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I’m a bit of a golf nut, so I’m excited about having some time to sit and watch the final round of the US Open today! Go Phil! Or, Padraig! Or, Monty! Or, Furyk! Should be lots of fun.

Reading an article on the open the other day, however, I saw a humorous story about a previous golf tournament that was in danger of being cancelled or curtailed because of unrelenting rains. One of the TV announcers spotted a priest in his clerical collar and called to him, “Can’t you do anything about this?”

“You’ll have to take that up with management. I’m in sales,” he responded with a smile.

It made me smile, too. I love the idea that God’s in management and we’re not him. I even see Jesus living in that freedom. He wasn’t trying to get his Father to do what he thought best; he was living in the things he saw his Father doing. On a number of occasions when questioned about the timing of future events, he would respond, that he didn’t know for those things were in the Father’s hands. I guess when you know the Father you don’t have to sweat the future.

As I thought about this more, however, I was troubled with the priest’s view that he was in sales. Believe me, if I had heard this story 15 years ago, I would never have thought twice about that. Religion is something you have to ‘sell’ to people and I wouldn’t have caught that. Today, however, the idea of being in sales as an ambassador of this kingdom turns my gut.

Perhaps it would be better said, “You’ll have to take that up with management. I’m in service.”

That, I like! Imagine the freedom of living that way. Even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve. He wasn’t selling anything either…

I got this letter the day after the last one I put on my blog. This one is from a senior pastor as well and letters like his more than make up for letters like the previous one. When our religious institutions get in the way of a simple hunger to live deeply in the life of Jesus, then we have to rethink what we’re doing…

I am a minister in my 50s. I was ordained as a Southern Baptist, was a Navy Chaplain, turned charismatic, involved most recently in a “apostolic church” with a strong emphasis on “fatherhood” (which I have decided is the shepherding movement warmed over), and I just separated myself from my “headship.” Part of me would like to walk away from Christianity completely and just take care of my young family, put my Bible away and tell God when he has something for me to light a nearby bush! My question is where to from here? I feel as though I can’t trust anyone. ( I also had my own business, to support my ministry, which some “christian brothers” left me holding the huge debt debt that resulted in personal and corporate bankruptcy.)

I became a Christian and a minister believing that the gospel could make the world a better place. Needless to say I have been disappointed. But I can not forsake Jesus. I just no longer know how the work of Christ in the world gets done in a tangible manner. Perhaps I am most disappointed in myself in that I have no idea any longer of my destiny or my calling. I am most disappointed in my lack of the love like Christ in my person. I feel totally inadequate for ministry (even with my college and seminary degrees and years of experience).

Got any suggestions?

Your story breaks my heart. Unfortunately it is not an uncommon story, even down to the betrayal of close friends and bankruptcy. You are not alone, Bro! What Christianity has become in our day is often a painful reality that doesn’t help people be transformed, just manipulate the system for their own gain. When it finally falls out it is incredibly destructive.

I’m blessed you would write me. I don’t feel like I have any adequate words at times like this and certainly can’t map out the next steps for you. I can affirm your statement that I can’t trust anyone. Jesus even said something like that in John 2. But you can trust him. You may not feel like that right now with so many disappointed hopes in him, but he has set himself to deliver you from a system that was doing more harm than good, even with the best of intentions, and is now inviting you to know him in ways you’ve only dreamed of before. 50ish is as good a time as any to let him take you through this transition and learn how to live in the freedom of his love rather than in the religion we call Christianity.

Where to go? To Him! To Him! To Him! Every day you wake up, just ask him to reveal himself to you as he really is. Ask him to lead you one step at a time to whatever he has for you. Follow the convictions of your heart and ignore the voices that seek to manipulate your sense of shame. Who knows what that will end up looking like for you? I’ve known so many brothers in your shoes and the outcomes are always different, but they all have this in common. We all look back and say, “Why didn’t I go on this journey earlier?” While the result are rarely what any of us expected, they are always far more spacious and filled with grace than our own dreams ever would have.â€

I know that may be hard to believe, given where you sit today. But he is pretty good at what he does. You’ve been dis-illusioned by what you thought his life was, but that is a GREAT thing. You (like all of us) had illusions about him and church that needed to be dissed. Now you stand on the brink of seeing this Father as he really is, and the bodfy of Christ as she is really taking shape in the world. It is more incredible than you’ll ever know.

