It's been a year...

Tomorrow marks one year since the church told us we weren't welcome anymore.

Someone who didn't even take the time to get to know our hearts decided that we weren't fit for ministry anymore.

Someone who demanded submission and following without question...

Someone who wouldn't listen to other points of view...

Someone who denied that there was anything harmful taking place within the church...

Someone who carefully curated his public presence and carried secrets behind closed doors...

I thought I would ache less after a year. I don't. Not really. It's different, but I wouldn't say that I hurt less.

This year has been so heavy. I've had nightmares of churches I loved turning their backs on me in the most malicious ways. I've lost sleep. I've been sent reeling for days after spending an hour in a church building for my daughters' piano recital. 

The church believes it is doing the right thing by protecting the inside from anything that feels threatening to what has always been. Nothing should question the walls of its box.

Jesus pushed on the church's walls.

Jesus made the religious leaders very uncomfortable. 

Jesus changed the way people thought and acted and were...if they let him.

Has the church meandered back to the time before Jesus? Are we more comfortable knowing who is in and who is out, keeping our rules and not opening our minds to other possibilities...to the Spirit? 

A church that won't allow questions is a cult. Jesus was constantly giving the people around him questions to ponder without giving them the answers. He wasn't in the business of controlling whether they came to the right conclusions or not.

A leader that demands submission without question is dangerous. 

We didn't choose to leave our institutional church one year ago. But I am sure glad we're not there anymore. I'm really glad we got out. The outside is so much brighter. It is not without baggage from years of unhealthy church practices and, in particular, a number of cases of poor leadership. (Over the past 20 years of vocational ministry we've seen a bit of that.) But I feel free to question everything now, and I'm confident that God will bring me answers.

If you're in the institutional box and it's been feeling a little tight lately, know that it's really not scary out here. You don't have to choose between institutional church and God. There are plenty of us out here who love God and want to live like Jesus and are happy to be in community with you. We're all just working through life together and looking for how to do that best. 

So yeah, it's been a year. A really hard, unfair, messed-up year. I'm still angry at the leadership that treated us so hurtfully. I'm working on forgiving them. Healing takes time though. I'm still grieving the life we left behind. Pastoring was a lot of work, but it felt like our work. Now we're struggling to know what to pour our lives into that will pay the bills. We feel a little lost, to be honest. But we'll find it. Eventually we'll feel like we're home again. 

Like I said, healing takes time.