopsital. This work is a special grace by those thinking outside the box of organized religion, but also working alongside all kinds of Christians to provide a compassionate outreach for those who need it so much.

The cost of their operations and refurbishing the hospital are significant. I’m talking in the 100s of thousands of dollars. This is completely a faith venture on their part and you won’t believe what they’ve already accomplished just by doing every day what God puts before them. If any of you have some extra money that you’re looking to give to help extend the gospel in a dark corner of our world, please give this some consideration and prayer. If you know any groups looking for a week or a few days of a ‘missions project’ right here in the heartland of the U.S., consider this. And if you know of friends or foundations looking to give to projects like this, please let them know too.

Every gift is put into the work by people who come from all over the world at their own expense to work in this ministry. I don’t know of a project I could recommend more highly to you than this one. These are people thoroughly dispensing the gospel of grace to people often overlooked and outcast in our culture. So many of them over the years have come to their own personal faith as well.

This isn’t just a hospital for Kansas, but a national center to help care for those with HIV/AIDs with no where else to turn. And it isn’t just a ministry for the U.S. This team travels around the world to help encourage and equip others on the front lines of HIV/AIDs care. I was with them in South Africa last summer and some of them recently returned from China.

If you would like more information about their work, you can contact me and I will put you in touch with them. You can send contributions to Lifestream if you want, made out to “New Jerusalem Missions” and we will send them along. Unfortunately they do not have a website at the moment, but I can vouch for their integrity, passion and mission and they would love to be in touch with you if you want further information about their work or bringing a team to help in the refurbishing. You can find out more at their New Jerusalem Mission website.

We do things like this very rarely. I hope you don’t mind. Thanks for giving this your prayer and consideration.

Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy) has been one of my favorite authors for some time. As a philosophy professor at USC, his view of God and his work in the world is breathtaking. I wouldn’t say we see everything in exactly the same way, but I always come away from reading his things greatly encouraged to live more deeply in Jesus, and having some excellent instructions on how to do that.

Admittedly some find his writings a bit too academic. That’s sad to me, because they are filled with such great life and wisdom. Recently I ran across an audio series of his at the Allelon website, that I hope everyone can benefit from. The title of the one I’ve listedn to is: Spiritual Formation in the Ways of Christ. This is good stuff on living a transformed life. Here are some of the things he said that I really appreciated:

We don’t build churches. We preach the kingdom, make disciples, bring them together in the presence of God and grow them and the church results.

The church: The people who have come to faith in Jesus Christ and are living together and dwelling with one another and allowing that mutual nurturing to happen….

What you really believe about Jesus Christ is shown by what you do after you learn you can’t do anything.

Spiritual formation is not learning to do the right things; it is becoming a different kind of person who will do different things. If you want to keep the law, don’t try to keep the law. Try to become the kind of person who would naturally keep the law.

If you want to hear the entire teaching, click here.

OK, we’re not exactly doing that, but today I did upload the PDF file of the rewrite of my first book ever—The Naked Church. This was my first attempt to express my passion for the body of Christ in the world and how we’ve traded the realities of relationship for the burden and ineffectiveness of programs. My hope was that it would help people discover the life of the church not as they’ve always known it, but church as they’ve always believed it could be. Then we would come to recognize how we’ve sacrificed a vibrant intimate walk with Jesus for traditions, programs and institutions, and how we can recover his life again. I had no idea at the time where that little book would take me.

The first edition of this book was filled with anger and some of the answers it offered were as stuck in the religious mud as those things I was criticizing. I just didn’t know it then. In 1998 I rewrote that book in the Revised Third Edition that has been available since. Many people have found a kindred spirit in that book and a hunger to see the church emerge is the living body of Christ in the world. It freed them to believe that what Jesus had put on their hearts wasn’t an idealistic fantasy, but a calling of the Spirit to go beyond the status quo of our religious institutions and find the life that really is life.

Just yesterday I received the following email from a pastor in Alabama:

Just to let you know, I have read two chapters (of The Naked Church) so far and almost burst into tears. Not because I didn’t see all of this, just because someone else does. I could have almost written word for word what I have read so far. Thank you for putting it into print. I plan on reading the whole book in a short time, and I’ll email you back when I get to the end. God bless you, my brother.

I hope the book continues to stir people to a more passionate walk with God wherever you are in the world. You can download the PDF file here.

Care to read over my shoulder again? I received this email this morning. It poses a question I’ve been asked many times when I talk about the way religion seeks to hold people accountable, and how Father never asked us to do that. I love the way this question was asked and thought others of you might be interested in the answer:

Wayne, you say that Christians are not accountable to each other, but that we are each accountable to God. Could you explain what you mean by that? If you’ve already addressed this in a previous podcast or BodyLife article just give me the reference and you can move on to your million other emails.

To understand where I’m coming from, this is what I think of when I hear accountability:

1) James 5:16 Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other. OK, so its hard to find a group today where this is “Safe” but it is the instructions we are given.

2) 1 Cor. 5 talks about “Putting Out” a brother who is guilty of a heinous sin. If you go to a “Sunday Morning Box” I understand this to mean the leadership asks you not to attend. If you are part of the “Boxer Rebellion” I guess you have to decide with whom to break fellowship. Either way it sounds like accountability of the sinner to the brethren.

3) Matt. 18 Instructs us how to deal with someone who sins against us. This also sounds like an accountability issue.

Can you see where I’m coming from? I must be misunderstanding something. Can you explain it to me?

I there there are two ways to interpret the Scriptures you’ve listed, even while embracing the truth in them.

One can confess, “break fellowship” or deal with sins using accountability components of enforced conformity, which is what I grew up with. Or, one can confess, break fellowship, or deal with sins out of a relational love that is ten times more powerful.

Accountability to me is the right to compel action and always forces those in power to manipulate others to their whim and desire. Scripture never use that term between brothers and sisters in the family, only between each of us and God. He’s the one to whom we give an account. We are called to love each other they way we’ve been loved. Love stands along side others with complete honest and affection and can accomplish all those things without the demand for conformity.

I guess the difference is a brother sitting beside you in the car asking you to slow down if you’re driving recklessly, or to let him out if you won’t stop, and a cop behind with red lights and siren. I’m not saying the later can’t be effective, and I’m grateful in a worldly sense that they are there. But by and large cops don’t transform behavior, they only conform it as long as they are present. As soon as they pull off the freeway, all the cars speed up again.

When Scripture tell us to owe no man nothing but simply to love each other, I think he discounts accountability as a means of fellowship. All the Scriptures you mention can easily and authentically be fulfilled by simply loving others around us. To me that means we treat them with affection, while still being honest with them in ways that convey grace. Even the last Scripture you refer to invites us to treat them as tax collectors or sinners, which were people Jesus hung out with. He was able to love those folks, just not let them live in the pretense of having a faith they did not truly follow. So the end was not to banish them from our hearts, but not let them pretend fellowship while we continue to love them.

Having lived this way now for a number of years, I find far more healthy confession, honesty and confrontation go on with compassion and affection than ever happened with accountability models. Those only offered an illusion of self-made religion, without helping the heart be transformed by the power and love of Christ. And it is his love and revelation that transforms people, not “holding each other accountable” to standards that our flesh cannot fulfill.