For the last 25 years or so, I’ve been preparing. The only reason it took that long is because I had such a very long way to go. I’ve passed through an awful lot of ideological campsites along the way. I always knew I was in training for something, though I never understood for what it was I trained.
Okay, I always had one useful inkling. I can look back and see a thread of truth that fattened as things progressed. Still, in terms of what I was expecting to actually do in real time, things have changed dramatically over the years. And to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what remains yet in front of me on that level. However, my heart tells me over the last few days that it’s done. I have no idea what I’ve accomplished in that sense, but my spirit rejoices that I’ve graduated from the academy.
I’ve been willing to do a lot of things that provided a path of joy. For example, my time in uniform serving in the Netherlands was a wonderful period of spiritual activity. It wasn’t the location so much as the atmosphere. Frankly, my Military Police mission did tend to interfere a good bit with the real mission I had there ministering in the AFCENT Chapel. I suppose I left a mark in the lives of the people who shared that time with me, but I can assure you it changed me.
But the goal has always been shepherding the flock. I came home to Oklahoma fired up and drove all over the state, and surrounding areas over the borders of neighboring states, trying to make some kind of physical contact with churches. Nothing came of it, and that was a bitter lesson. While the bitter memory remains, I got over it a long time ago, because it was necessary to move me to yet another place on the long trail.
And then I spent a long time chasing the dream of an online church, but that simply isn’t possible. A community of shared faith, yes, but not a church. If anything, we are a religious ideology movement, if I can say it that way. There is a certain amount of organized thinking necessary to move closer to an ideal, but not in the sense of starting a new organization of people. The ideology is not the thing; it’s only a path. So I call it a covenant and give it an odd name (Radix Fidem) so that it gives folks a place to hang things they must do in order to respond to the less concrete and much deeper calling of faith.
For the longest time, I’ve been telling folks that I am an arrow in the quiver, because the battle has not begun. In a sense, I still have no idea what I’m being saved for, but I’m being held in reserve for something that has not yet come.
Well, that thing is about to come. I have some vague notions about what it looks like, but I know that the Lord is shaking his Body. He’s doing a work that will make them doubt everything that they thought they knew, dissolving their comfort zone. I have no idea what kind of numbers will be shaken loose, and I seriously doubt we are the only refuge that will be available, but I am utterly certain our numbers will grow. It’s not about the numbers, but for whatever reason, the Lord has driven me hard to prepare a conceptual place for some number of folks to escape the current churchian prisons.
I’ve tried to avoid forming a concrete identity, frankly in part to disable the numbers mentality. I am utterly convinced the boundaries need to be fuzzy, and we must guard against making them precise. The whole point of this movement is to change how folks approach the question of forming a church, not give them any particular answers. So it’s a fundamental element in our teaching that we avoid setting useful boundaries.
Please, please, please — forget my name and let’s call this a movement of faith.
Meanwhile, one of my major prayer requests currently is that somewhere in the foggy near future I can become associated with a congregation of some kind. The times in my life when I truly felt alive were those moments when I stood before a group and delivered the Word. I’d sacrifice a lot for that, though by no means would I compromise on the message I’ve shared here already. So it would have to be a congregation that knows in advance what they are getting into when they invite me to teach.
I’m confident that will happen; that’s what a prayer of faith means. You have the faith to pray for something because you know it’s consistent with what your convictions demand of you. And my convictions tell me we are very close to that moment in time and space.
