I remember writing an article about changes in pursuing a faith life that I found in Newsweek almost twenty years ago. As the modern age transitioned into the postmodern and exploration went beyond the realm of earth into space, a spirit of freedom was released in human culture.
People, on their own and in communities, sensed there was a world outside themselves to be explored: hallucinogenic drugs, cults, movements, communes, and non-traditional churches. Writers like Marshall McLuhan, Hunter S. Thompson, and Timothy Leary, who popularized the phrase “turn on, tune in, drop out,” first shared the phrase at the 1967 Human Be-In event at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
It was a revolutionary era in the world. I see this spirit of exploration and space consciousness in a primarily spiritual light. The hypocrisy of Puritanism, or moral religion, was being exposed for its failures. It had been exposed, little by little over the previous century, in the actions of the (un)civil war, followed by emancipation (which wasn’t), women’s suffrage, prohibition (as if), and a century of war-like the world had never experienced, followed by the United State’s civil rights movement.
Our world changed. The removal of limits or previously held boundaries unleashed chaos. Humanity was now truly free to be as they wanted. The beginnings were fraught with what seemed to be freedom, but freedoms in conflict only breed a desire to control. We are in a season like that politically, culturally, personally, and religiously. But we still haven’t found what we’re looking for.
Rabbi Marc Gellman once wrote about spiritual revolutionaries. According to Wikipedia, a revolutionary supports abrupt, rapid, and drastic change, usually replacing the status quo. At the same time, a reformist supports more gradual and incremental change, often working within the system. In that sense, revolutionaries may be considered radical, while reformists are moderate.
I am wondering which I am. I am a misfit in my church I am a misfit in my church culture.
I see and sense things that create soul dissonance at many levels. If God chooses to use this dissonance in me to be an agent of change, then so be it. The late Floyd McClung of YWAM speaks of this feeling I share when he says, “After several years of deepening frustration with how I was doing church, I went to a spiritual father to ask for some counsel. I told him I wanted to do church differently, maybe even to plant a church, but the organization I worked with would not allow me to. He laughed and told me god had given me a “holy frustration” to get me ready for change.”
Revolutionaries & reformists are not rebellious, but they are chaotic. They are disruptive. They are agitators. They are discontented but not malcontents. We are the seeds of change within organizations to bring about organic modification. Why do I need to be this way? Why do I feel change is necessary? I think the answer came to me in an extraordinary way. While traveling in South Florida, I was sitting in a coffee shop having a bagel after attending church with a family member. I was dining alone, and this place was crawling with people emerging from a Saturday evening filled with revelry and merriment - not to mention some beverages that induce temporal changes in behavior patterns. Most people around me were seemingly non-Christian, and I was engaged in hearing their conversations. (Yes, I was eavesdropping.)
As I did this, a wave of common sense began to swell in me, asking, "How can I relate to and touch the lives of people admittedly far from God? What am I doing right now in ministry or life that would make a difference in their life?" Preaching on the corner? No. Teaching? Again, no. Church services with really hip music? Umm, probably not. Amazing videos? Nope.
The only thing that makes sense but is not widely accepted is being part of a community and being the presence of Jesus Christ in that community—a lover, a healer, a friend...and ultimately a bridge to a daily awareness and intimate relationship with God. Why do I want the church to change? Because disconnected, institutionalized religion is a poor image of the Kingdom of God. I want people to KNOW Jesus.
I am with Paul, "I now realize that all I gained and thought was important was yesterday’s garbage compared to knowing Jesus, the Lord. I have thrown everything aside for Him—it’s nothing but waste—so that I may possess Him. When it counts, I want to be found belonging to Him, not clinging to my righteousness based on keeping the rules but actively relying on the faithfulness of Jesus, the difference maker. This is true righteousness, supplied by God and acquired by faith. I want to know Him inside and out. I want to experience the power of His resurrection and understand His suffering, shaped by His death, so that I may experience the final resurrection from the dead.
I’m not there yet, nor have I become complete. Still, I am moving forward to gain anything and everything that Jesus has in store for me—and nothing will stand in my way because He has me and won’t let me go. Brothers and sisters, as I said, I know I have not arrived. Still, there’s one thing I am doing: I’m leaving my old life behind, putting everything on the line for this mission.”
I would love to walk this way with you beside me. Whether revolutionary or reformist, I want to see change. I want to find what we’re looking for. What about your feelings?
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