Occasionally I hear what seems to be echoes of my thoughts and sometimes my words. Today’s post by the Internet Monk is one of those occasions. These quotes specifically resonated with me:
… those who are living through a “church crisis” and feeling spiritually homeless.
That would be me in the middle of that crisis, and best I can tell from my email, thousands and thousands of others are on the same bus.
It’s not that I don’t have a home church where people love me, or that I’m a church consumer who can’t be satisfied with the coffee bar and kickin’ worship band at the local megachurch, or that I am so theologically sophisticated that I can’t stand to listen to any preacher who isn’t more interesting than N.T. Wright.
No, my spiritual “aloneness” crisis is something inside of me. It just isn’t syncing with the churches around me. I feel like I’m sitting in a huge commercial for a product I don’t want to buy anymore. (Not Jesus, but the current version of the Christian life as its sold by evangelicals in general.) I haven’t abandoned the church. I just feel like I’m an alien visitor listening to a lot of that sound the adults make in the Charlie Brown cartoons. …
My prayer isn’t that I will find the church. I’ve had plenty of that. I want the Holy Spirit to make me the beginning of the Jesus-story believing community that tells its stories to the world. I want what Jesus wanted when he poured out his spirit on those disciples to happen in and through me, to whoever is thirsty, lost and alone.
You might want to read the post in its entirety at http://jesusshaped.wordpress.com/2008/06/13/finding-jesus-at-aa/.