Yesterday I got to Pennsylvania and found this note in my inbox from a ‘Senior Pastor’ in North Carolina:

So tragic that heresy can look repectable (sic)* on the web. Your thots (sic) disagree with scripture, church history, the expression of the church on any continent of the world, and the thots (sic) of any great Christian thinker thru the ages. Wake up Wayne, your (sic) deluded – I pity you.

Such emails make me incredibly sad. No doubt, something I’ve written has caused him some pain. I don’t know how in his case, but often when I get letters like this, it is because those that pastors like him feel responsible for are passing out some of my articles to others that are creating some disaffection from the institution he manages. Sometimes people do that innocently and with God’s leading, at other times people do it in a way that is divisive.

Either way, I never rejoice in the pain my words cause others, unless it leads them to a greater joy and freedom. I know how threatening my thoughts can be to those who think they have the only expression of church life that God sanctions in the world. Theirs is a darker prison, unfortunately, and I always hope to write something that might put a crack in the door to a brighter world. Here’s how I responded to this one:

“I’m so blessed you had the courage to write me with things you are obviously very passionate about. And believe me, I understand your concerns. A number of years ago I would have even shared some of them. I’m not exactly sure what your labeling as ‘heresy’ from my site. I doubt it is Father’s great affection for his children and his desire to transform us into the image of his Son. Could it be the fact that I embrace many expressions of church life as the Spirit would lead people? I do have a shelf full of books that suggest many others have struggled with similar concerns down through the centuries, and I have visited Christians in many countries where they live in a relational demonstration of community that expresses the truth and the power of the Scriptures. You could look at China alone to see what God can do in alternative expressions of congregational life.

So, I know we see this differently. And if my deluded soul needs to awaken, you’re welcome to pray to that end. I think Jesus is quite capable of taking care of that, if need be. But I already feel as if I have awaken from the rigidity of human effort to the reality of abiding in the vine that has significantly transformed me in ways I only pretended in the past. In every way I have more life in him, more shared life with other believers and more engagement with a lost world than I ever thought possible in this age. I’m not about to go back on that…”

________
*sic – thus or so, used within brackets to indicate that what precedes is written intentionally or is copied verbatim from the original, even if it appears to be a mistake.

I got this in my inbox the other day, in response to a recent podcast. I LOVE the last sentence and shout a hearty AMEN to the proposal. Let us be such people!

I listened to the “Are You a Christian?” podcast today and loved it. I was especially touched by your story of the 2 hour conversation with the woman you were at political odds with. And I loved that you could tell that story about yourself and it come out so clean and honest and humble. That is a work of grace.

It’s similar to how I feel when I talk about (what he is doing in me.) This adventure is not about me but Jesus, and apart from Him and the grace of the Spirit and Papa’s love in this process, there would be none of it and I would be only lost and destroyed, or dead already.

So let’s be people who rock the world, who fight for the unity of the heart, who embrace powerlessness and a love that is so wondrously painful that it threatens daily to pull us out of this age and into the presence of the One we so desperately love.

In a comment on my blog about Christian Magazines, Eric left a comment thinking I’d been a bit rough on the industry and painted with too broad a brush. I thought his comments had some validity, so I want to try to clarify that previous blog here:

Eric, Thanks for writing. I love you’re perspective and your heart. Maybe you’re right. It was a bit tough.

I certainly do not believe nor mean to intimate that folks who work for Christian magazines are evil. But this piece was not directed at individuals who work in the industry, but at the industry as a whole and how groupthink can make the subobjective of making a profit more important than helping people discover the truth of God’s work on the earth. I tried to make it clear that they don’t see it that way, and as you say are doing what they think best to spread the kingdom.

