Recently when I was questioning in my personal blog some questions about life, about what I'm supposed to do with it, about what I have to do with a higher power and some sort of purpose, A friend who we will call "Laura" suggested I should 'start my own church'.
While that's nice to hear, it is a phrase (at least for me) fraught with words that are "hyperlinked", for lack of a better metaphor.
My Own? There's one tiny grain of truth there, but no, I am not interested in starting a little cult of me.
Church? What does that mean? To me it means that this entity would be part of a larger recognized group. Presbyterian... Congregational... Catholic... And you know what? With each passing year, I feel a bigger "no thanks" growing within me about associating with these entities. We'll talk more about this later. But for now, understand that I'm proposing something that could MAYBE be termed 'micro-church'. Would you rather support a multi-national corporation, or a very small local market with only ONE location?
If we go further with this, I want to try to determine what sort of a group we could have that would lose the guilt (I don't go enough!) and avoidance (I don't want to go, but I really should....) and dressed-up-showiness of "church" as so many of us have come to know it and/or reject it, but would still be a way to provide guidance and community to those who so often seem to refer to themselves as "unreachable", or those who would want to stand with them. When this is said, I believe it is of course part self-hate, and part false modesty (that yearns to be corrected).
But so many consider themselves to "seek God in nature" or something like that, who then consider it no further. What if you set aside organized religion, but could design a group of people to help in making spiritual thinking a practical life occurrence?
What about that?
Well, here's an inside line for you: You can. If that is something you want. You don't have to start a league just to play some ball...
I've had this same notion myself over the years. Well, not leading a micro-group myself, so much, as starting one with others and letting the group sort out leadership (however we decide that should look like). Here in our neighborhood, there haven't been the social links to make that possible. Too many pew warmers among our friends to discuss an enterprise without pews, if you get my meaning.
ReplyDeleteI like it. Keep us posted.
Well, I'm not going to push. I'm just trying to associate the loosely affiliated friends of mine who ask spiritual questions with each other.
ReplyDeleteNot me, I plan on being dictator-in-chief. Have to have something to tell people who ask about seminary, don't I?