Recently, I read a book that, from my experience in church culture, is the best assessment of the current plight and future hope of the American church.  It's called The Mystic Way of Evangelism by Elaine Heath, Professor of Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology.  Here's a couple of passages from the book.  Let me know what you think.

"Many Christians view the decline of Western Christendom with alarm, as if God had fallen from heaven.  Enormous effort is put forth to launch church growth programs to shore up membership, increase giving, and keep denominational ships afloat.  But the history of God's people is a history of life cycles, a history of clarity about call and identity, followed by complacence, followed by collusion with the powers, followed by catastrophic loss.  Contrary to being a disaster, the exilic experiences of loss and marginalization are what are needed to restore the church to its evangelistic place.  On the margins of society the church will once again find its God-given voice to speak to the dominant culture in subversive ways, resisting the powers and principalities, standing against the seduction of the status quo.  The church will once again become a prophetic, evangelistic, alternative community, offering to the world a model of life that is radically "other," life-giving, loving, healing, liberating.  This is kind of community is not possible for the church of Christendom.  Christendom opposes prophetic community with its upside-down power and its exposure of golden calves."

She continues with a hopeful vision of the future.  "The dark night of the soul is precisely that - a divinely initiated process of loss - so that the accretions of the world, the flesh, and the devil may be recognized and released.  It is a process of detachment from disordered affections, a process of purgation and de-selfing.  Though the dark night is perilous, with no guarantee of a good outcome, it holds the possibility of new beginnings. Out of the night the church could emerge into a dawn of freedom and fidelity."

What do you think?

Where Do I Begin?

Where do I begin to chronicle the journey I've been on for the last three years?  How can I possibly describe what it's like to move outside the narrow confines of my religious heritage to experience the richness of other faith traditions while, at the same time, moving further within myself to face the depth of my own spiritual poverty?  It's not easy being me.

It all began three years ago, sitting in my car in a parking lot outside a parking lot in north Austin.  I had been meeting with a dear friend, a comrade in faith that shared my deep desire to do authentic ministry in the name of Jesus.  We were continuing our discussion about moving out of our comfortable surroundings to another part of the city that was struggling.  It was a challenge that we had been talking about for months.  As we parted and headed for our cars, I heard a voice inside me say, "You're never going to do this!  You're too comfortable and secure to risk it all on a venture like this."  At first, I just shrugged it off in the night air, but, as I sat in my car, the voice grew stronger as I realized just how true it was.  Suddenly, I began to weep, in frustration and anger at my own impotence and disobedience.

Eight years before I had moved my family to Austin to become the senior minister of a medium-sized Church of Christ at the front entrance of the University of Texas, determined to help young people, like my friend, take Jesus' call to discipleship seriously.  I knew that the faith tradition I lived and worked within was severely challenged in this respect, but I was committed to "changing it from within."  It was the reason I confined myself to that tradition my entire life.  The particular church I was pastoring was a very wealthy one and I was experiencing, for the very first time in my career, the benefits of such employment - a beautiful house, generous benefits and a comfortable salary.  Yet, for the first time in my career, I was miserable.  For most of my career we had struggled to maintain the "good life," the "American dream," and now I was finally experiencing it.  Jesus was right about serving God and Mammon and I was the living proof.

As I sat there weeping in my car, I started praying, something that I had been struggling, but failing, to maintain over the previous months.  That night I prayed as if my life depended on it.  Looking back I realize it did.   I don't remember anything I prayed that night except the last request - "Dear God, please do whatever it takes to get me back to doing authentic ministry.  I am so miserable now."  "Whatever it takes" - I had no idea what I was praying.  That became evident a week later when the three elders at my church met with me and summarily fired me.

It was a brutal process, not one that I would wish on my worst enemy.  I was understandably angry and blamed them for months for being unemployed late in my career with no real prospects for another job in professional church ministry (nearly every advertisement for jobs in my profession began with the words, "Looking for someone aged 30-55").  Looking back, I realize, like Joseph of old, that what they meant for harm, God meant for good (Genesis 50:20).  God was faithful, is faithful and will be faithful in the future.  And God has allowed me to minister in ways that I haven't done for years.

But the process of preparing me for this ministry was truly a "dark night of the soul" experience.  It still is, because that process of transforming me from a "believer" to a disciple has been a slow and arduous one, revealing just how corrupt and sickly my faith was.  I'm still in recovery, but I'm moving in the right direction now.  At least I think so.  Perhaps my brother, who had experienced this journey several years prior to mine, put it best.  When he heard of my firing he responded - "This will make a Christian out of you."  By God's grace, I believe it is.

Now I'm beginning to "have an inkling" of what it really means to follow Jesus.  For most of my life, my career in "professional church ministry," my faith has consisted more of theories than practices.  I've come to believe that faith is whatever we practice.  Everything else is just theories.  My confidence in my own belief has been destroyed and replaced with a feeble confidence, and curiosity, about God.  I'm reading the words of scripture in a brand-new way and trying to approach God with a humility that was completely absent before.  If you have an inkling that what you've always believed, and particularly what you've practiced, isn't working anymore then perhaps you can walk with me and discover the path of discipleship all over again.  I could really use the company if you're up for it.