The meaning of Jesus for life and community – Part 3: Church Leavers

It is commonly assumed that people who leave churches do so either out of conflict with the leaders of those churches or out of frustration. These individuals are pictured as banding together to diss the established church and argue that the path they’re on is the real, true and authentic express of community through which Godde may be found. They’re often portrayed as backslidden at worst and off track at best in terms of their relationship with Godde.

Just over two years ago I went on sabbatical for 3 months, and then never went back to church. Recently I’ve been having conversations with some people from my old church. I’m quite disturbed by the number of people who apply the common assumption to me – that I left out of frustration and am embittered by my experience. Sorry guys, that brush simply doesn’t fit. I said in my last post that I’d be picking up conversations stemming from my desire to create a new architecture for church. In this post I want to comment on church leavers’ ongoing journey with Jesus as well as my own.

The meaning of Jesus for life and community Part 2 – Toward a new architecture

In conversations with people I find that many are open to Jesus while being closed to Christianity and church (loosely grouped as churchianity). Many agree that Christianity amidst postmodernists will look different to Christianity as expressed in previous generations. I’m part of an emerging community that looks toward reimagining Christianity. What exactly does this mean? In a previous post I briefly touch on the meaning of Jesus and here I take a bit of a side-step to explore emerging church, a new architecture for Christian faith. I’ll bring this back to Jesus for community in my next post.

The meaning of Jesus for life and community – Part 1

 

 A few of are starting to deliberately explore community around faith in Christ as postmodernists. I guess we’re actually just a few post-Evangelicals redeveloping our spirituality in community. We’re open to Jesus Christ – as historical man and risen Lord – but not overly fond of church or rather churchianity. What can the “gospel” mean to us?