Spiritual Community

Excerpt from Ian Morgan Cron post:  Believers in Exile. A New Christian Diaspora?

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“One Sunday I walked out of church and never went back,” he said. “I want spiritual community, I just don’t think the church as it is right now is where I’m going to find it.”

Most of the people I meet who are leaving church aren’t young. They’re in their forties and fifties. After years of reading off the same theological script they began yearning for deeper, more open conversations about faith that included considering diverse perspectives and conversations that widened rather than narrowed their souls. Their churches were either threatened by these folks or unprepared for their emergence.

My friend shared other reasons why people are leaving. They were edgier.

“Some of us began meeting gay people in committed relationships, and we couldn’t square what we were taught about human sexuality at church, with who we knew our gay friends were in real life. Others had neighbors who were raised in other religious traditions who lived out the values of the kingdom more consistently than we did.

One day I asked myself, “Isn’t it strange to tell these people that Jesus wants us to love our enemies and forgive seventy times seventy, but then he sends people to hell for not receiving him as their Lord? I kept asking friends and pastors at church what they thought about this stuff because it troubled me, but no one really wanted to talk deeply. They just went right to the scripted answers.”

“So you left church because you had too many questions?” I asked.

“I left my church because it didn’t honor my questions. I got pegged as having gone rogue,” he said, swallowing the last of his coffee and glancing at his watch.

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