Jenell comes with thsi blast today:

He’s been on a leave-of-absence from Woodland Hills Church for several months, considering whether or not he wants to remain a pastor. He said he’s in a crisis of faith. He said he was questioning whether or not there is a meaningful relationship between the church and the kingdom of God. Does the church contribute to the koG, or could we better love people and change the world without organized religion? He says the koG is about love, but if you went up to a person on the corner and asked them what born-again evangelicals are like, no one would say ‘love.’ They’d say ‘judgment’, ‘arrogance’, ‘isolation’, or ‘moralistic.’ What people say about the evangelical church today is what people once said about the Pharisees.

I’ve been having a lot of conversations like this lately, with Brookwood as the context. So far it’s been very deconstructive (CMar should blast me for that since I always rag him for being too deconstructive). As I try to move the conversation toward contructive options, though, I hit a wall: should we devote our energies toward changing what we think needs to be changed (this may be a long - think years not months - process and could be a fool’s hope) or do we devote our energies toward minimizing the impact of what needs changing in order that those things become irrelevant and fade away, thus improving the situation. By choosing the latter am I being efficient and effective or just a coward who doesn’t want to turn over the moneychangers’ tables in the temple?