It is amazing how fast time travels. Even though we are part of the fabric of time, sometimes it feels like it's moving by us so fast that instead of being woven into it we're road-rashed by it by it. I have very much missed sharing from my life and my journey with you all. It has helped me immensely to air out my faith and struggles as I try to make sense of it all.
   The farther I get into my 6 month sabbatical from the church the more alive in Jesus I feel. It's like a great darkness has been lifted from me. A darkness I did not really know how to identify or quite honestly did not know I needed to identify. I knew something was wrong. But "church" culture and "church" leaders have told me for years that I must do it "this" way, or I can't do it "that" way, and I have allowed that to dictate my life and faith.

     As I read and ask the Holy Spirit to teach me, I see a different model in the scriptures, one that Jesus himself works very hard for, and ultimately gives His life for. A model that taught His disciples to beware of the religious elite, the false teachers, and spiritual abusers. (Ezekiel 34)The Message.
                                 
Matt 23;  “Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can                                                          banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like                                                    pack animals.
   These next few paragraphs will, I'm sure, cause some of you to cringe and some of you to possibly stop reading this blog. I understand. This is a hard topic and it's unraveling in a way that is going to be dealt with in these pages in a very raw and authentic way. I don't make any claims that these ideas are truths only that they are very real and heartfelt to me. They are the most genuine reflections of my heart; a heart that to me feels like it has been pumped full of churchianity and counterfeit gospels, a heart that for the many times I questioned these gospels was told I was wrong and misled, misguided, and sometimes told I was in sin, a heart that for many years listened to mans' gospel instead of the gospel being shared by the Holy Spirit within me. 

    I do realize that with this kind of conversation being aired I have the responsibility to be seeking and sharing the solutions and resolutions happening for me.

Jeff VanVonderen, co-author of the classic book, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse, defines spiritual abuse like this:

“Spiritual abuse occurs when someone in a position of spiritual authority – the purpose of which is to ‘come underneath’ and serve, build, equip and make God’s people more free – misuses that authority by placing themselves over God’s people to control, coerce, or manipulate them for seemingly godly purposes which are really their own.”

 VanVonderen adds:

“Nothing about spiritual abuse is simple. Those who have experienced it know it is powerful enough to cause them to question their relationship with God, indeed, the very existence of God. And it is subtle too! The perpetrators of spiritual abuse are rarely ‘Snidely Whiplash’ sorts of characters who announce that they are going to drain your spiritual energy. They may be people who seem like they are seeking to guide you to the deepest levels of spiritual maturity.”

   One of the things that I have always wanted to be a part of and relate to are the 1%-ers, the downcast misfits and castaways of society. I don't know how to explain that. I have always had this attitude and disposition to be outside-the-box, to be separate from the norm. I think this is rooted in pride, a part of my character that followed me into my life of faith. Because of my early "church" life I was quickly indoctrinated into being a good charismatic Christian who should 'purge your soul, purge your life of "unsaved" friends, purge your music collection, purge your identity, and your individuality'. The more this went on the more and more I felt unsettled, like I was losing myself and who God made me to be. In reality what I had become felt like a 1%-er Jesus follower, a disciple of Jesus that had become an outcast from evangelical Christianity because I didn't the mold or 'drink the Koolaid'.

Does it get any more "Life is Good"

    It shouldn't surprise you to learn that spending six months with Jesus just as I am, as simply and honestly as I could manage, shook my safe evangelical assumptions to the core. The world inside the Gospels is not the same as the world inside my church(or my head). Jesus doesn't talk like an evangelical. The issues that my church obsessed over (reform vs. free-will, membership, women in ministry, the authority of the pulpit, etc.)aren't on the radar at all.
   Spending six months with Jesus did something else. I was 25+ years into my ministry and for the first time in my life, I realized I didn't understand the Jesus I was proclaiming. I was steeped in religiosity and churchianity from head to toe. But Jesus? Not so much. In the midst of this sabbatical and plunging into the Gospels, I discovered that Jesus was another world altogether, another universe really. I knew Him as an actor in the story as it has been told to me by my church(churches). It's a very raw and naked feeling to admit that. There is just so much more to the person of Jesus and I had no idea.
   As I have pursued Jesus-shaped spirituality, I have been forced to do it on His terms. Jesus wasted no time letting me know that He is not an evangelical, or a Protestant, or an idea, or a doctrine, or a liturgy. He is my master and my Lord and my biggest fan.
   If I(we) are hungry for a Jesus-shaped life, what is it about Jesus that will most shape our lives to be like Him? I feel that in order to answer that question we have to cut our ties to the comfort and safety of traditions, customs, and assumptions. It's time to leave behind our religious programming, that has no connection to Jesus, and begin a real and new adventure.

   The Jesus disconnect is everywhere. My prayer for you and me is that we all feel the exciting tension that comes up when we bring Jesus back to the forefront and put him in the spotlight;. Jesus himself, not formulations of Christian doctrine or church traditions. It will transform our faith, lives and relationships. We can't have an authentic Christian experience, in church or outside one, without Jesus.