In the home stretch

I’m 95% done with “The Church For Skeptics” – well, with the writing part of it, anyway. It still has to go under an editor’s microscope, and then into a designer’s hands. I’m not sure what kind of rewriting I’ll have to do, although my guess is that it won’t be any significant amount. What an amazing process this has been. I’ve been working on this book non-stop since last summer and have gotten a chance to go deep as I’ve written on one of my favorite topics – the church.

After exploring the definition, the beliefs, the practices, the history, the denominations and the community of the church, as well as what Jesus has to say about religious insiders and spiritual outsiders, the process has changed me. I have run into every possible sort of group identifying themselves with the church as I’ve surfed the net the last few months. Notables include a nice man named Earl who has declared himself the true Pope, the flaming fury of the fundamentalist haters committed to showing up at soldiers’ funerals, the people who believe that the Bible is nothing more than an interesting Important Cultural Myth, white supremacists, and a lot of bloggers angry about everything from Southern Baptist church politics to the use of the “e” word – emerging.

The subject of the church stirs a lot of passion in me. It always has. I am ruined by the promise of what I saw when I read Scripture sitting alone in my room for 3 years because my parents prohibited me from attending church while I was a teen. I saw the problems of the church, but I also believed the description of who she is meant to be – a body, a family, a living temple, a bride. Given the dumb stuff* we’ve gone through at the hands of some mighty dysfunctional churches, it would have made a lot more sense to just walk away at some point. But I can’t…

I am amazed at the number of people who feel as passionately about the church as I do. Though some of them are at best misguided – and others are dangerous whack jobs – it’s been fun to discover that there are some interesting people who’ve tasted Jesus and, as a result, refuse to settle for a life of complacency and safe religion.

*One sorrow - More than anything, I wish I could have spared my kids the experience of living through the dumb stuff.