The more I worked on this blog post, the more I found that I was hesitant to complete and post it. I am not completely sure why. I have no agenda in writing this except to share my heart and communicate to old friends why I am no longer involved in the Church. -No longer involved in the Church… That is a phrase that I never thought would come out of my mouth.

I am thankful for my life journey and the impact that the Church has made on it. Amy and I often comment on how fortunate we feel to have landed where we are at in life. These two teenagers from Albany and Tickfaw Louisiana, who found each other at 16 and 14, have been through a lot since 1992. I surrendered to the ministry at 18 and was actively involved in ministry by the time I was 19. We were also married at the ages of 18 and 19. Amy and I essentially made the transition from adolescence to adulthood in the Church, doing ministry. For the next 20 years we invested our lives into the Church. As a result, we have been undeniably shaped by the Church. We do have our “church baggage” but I am still grateful for the Church’s influence in our lives. And even now, I miss being connected to the Church.

With the above being said, some might find it surprising that I have not been involved in a local church in over six years. This blog post is my attempt to explain why. I want to be very clear; my purpose in writing this post is to share where I am at in my own spiritual journey. I am not trying to convince anyone of anything nor am I attempting to start any arguments. If what I share in this post resinates with you, now you know you are not alone. If you read this post and think that I have become deceived, then please pray for me.

Backslidden. As I began to think of writing this post, that is the word that came to my mind. I think it is safe to say the average evangelical christian in south Louisiana might call me “backslidden” right now. From the perspective of my former Church communities this description fits me because of how my behavior is labeled by what is accepted by those traditions in the Church.

Backslidden. As I reflect on my thoughts of God and state of the Church, I have to begin by saying that I think that local churches should get out of the business of policing the details of what is acceptable behavior. There are just to many gray areas and abstract details for us to legislate the details of “moral behavior.” This is one of the primary issues that divide us.

The Church is made up of people, and people are not perfect. We all have struggles. We all have issues. We all have insecurities. We all have coping mechanisms. We all have bad days. We all mess up. We all need tons of grace. When we legislate the details of our behavior, we set our church communities up for legalism, an environment of constant judgment and relational dysfunction.

Then to make matters worse, we use the Bible to judge behaviors that have no clear moral instruction from the scripture. Here is an example: Visit Tacos and Beer in Hammond, Louisiana on a Friday evening and you will likely run into Amy and me there. Pass our booth and you are just as likely to see two margaritas sitting on our table while we are catching up with our favorite waiter/waitress and/or family and friends. If you catch us on really good evening, we might even be the “loud” table.

So what is so bad about the scene I described above? You know; one word, Margarita. In southeast Louisiana alcoholic drinks are forbidden for most evangelical christians. I have even been accused of being an alcoholic by some former church friends. In their minds, the fact that I drink alcohol automatically makes me an alcoholic. That is simply ridiculous.

Let’s examine a different scene at another Mexican restaurant in Hammond where my daughters used to be waitresses. It is Sunday afternoon, let’s say 12:15PM. A few colleges kids and a single mom are serving tables. The church people start flowing in after church services end and all the waitresses begin to sigh… “Why?” you might ask. It is commonly known among waiters and waitresses that most church people are bad tippers, sometimes rude and at times the waiters and waitresses even feel harassed by them. Before writing this I wanted to be careful to portray this accurately so I asked my daughters again, “How was it serving to church people at that restaurant after church?” Their instant answer was, “They are the worst! Not all of them, but most of them are.”

Who am I to tell someone else how much to tip or how to behave at a restaurant? Well, I think I have as much or more grounding from New Testament teachings to support tipping than someone else does to tell me that I should not drink a margarita. I will gladly stand before Jesus, margarita in hand, and account for my actions at Tacos and Beer. I can even envision Jesus, that is “the Jesus of the Gospels,” sitting right next to me on a Friday evening. -I struggle envisioning that for the church folks at the other Mexican restaurant on Sunday afternoons. Jesus might have a few comments or a parable to tell about what it looks like to love your neighbor on a Sunday afternoon at the local Mexican restaurant.

And here lies our problem. With tipping, I am attempting to define clear moral boundaries in a gray area. While I am capable of making a strong argument, it is still a gray area. As we attempt to define all areas of behavior, in detail, across millions of people and different situations and cultures we get division and then isolation. I want to be careful to be very clear here; there are some clear moral boundaries that need to be defined: murder, theft, adultery, etc. Then there are the gray areas like, how much someone tips at a restaurant, or whether or not I drink a margarita on Friday night, or the placement of someone’s piercing and may I dare say, who someone else chooses to love… These are gray areas.