But isn’t that what is scary about it? When I was a pastor I was deeply convinced that by building my institution, I was buildilng the kingdom. My passion for God was the same then, but the groupthink of the institutional enviornment took those passions and twisted them into manipulating people with guilt and commitment, saying what would not offend even if it wasn’t quite the truth and thinking the success of the institution was more important than the growth of individuals. When the subobjective of buildling an institution replaces the key objective of living loved and loving, horrible things can happen by well-intentioned people. I wasn’t writing about anything I haven’t also experienced firsthand. And yes, that is a confession.

I wrote the original blog because of the number of people that thought I could influence Charisma to give more weight to those thinking outside the box. I know the futility of that given their readership. I don’t know the editor there at all, though I have tried to write him on a number of occasions and have never had him respond. I have LOVED a lot of his editorials that challenge religious ways of thinking. I’ve often wondered how he stays there given the overall humanistic and materialistic feel of the magazine and those it covers. I stopped reading it years ago because it beckoned the wrong motives in me.

That said, I do think there is a huge difference between people reading what I write because it resonates with them, and me writing what I write to draw the largest audience I can. Very different. Pleasing people is not a trap I hope to fall into yet again. I’ve been in that pit way too many times before. It’s muddy at the bottom and the sides are steep and slippery. There’s no way out without a firm and loving hand from above!

I received this today from a brother I’ve been corresponding with in Switzerland who is translating the Jake Colsen book, So You Don’t Want to Go To Church Anymore into French.

Hi Wayne,

I just want you to know that I finished translating Jake Colsen. It’s in the “2nd reading” process now, somebody is correcting it, and I’m looking now to find somebody who could edit it. So please pray with us in this process.

Silvio

So, please pray. And if anyone out there can edit French, please get in touch with me and I’ll direct you to this project. I’m blessed by the people who are helping get this out to other nationalities in their own language. I’ve also reached agreement with a German publisher that will be translating and publishing the Jake book and He Loves Me into German. Cool!

I’ve had a lot of email in recent days about some comments I made to a reporter that recently ended up in the current issue of Charisma magazine. People seemed to think I must have been misquoted. When I finally saw the article I was relieved to know that the reporter basically got my words right. I love relational expressions of God’s life among people whether they meet in a home, a building or a tree! It is Jesus and his presence that matters not the locality. I’m not a banner waver for the so-called ‘house church movement’ and see many of those who are exhibit some of the same attributes of building their own kingdoms that we in other franchises of church life. I honestly think Jesus is tired of it all.

I have also talked to people who were upset with an editorial in that issue that says some disparaging things about people that don’t attend sanctioned Sunday morning events that have ‘church’ printed on the marquee out front or the bulletin they hand you when you walk in. I don’t know, I haven’t read it yet. Some want to start a letter-writing campaign to help the editors ‘see the light.’ I chuckle at the notion. By all means write. I often write to editors to at least give them another perspective, but I don’t ever expect it to change the nature of the magazine. That isn’t going to happen because entrenched Christian magazines are not primarily serving the kingdom, they are serving their business plan. And their business plan is to stay in business by increasing their market share and if they can sneak a bit of truth in while doing that, so much the better.

What many people seem to misunderstand is that Christian magazines are most concerned with printing the truth of God’s heart and light in the world. That is one of the most deceptive things about them. Don’t get me wrong, that’s what most publishers THINK they are doing, but when you get behind the inner workings of a magazine today, you discover how much they serve the bottom line by serving up articles that their readers WANT to read. It’s the fulfillment of 2 Tim 4, actually, where people “gather around themselves those who will say what their itching ears want to hear.”

