My Interview on Gottalife Radio

I was interviewed on Gottalife Radio by the spirited Scotsman Kenny Russell in the Summer of 2009. If you’re not familiar with my journey out of the organized church into organic church life, you will want to listen to this interview in its entirety.

I’m sharing this interview because I do have many new readers, but also because I want to be transparent about how our lives reflect a real journey with Christ. If we’re growing, we ought to be in a constant state of flux.

My wife and I learned a great deal about Christ in community between 2006-2011. Much that we have learned through the years has been refined, as we have since moved back into more organizational forms of church life.

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I’ve recently made clear here, here, and here that organized Christianity is not the enemy of authentic Christian community. Many well-intentioned folks have overcorrected in their attempts to discover a more familial church life.

While a great deal of organized religion has lost its way in attempting to market the gospel way to evangelical consumers, there is a pronounced leadership and organizational church life that is able to do great good for the Kingdom. For “organic” Christians to discount or demean these forms with talk of “good is the enemy of what’s best” isn’t helpful.

In fact, I even think it can be divisive. We should celebrate wherever and whenever Christ is being known in community and the church is actively on mission for God’s Kingdom. I have issued this challenge before.

Planting a New Church

I think it’s now time for me to follow through with a calling God placed on my life many years ago. I believe that the Lord would have me plant a new church as its lead teaching pastor.

I’m currently in an exploratory stage with intentions of planting a different sort of church in our city. I’m convinced that the Lord desires to have a fellowship that works to bridge the gap(s) between the church and academy, faith and reason, and science and theology—to create a community of radical disciples who get all of their life from Jesus, not from their theological opinions. This is especially needed in the Bible Belt of the United States.

I envision a learning church that seeks to remove intellectual obstacles that needlessly bar people from the Kingdom—a church that isn’t afraid to ask questions. The Lord wants a church that truly loves like Christ. He wants a church whose allegiance is given only to King Jesus and the upside-down Kingdom that is coming to earth.

I must confess that I’ve been deeply inspired by the work of Greg Boyd at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, MN.

I would appreciate your prayers as we venture into the unknown. I believe the Lord wants to turn the tides of pop-culture Christianity and respond to religious fundamentalism that breeds toxic cynicism, that may well be keeping an entire generation from seeing the beautiful Kingdom of God.

Please stay tuned, I’ll soon be posting more of my thoughts here at the blog, and how you can help. In the meantime, thank you for your prayers.