Getting Over That First Hurdle

This from my "Authentic Church" post Sunday is the place where I find myself, and often have, when I allow myself to really reflect on it, over the past 4 years (and probably even longer). I'd say that I have most often found myself here over the past 30 years, since my first exposure to the embodiment of church represented in The Church of the Saviour.

Movable Theoblogical: Finding Others

The compelling desire to be with others in more authentic ways, ways that will foster diversity and reconciliation and help us to act for justice, often presses in on us long before we find others who share that desire. We can feel very alone. We long for something more, but don't know how to find others who might be willing to step out into new structures and processes with us.

You might be wondering where to start. That's easy: start where you are. Let the new way begin in you.

We can't expect others to internalize what we have not yet internalized ourselves. The first "other" we must be reconciled to is our own self. Our true self in Christ waits to know and be known by us.

I am in a place where I don't feel at all that I am the sort of person that anyone would want to be on a journey with. As I have gotten older, I feel less and less like someone who others want to have around. And I feel less and less patient, more frustrated with the direction of things; more restless about how far the church is straying, and the seeming lack of an alternative which offers a hope of turning things around.

I'm determined, though, to seek out the other hidden malcontents; others who have been "ruined" as Gordon Cosby said it; "ruined" by exposure to a vision of church that will not let me satisfied with anything less; particularly with church that doesn't help me AT ALL to battle my addiction to culture. Gordon told me in our conversdation: "It sounds to me , Dale, like you've been ruined". And "it takes disillusionment to be ready for Authentic Church".