Even if some of the editors thought various expressions outside of organized religion were valid expressions today, they couldn’t say it outright. They would have to couch it in deniable words so as not to tick off their readership. How many people into relational life do you think subscribe to Charisma? I don’t. It’s a fluff piece of celebrity worship for the charismatic renewal. People who know God and how he works wouldn’t spend a lot of time trying to find God’s truth there. That’s not to say it doesn’t show up there once in a while, but it has a high noise to signal ratio. Way too high for me.

What they can do is run an article about house church that isn’t totally negative, but to keep their readers they preach the old, ‘gotta go to church’ rules so they won’t think their editors have gone daft. It’s a game. That’s why disgruntled letters make little difference. They can run them on the ‘letters’ page to let those people think they have a voice, but it will not affect their direction as a magazine. They are not looking for truth, but to keep their jobs and keep their readership. Cynical, you say? Nope. That’s business.

I’ve written articles for magazines, that editors have told me they truly love, but cannot print. “Even though I love what you’ve written here and think it is the truth, I cannot print it in this magazine without 20% of our readers canceling their subscriptions in anger. If 20% cancel their subscriptions our entire market plan goes belly up and we won’t print another issue.†That’s how it works. See it for what it is. Enjoy the truth that slips through, but don’t live under the illusion that these editors are the gatekeepers of truth for the family. They cannot afford to be, even if they did have that kind of wisdom. All the major magazines even use focus groups now to find out just what their readers want to hear so they can serve it up to them month after month whether or not it is helpful to God’s work in the world…

Crazy? Probably. But Paul told us the day would come. Lo and behold, we’re smack dab in the middle of it. It’s quite a ride. That’s why can you keep your eyes on him and don’t freak out when people miss the truth because of their vested interest. Just keep living it, one day at a time and loving one person at a time. That is the way God works in the world. That’s more powerful than any editorial in any Christian magazine…

Truly!

As I wrote earlier Sara and I are reading through The Christ of the Mount by E. Stanley Jones while she gets ready to leave for work in the morning. This book is a classic study through the Beatitudes, especially how the blend together in our lives to demonstrate God’s life to the world. Here he deals with the third beatitude, the meek. But he postulates that it is a convergence of the first two—the renunciated life of the poor in spirit, and willingness to enter into other people’s pain as those who mourn.

As hydrogen and oxygen, two diverse elements, coming together produce an entirely new product, water, so the spirit of renunciation and the spirit of service coming together in a man make a new being, the most formidable being on earth-the terrible meek.

They are terrible in that they want nothing, and hence cannot be tempted or bought, and in that they are willing to go any lengths for others because they feel so deeply. Christ standing before Pilate is a picture of the Terrible Meek. He could not be bought or bullied, for he wanted nothing—nothing except to give his life for the very men who were crucifying him. Here is the supreme strength—it possesses itself, hence possesses the earth. It is so strong, so patient, so fit to survive that it inherits the earth.

No one gives the earth to those who have this terrible meekness; they come into it as their natural right, they inherit it because they have the blood of God in their veins.

On an unrelated note, I leave tomorrow for a week in the midwest. I’ll be in Windsor, Canada over the weekend with a Messianic fellowship that wants to sort out the freedom of relationship from the bondage of religion. Should be interesting. Then I’ll hang out in Detroit on Sunday night and Monday. On Tuesday I fly to Des Moines, Iowa to help a school district there deal with some harassment issues as part of my BridgeBuilders work. This is a tough trip to pack for!

I know! I know! I have been way too busy of late and some travel as well as work on a manuscript has left me woefully behind in emails and updating my various websites. It turns out I’m going to be a literary agent for awhile in my spare time, and perhaps be involved with a screenplay and movie production. All of this, because a few days after Christmas last year an unpublished manuscript arrived unannounced an unexpected in my inbox.

That is not unusual. Lots of people send me manuscripts and articles to read and I try to give as much time to them as I can and get some feedback to the authors. So I printed off a few pages to do that when I found myself on the ride of a lifetime. This book captured me in the first few pages and wouldn’t let me go until I finished it. At its end it left me in tears for over twenty minutes overwhelmed by the immensity of a Father’s love in his broken universe. And I didn’t even cry at the end of Ol’ Yeller!

