If my heart could rant this is what it would say…
Here is the bottom line truth. I know what I want to do. When I have said I don’t know, it is only because at times there have been no words to express what is in me. Or even if I could express it, I’m not convinced you wouldn’t judge me.
I am not lazy. I want to work, I love when my days are occupied. Maybe I am a disgrace to those who paid for my college education, but in some ways I love my dead-end job. My work doesn’t go home with me. My mind, evening, weekends are free to focus on things that really matter to me. I have no dreams of a fancy career. I just want to serve and meet the heart and felt needs of people. As I look at choices I have made over and over again, I have turned down jobs that pay more to work for almost nothing or for free in roles that minister to people. I want to cook, clean, organize, plan, teach, minister, serve, learn, read, write, talk to people, empower people, see people become free.
I know who I am. I might be traditional, I might be a feminist worst nightmare. I just know that I am tired of listening to the voices that tell me that I’m not living up to my potential, that I am a failure, that my ideas are fine in an ideal culture, but they don’t work in ours.
I want simplicity. All the rules, regulations, and educational theories are starting to feel like chains. Vision statements are focused on work to be accomplished, worship segments are timed, and I want to know when the church itself stops just to breathe and enjoy Jesus.
I want to be a part of a church that has order and leadership authority but looks more like a community than an organization. I want to find a way to empower the everyday believer. They shouldn’t have to bend their passion and gifts to fit in the mold of cookie cutter-programs. People are hurting, they need friends and hope and truth. Who’s says that for the body of Christ to be growing and healthy, it has to be a bureaucracy.
While I am not an animist, the world we live in has a spiritual component to it. I’m tired of taking spirituality out of christianity. I am for making the gospel culturally relevant, but in a culture that prefers the scientific to supernatural you cannot take the supernatural out of gospel. I mean seriously people, we had a dead man become alive again and then this resurrected man runs around and tells people that they will have power to “drive out demons…speak in new tongues..pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all…place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” This came out of the mouth of Jesus. how can we make it N/A?
I love missions and cross Cultural work. But right now, I want to know, “How do we in America follow Christ in normal, difficult everyday life in the radical life-giving way it is supposed to be?” Maybe there is something wrong with me, but I want more than Sunday Morning and Small group.
I have looked for jobs with churches. I am even considering some as we speak. I want to learn, but I don’t want to learn how to be a program director to shuffle the masses through a religious system that makes them feel like they are never quite good enough.
Even though I don’t know what this looks like, I want to represent the love for Jesus without people throwing out term like weak and codependant and boundaries. Choosing to lay your life down for others to see them succeed is not the same as being an enabler or letting people run all over you so that you will be liked.
I want less and less of religion, and more and more of Jesus. I want to work in ministry, but I want to look more like fishermen disciples and less like the religious leaders.
My main question: realistically, what does this look like?
*Mark 16:17-18
What does this look like? It looks like whatever you want it to look like as long as you are seeking become more like Christ. Practically, a lot depends on your family’s structure as far as mutual dependence or lack there of.
Wow… Lot’s to think about after reading this. But then again maybe all of this is what we have been processing through together for months now. I believe what you describe is what the church should look like verses what it is currently modeled as. In today’s society we claim we value independence and standing on our own. But the truth of the matter is people feel alone when they are home and not surround by friends and family that love them. We need to get back to the basics. The true struggle in this is that we love technology. And technology has replaced the time we once had for community and relationship. Less technology = more time for community.