I want to thank you all for involving yourselves with nakedpastor this past year. I usually love the quality of our community here. I put out my ideas and the variety of responses they get is a pleasure for me. Nakepastor would be nothing without all of you reading and participating. Over the last year I’ve discovered that there are far more readers than there are commenters. So there’s a huge silent majority involved with nakedpastor that we don’t even know. I hope more people find the nerve to enter into the fray. In many ways, nakedpastor is an online reflection of my local church that I pastor here in eastern Canada. In fact, since we seem to like lists, here’s a list of the positive similarities between the community at my church and the one on nakedpastor:
- both are very unique communities
- you are free to speak your mind
- i am free to speak mine
- there’s an appreciation, usually, of humor
- a wide diversity of belief and non-belief
- exploration of doubt and faith are both embraced
- even if there’s disagreement, usually respect is shown
- you feel free to call me on my bullshit
- women have strong voices
- gays, and other marginalized persons, have full status, rights and privileges
That’s just some of the similarities. Again, thanks everyone for a great year. The traffic to np has about doubled in 2009. Maybe we can see that happen again. Tell your family, friends, pastors and enemies. It’s not about financial gain for me. In fact, that’s another similarity between my church and this community: I’m not going to get rich on it… yet ( 
). Anyway, here’s to 2009! And here’s to 2010!! May you all have a great new year. And genuine heart-felt thanks from me!
Contributions to nakedpastor are greatly appreciated. ). Anyway, here’s to 2009! And here’s to 2010!! May you all have a great new year. And genuine heart-felt thanks from me!
I speak from a Christian perspective here as it relates to the church. But these 10 points can also be applied to any denomination and even any religion. I am in solidarity with those who struggle to stay in the church, with those who have left it, as well as those who desire to be a part of a spiritual community but won’t for various reasons. I consider these my mission field. These points below are only from my experience, and they all can be prefaced with “generally speaking”. Not everyone’s. Just consider them:
- I’ve experienced enough abuse, intrigue, exploitation and alienation within the church, and have heard enough first hand testimonies from others, to realize that it isn’t rare within this institution.
- My experience of church in the past tells me that I am to believe what is expected and what I am told.
- Questions, unless they complement the accepted tradition and dogma, are not welcomed.
- I’ve found that friendship within the church is not based on love for the person, but on a conditional compatibility.
- The church is notorious for supporting codependency. Refuse to play this game and you’re considered cruel.
- Success, in terms of money, numbers, appearance and reputation, is the gauge of choice. If you redefine what true success is and live by that, you’re considered a failure.
- Creativity has difficulty finding a home here. Unless it is religious art.
- Exclusion trumps inclusion. Gays, for example. Diversity is scary and deemed impossible.
- Male dominated. The fascination with power, authority, strategy, chain of command, visions and goals, reflect this.
- The threatening demand to adhere to a literalist interpretation of scripture is always the axe waiting to fall and sever you from the group.
Job is the man! It took you one word for him to ask the question and forty-two chapters to not get an answer. From beginning to end he’s the man. His friends, men with meaning on their lips, spoke words that evaporated in the heat of his defense. Not one word came close to him. Not one shred of meaning struck home. The unanswered question was his pillow upon which he laid his beleaguered head. It was the air he breathed. What’s the point of sitting on a dung-heap? Exactly! What is the point? He never did learn the point. Answers answers everywhere, flinging by his ears, and not one entered into his festering brain to settle his enormous pain. Not one. He insisted on living in the ugliness of faith, dark, lonely and uncertain. He is my resistant insistent reminder to reject the answer and the made point. Job is the man!
Contributions to nakedpastor are greatly appreciated.
David Hayward is a pastor artistically stripping to the essential.