The book is called The Shack and the gist of the story is this: In the midst of Mackenzie Phillips’ great sadness, he accepts a disturbing invitation to return to the shack, the scene of his 6 year-old daughters grizzly murder four years previous. There, he is confronted by a middle-aged black woman claiming to be God and thus begins an incredible weekend that turns his world upside-down.

The book was written by someone I’d only met a year previous. Frankly, this is one of the most absorbing depictions of God in his universe I have ever read. It is clever, colorful, witty, powerful and full of insights about the God I know. And it wasn’t even written specifically for believers! Though believers will find it engaging even as it challenges some of their religious constructs, The Shack will also hold great interest for nonreligious people. It wrestles in a most creative way with the universal question: Where is God in a world filled with unspeakable pain and loss? In that vein, this book and its edgy story will have incredible crossover potential. It has inspired my own journey and I find myself wishing every person I know had already read this book so we could talk about it.

Unfortunately I can’t put a copy in your hands today. I wish I could. This is one of those special books that comes along rarely in a lifetime. The author was raised among cannibals in West Papua, suffered great loss as a young adult and has overcome a host of inner struggles to live a fulfilled life in Christ now into his 50’s. As I got excited about this book, so did a couple of filmmaker friends of mine and we’ve put together a small team that is working with the author to ready the manuscript for publication, seek out a world-class publisher to get it in print, and turn it into a screenplay for a feature-length movie for general release at a budget of $15 million.

This is definitely a journey for me into uncharted waters, but I felt strongly enough about this book to help it find its way into our culture. It presents God in a way that our world rarely sees and rings with authenticity and overwhelming joy. It will help you in your own struggles to sort out God’s love in the midst of inexplicable suffering.

Already God has opened the door to put this manuscript in the hands of some major publishers and has opened conversations with others who may invest in the movie production. I would appreciate your prayers as this process unfolds. I also have no idea who is reading this blog and thought it might be worth asking if any of you have an in to a major publishers of general interest fiction, either Christian or secular. If so, I’d appreciate you helping me make that connection. Though I have many contacts in the publishing industry because of my own writings, there may be other connections God wants to make.

And if anyone has an extra $15 million lying around and would like to invest in an astounding production of this film, we would love to hear from you to.

Today Sara and i are celebrating 31 years of marriage. Amazing! As we sat and reflected on that this morning, we were so grateful that God has given us a way to let everything that has happened, good and bad, in the last 31 years draw us closer to each other instead of driving us apart. Today we are better friends than we’ve ever been. We’re partners in each other’s journey at every level and I don’t know anyone I’d rather spend time with than Sara—whether we’re in intense prayer, laughing our bellies to soreness, hanging out with good friends or sorting out some question one of us needs resolve.

She truly is the love of my life, my best friend and most endearing sister in Christ. We have all kinds of private jokes between us no one else shares. Her laughter makes me light up. I love the way she lives her life, loves our kids and treats people around her. I can’t believe the joy Father has led us to together and look forward to whatever lies ahead together.

Tonight we’re not even together, and it isn’t due to my travels. Sara has an awards dinner tonight at the Reagan Presidential Library for some of her seniors. But as I write this I can’t stop smiling. Whether we’re together or apart, she is my joy, and I know she’ll always come home!

I know marriage doesn’t sort out this way for everyone, and it makes us sad when we find couples who haven’t learned how to cling to each other, even in their differences and learn to rely on him together. Sara and I have been through some painful times. There was even a season of pain, I wasn’t sure our marriage would survive. What we enjoy now is the fruit of a lifetime shared and I do think there is a way for every couple, if they will explore it TOGETHER, to find their way into the absolute joy and bliss God had in mind when he made a man and a woman and put them in his garden together. Don’t give up! It’s worth sorting out with Father, and with your spouse!