Life can be difficult and lonely, but life can also be wonderful -and messy when we live in community together. We rob ourselves of this incredible gift by judging and then isolating each other. It is so sad. And I confess that I am just as guilty as the next person. I have been working very hard to become better at this.

Why do we feel the need to judge the details of each other’s behavior? Fear, power, hate, control, maybe a bit of manipulation? I cannot think of a good valid reason. We often use God and “His Word” as the reason. I think we need to reexamine that mindset.

Are we following God or a man? “God said” or “God’s Word says” carries a tremendous amount of weight, especially in evangelical churches in south Louisiana. But, what if God did not actually say that? A lot of the times whenever we say, God said… what we don’t realize is that is actually what “men said” or what “a man” said. And sometimes it can even be what “a very manipulative man said.” The truth might be, God never said those words. Some man came up with them and then someone else just started saying this is what “God said…” Often, we are using those words to manipulate people to get them to exhibit the behavior that “we” feel is morally right. We are all entitled to our opinions, but the God of the universe never “said that.”

I have a tremendous amount of respect for the Bible and church history. However what I am saying is that in the background of church history, the Bible and Jesus there is this incredible mystery of our relationship with God that is completely based in faith. Frankly, I think we try to hard to figure out and define everything rather than just admitting that in many aspects our faith is a complete mystery. We were never meant to figure it all out. We rob ourselves of the mystery of God by trying to figure everything out and fill in all the blanks. And when we do that, we just don’t rob ourselves of the mystery of who God is, we rob ourselves of the beauty of who God is. -Stop and digest this for a moment… This is what faith is. The origins of faith are beyond the limits of our minds and the artificial boundaries that we attempt to create.

Faith is not meant to be understood; it is not meant to be logical. In Matthew 22, Jesus said faith engages our hearts, and our souls and our minds. And then He said, “The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” -This of course is His reference to loving God and loving our neighbors.

Rather than our churches being a place where we come together in community and engage in this mystery together, because of our divisions, we have turned much of the western evangelical church into something else. The American Evangelicals allowing themselves to form an alliance with the Republican Party is probably American Christianity’s biggest disaster of the 20th century. The same could be argued with other veins of the church and the Democratic Party. I know the word “disaster” will offend some, but it is the right phrase to describe what we have allowed. In most cases, I have to choose to either to go to the church that follows Donald Trump, or the church that follows Joe Biden. Really??? Is that really where we are at? (We may not say it out loud, but it is often the understood norm.) Interesting, I thought we were supposed to be following Jesus? Yet we have divided many Protestant churches along political lines.

There used to be groups of evangelical christians that identified with names such as the “radical middle.” Now we just have the radical left and the radical right; the middle ground is almost gone. At least that’s what it feels like to me.

Over the past ten years I have gotten quite comfortable out in here the wilderness, -outside the four walls of the Church. And do you know what? I feel the Spirit of God out here… outside the four walls of the American Evangelical Church. I truly miss being connected to a spiritual community. I miss small groups. I deeply miss the relationships. But I still feel connected to God. I still feel the Spirit of God working in my life. I do not feel backslidden at all.

Could things be different in the evangelical church? Could there be a different wineskin on the horizon? Sometimes I allow that glimmer of a dream to take shape in my heart, just for a few moments, I wonder what a community that was able to gather the people like us would look like? A community that evolved around coming together and drawing near to God -even with all of our differences. Maybe there is something there, maybe it is just a pipe dream. I’m not sure. -But I keep hoping.

Six or so years ago our whole family would commonly visit churches as we were searching for a new church home. One of the last times we did this was at one of the most popular churches close to where we live, in the denomination I grew up in and that first licensed me for ministry. We walked in the sanctuary and were greeted by several friendly faces, many we knew from our community. I was hopeful, maybe we could find a church home there.

Then, less than five minutes into his sermon, the pastor made a comment about how all homosexuals are condemned to hell. I remember being deeply grieved in my spirit. There were at least 200 people in the room. The odds were strong that some, possibly several people in that room had questioned their own sexuality or knew someone close to them who were questioning their sexuality. -I understand that this is still a very controversial issue for the evangelical church in the south. But, do we honestly want our position to be (in the first five minutes of a Sunday morning sermon) “all homosexuals are going to hell?” As a former pastor, who will always have a pastor’s heart, I was deeply grieved in my spirit that morning. I remember looking around the room and no one appeared to be phased by what the pastor had said. I even saw several heads nod in agreement. And that was when I knew we did not fit there.