It’s been nearly two months since I left my job in full-time ministry. And it feels like a lifetime. At the same time, when I’m missing the friends, or even some of the tasks (for the mastery or the creativity I enjoyed), it seems like just yesterday, and I almost miss it.
And then there was today. I stopped by the local “Christian big box store” (really, that’s almost what it is) to pick up a book that was on sale. Because a bargain book table is my weakness, I of course had to look. I spent a few moments there, and then wandered over to the greeting cards. What I found left me shaking my head at the irrelevance of the whole thing. I was looking for a nice, simple and romantic “Love you” card, and I found next to none. The ones that I did find were all from one company, and they were just sort of…missing something…and almost “holier than thou”.
I walked back over to the books, almost forgetting that there was a special section for books for people like me-the postmodern, college-age, emerging church crowd. I stopped to look and found books by ministers with some whacked out theology, ones to tell me how to survive my 20s, and some books on quitting church and doing things differently. Hmm, that last one had promise. Until I picked it up. Turns out it’s about the ministers of churches can get the people back. THAT wasn’t what I’m looking for.
Disheartened by the one section that might have helped me, I went to check out. And again got side-tracked by the bargain books. I found “The Five Love Languages for Singles”, “…Kids”, “…Teenagers”, the special men’s edition, and “The 5 Love Languages of Apology”. And it was there I realized that I’d completely had it. That 90% of the store was totally out of sync, out of touch, irrelevant with my own life. And I’m supposed to be one of the ones that’s still in the church. What about those people long gone? Or those that never “got it” to begin with…?
I drove away realizing that another door had closed, and that I don’t really want it to open again. The life that I’m looking for…
- means building a strong marriage before it starts, with a best friendship at the core
- is about being the church not going to church
- involves teaching my children this from the very beginning
- is about taking care of the environment as God’s creation
- is about a world so much bigger than the US
- is about realizing and being ok with not following party lines…that even though I totally agree with McCain’s stance on abortion, there are so many other issues at play
- involves figuring out what being green means, in everything from where we choose to live to making the choice to not buy Tupperware because of plastic leaching.
- is about raising children who are used to loving people, following Jesus, being green, and so much more, in all sorts of frameworks, not the limited ones we grew up with
- is about a career that I’m passionate about, in whatever form “career” ends up being
- is about finding some answers (or more questions?) for why so much of my “churched” education didn’t seem to teach me very much at all about life outside the bubble
And so much more…
P.S. I know some of this sounds harsh, and I probably don’t mean all of this as blatant as it came across. I do believe that there are institutional churches and Christian books…but there are also some major flaws in the systems.
