What might it look like to be people of faith outside of the bounds of the instiutional church?
I have been pondering this question lately for all kinds of reasons. I have listened to many of you ponder this question, as well. There is a growing body of people who -- for one reason or another -- have found themselves in the wilderness when it comes to belonging to a faith community in a formal way.
Some have walked out of the doors, others have been unceremoniously booted out. Some have drifted away, others have made a fast and painful break. Many have been deeply wounded.
The church of the wilderness might just be the fastest growing church in America.
Author and trauma therapist KJ Ramsey has much to say to those swept out of the church and now standing in the blustery wilderness.
This bit of her writing from her book The Lord is My Courage has resonated with me lately:
Let yourself be startled out of the narcotic narrative of having to do good things for God to be loved by God. Let the wind sweep away the story that you have to put up with hurt to be part of a community. There is a whisper in the Wind telling you that you are already loved and valuable and worthy of belonging just as you are. Do not silence the storm of sensing the wrongness of all the shepherds and systems that try to tell you otherwise.
God speaks in the storm of the internal signals of our souls that tell us something is off, unjust, and dissonant. God guides us in our anger. God leads us in our anguish. And sometimes God shatters our comfortable certainties with a storm to shake us out of being silenced and small. God is too kind to keep us from growing tall.
Witness grace in the gale. Let the storms of suffering and stress strip away your dead branches and move you into a new story. The Spirit hovers and howls like wind over water, and what seems like chaos might be creation.
Welcome the wind.
What if the church of the wilderness is actually a real church?
What if there are thousands upon thousands of members?
What if you are not alone in your disillusionment with the organized church?
What if God's love is just as real and true outside the doors as it is inside?
Welcome to the wilderness, friends.
Welcome the Wind.
Photo by Victor Yuyang Luo on Unsplash
