graffiti artist on the walls of religion

Strange things happened when the church I used to pastor renounced vision. It used to be a church that thrived on vision. There was the annual seeking of vision from God, then articulating the vision and then the vision casting, along with banners and meetings and reminders. Vision was its blood.

Then the church gradually let visionary thinking go. It was a tough transition, including a painful church split followed by slow leakage. But I felt, along with so many others, that the church was so far better off for it all.

But here are a few observations of strange things about the process:

1. People really loved the visionless way of doing church. It was more authentic, real, raw, spontaneous, relaxed, gracious, open and stressless. People felt free to be who they were without having to conform to the church’s vision or mission statement. Even visitors remarked on how unusual the church felt. They loved the spaciousness.
2. But this is when it gets weird. People wanted to package and program it. It felt so good, that they wanted to make it our vision. They wanted a vision statement that articulated this visionless way of being. They couldn’t see the irony and even the destructiveness of this desire. They couldn’t see that as soon as you make this freedom a law, this grace a rule, this spaciousness a requirement, then it would kill it almost instantly.
3. Others wanted to keep the freedom but also wanted to add visionary thinking and mission statements. “But what is our purpose?” “What are we about?” “What is our mission?” “What are we supposed to be doing?” Questions like this would emerge. I tried very hard to explain that just being and allowing this to be our fruitfulness. But so many couldn’t get it. They didn’t realize that, like yeast, as soon as you add a little bit of vision to a visionless community, it would affect the whole batch. It would ruin everything.

I claim you can’t have both. You can’t be a free and open community and a visionary one at the same time.

I’ve written a whole book on vision “Without A Vision My People Prosper”: click here.

It is possible and I would even say necessary to have a spirituality outside of church. That’s my opinion of what a healthy church is anyway: a collective of uniquely independent spiritual pilgrims. Therefore, it comes down to how to have a healthy spirituality anyway, whether you go to church or not. Being outside the church is a valid and viable way of being spiritual.

Right now I just want to share with you the first and most important step:

Get in touch with your own spirituality! One of the first exercises my very first spiritual director had me do was to go back as far as I could remember and write my “spiritual history”. I went back to my earliest years, long before I officially became a Christian, and detected Benediction in my life. During this time I also learned about my mother’s prayers over me right after I was born, dedicating me to God. Just like Abraham was blessed before circumcision, before he received the official badge of his religion, so you were blessed before any religion or church laid its hands on you.

When you come to this understanding, then you come to realize that church is simply a community of several communities that you can flow in and out of. They are like pastures where you can go in and out and find pasture. Sometimes in. Sometimes out. Always pasture. Because wherever you are, there your pasture will be provided.

You can buy a print of this cartoon HERE.

Spiritual transformation is very difficult.

The mind is a very complex organ, bent on its own self-preservation, security and comfort. The brain’s primary purpose is to protect the organism. Once we see this to be true, then many other things make sense.

1. For instance, the brain is an expert tweaker. We can see self-protection occurring in religion and spiritual growth. Often, what we think is spiritual growth is actually a slight modification of the thoughts already present.
2. But the brain is also a great illusionist. It can be busy tweaking, adjusting and modifying, all the while convincing itself that it is actually changing, that it is actually being transformed. The brain gets some delight in thinking it is on the radical edge while holding the moderate middle.
3. However, the brain has the amazing ability to be transformed. It has the profound capacity to come into something totally new and full of benediction. We can experience a deep peace when the mind is free from the past and disordered thought.

Much of religion and spirituality is employed in the service of keeping our minds busy modifying their thoughts to conform to the set standard. They are also very busy engaging our minds in believing that they are growing and making progress.

This is why spiritual transformation is very difficult.