God defiantly has me on a journey, where am I headed? I am not sure, what am I supposed to do? I am not sure yet. I DO KNOW that something within my heart and spirit has shifted.

For the last couple years, it has been very difficult when it comes to my spiritual life. Slowly I have moved away from Church, worship, the word and I’ve started finding fault with the church in general. Listening to people talk about coming out of the structure of a church for various reasons. I struggle with this on many levels, I am not sure how I feel about this moment.

There are many flaws in the church, and I’ve written about them, preached about them and prayed about them. The focus it seems always ends up on “growing the church numbers, growing the finances, building a new building. There are good points in all of this and bad points in it. I sit in a big beautiful church building, with millions of $$ worth of sound equipment, camera’s, lights, a coffee shop and well the list goes on. While right outside people are sleeping on the street, hungry, broke, addicted and mentally unstable. SO, I look at the budget of the church the bulk of the money they bring in is to just support the church building, staff etc. with a fraction going out to the community. Most denominations support some type of “Mission” program, and they HAVE to pay their part of the total budget to this.

I will never forget the church I was pastor of in California. A building that was about 50 years old and in serious need of many upgrades etc. Over the stage, ceiling tiles started to fall out because they were rotten and would not hold any longer. For me as a young pastor, wanting to make a mark in the world wanted to change everything, make it more appealing to a younger generation. Update everything, take out the old and put in the new. Now we were a pretty small congregation and already lived on a tight budget, but this HAD TO BE DONE if we wanted to grow. So, I convinced the board to take out a loan to pay for it all. Of course the next few years we had to cut “ministry” programs and tighten up to pay for all of this. NOW, with all that said it’s not all bad, of course we want a nice building, after all this is the HOUSE of GOD!!

A couple weeks before we started construction, on a Sunday morning a new young family visited our church. I was pretty excited to see this, that is the goal for us. After service I hurried over to make sure I could introduce myself to them and invite them back. While talking with them, I asked “how did you find this church” they said they just moved into the neighborhood and decided to try us, then he said, “when I walked in and saw the ceiling tiles had fallen and a few of them hanging on by a thread, I knew that you cared more about the people in the neighborhood and community than pouring money into this building, and we love that”