So today I was hanging out in Portland. There was this big festival so a bunch of people were out and about. The day was beautiful. Perfect. Then some jerkoff religious nut had to ruin it all. He started going off on this huge diatribe about how awful pastors and priests and elders are. I’m a good Christian dude so I was seriously offended. I also felt bad for the guy. He obviously had a screw loose. Whatever he was, he was viciously angry. I wonder if he knows that anger is consuming. I wonder if he knows that the church should be united. I wonder if he knows that we should love one another. I wonder if he knows that it is sinful to speak out against God’s anointed. It sure didn’t sound like he had gotten the message. The following is what I can recall of his crazy hate-filled speech to the crowd:

Pastors want to tell you what the Bible says, and a lot of what they say is true on a level but you couldn’t tell it from their lives because most of the stuff they talk about they don’t actually do. They weigh their followers down with all these insane rules and ridiculous expectations, but they don’t make any effort to help anyone. At the same time they make it look like they are always helping people. They do things like hand out giant checks to charity on the local news like some corporate America PR stunt, and they do all this because they want people to think they are awesome. They want people to look up to them and follow them and recognize them when they are at the grocery store and tell them how awesome they are and what great examples they are and what powerful teachers they are.

You shouldn’t want people to think you are a great teacher or great example because Jesus is the only teacher and the rest of us are his students, we’re all just brothers and sisters. Seriously, you guys are always talking about the “church fathers” or calling your priests father. God is the only one we should call Father. You want people to see you as a leader? Why? You should know that there is only room for one leader, Jesus. Anyone who thinks they are awesome should be brought down. The way God works is to make the people who think they are awesome look like idiots and people who realize how pathetic they really are he will make strong through himself.

But pastors and priests, bullshit artists, you are screwed because you keep everyone out of Heaven, the people who are following you, the people who were already on their way in, and even yourselves.

Also pastors and priests, bullshit artists, you are screwed because you rob widows, and at the same time try to make yourselves look spiritual through fancy prayers and long tiresome sermons. This is just going to make you even more condemned before God.

Also pastors and priests, bullshit artists, you are screwed because you make such a big deal about missions but the converts you make half way around the world are twice the children of Hell as you are.

You blind “leaders” are screwed because you tell people that the most important thing is giving money to the church. You fools and blind men! Money is worthless unless God chooses to use it!

You also tell people that the offering plate is only worth anything if you fill it with your checks. You blind men, paper checks are worthless unless they are used to serve others in Christ’s love!

So if you write a check to help serve others in Christ’s love, your check is valuable as an expression of that love. If you desire to grow in Christ with your brothers and sisters, no matter where you meet, it is special because of why you are meeting there. The only reason that even Heaven is important is because God is king there. I think you see the theme here!

Also pastors and priests, bullshit artists, you are screwed because you always drop your check in the offering plate, but somehow miss what actually matters: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these things are the real point! It’s like you blind “leaders” are trying to get a fly out of your soup when there is a huge shit sitting in it!

Also pastors and priests, bullshit artists, you are screwed because, to make things look good to others, you clean the outside of your cup, but inside it is full of spoiled milk, i.e. robbery and self-indulgence. You blind “leaders”, wouldn’t it make more sense to clean the inside of the cup first, you know, where you drink from, and then worry about the outside?

Also pastors and priests, bullshit artists, you are screwed because you are like those fancy tombs in the graveyard that have all those cool carvings of angels and flowers and stuff and actually look really awesome, but inside they are full of disgusting rotten corpses. You are just like that; on the outside you look like real good christians, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Also pastors and priests, bullshit artists, you are screwed because you celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and cannot believe that anyone would have been stupid enough to kill the Son of God. You think ‘What a bunch of idiots. If we were around when Jesus was alive we would have followed him, only a complete moron would have killed him!’ But, what you don’t see is that you are just like his killers, so your criticisms of them are criticisms against yourselves! So keep it up, you are just digging your own graves!

You are just another generation in a long line of slithering venomous snakes, so how do you expect not to be damned to Hell? Jesus sends you people to show you the truth so, to shut them up, you kill them, and you torture them (even in your holy churches) and however you can get away with it you generally just persecute them everywhere. Your hands are stained with all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of those you are jealous of, to the blood of those that you killed supposedly in the name of God because they opposed you.

Seriously, you are condemned! You take on the name of his Church and then kill the people who speak the truth! God wanted you to trust him, he wanted you to depend on him, but you didn’t want any part in that. He will destroy everything you have built and the next time you see Christ will be when he is damning you to Hell as you cry out your empty words “BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!”

Finally the cops came and dragged him away for disturbing the peace. Thank God! What anger! What hurtful words! How could anyone speak this way? This is not redeeming. This is not restorative. This was an angry man, spouting off crazy hate, and ruining my, and everyone’s, nice relaxing afternoon. I wonder what Jesus would think of this guy?

We all love beating up on other people. I don’t care what you say, I know you love doing it, so quit lying to yourself. You know why we love it? Because it helps us think for a few minutes that we aren’t quite the total screw-ups that we know we are. This is one of my favorite things to do!

The best part is when this activity is encouraged by the guys that usually make us feel terrible about ourselves: pastors. They always preach against gossip and judgmentalism and stuff, (except the really badass new wave of holy rollers, they love judgment! Hellfire and brimstone, bitches!) but there is always at least one group of people that they encourage us to bust up on. Bible characters. You know, Jonah didn’t want to do what God told Him to do, Joseph was going to ditch Mary for getting supernaturally knocked-up, Moses was always bitching about how he couldn’t speak well, that old hag Sarah laughed at God when he told her she was going to be popping out babies, those damned Jews were constantly doubting God when he was freeing them from slavery. Those bible people were so messed up. How could they not have trusted God better?

You wanna know why? Because no one would have! These are the few stories in the Bible that I don’t struggle to connect with. Be honest with yourself for five seconds: if some teenage girl told you that God had put a baby in her, it would make perfect sense, right? Give me a break, that girl is using a terrible excuse to try and fool people into thinking she isn’t a little whore. We would ALL think that. That is a fact. Virgins don’t get pregnant. Joseph had some balls though, cause he sucked up what must have been serious ridicule and after an angel told him it was legit he stayed with Mary.

How about God tells you to go talk to the president and let him know that you’re going to take a bunch of people (that he gets free labor out of) away from him? How could Moses have not trusted God? Because God wanted him to tell a king that he was going to take away all his slaves! Think about that. That is retarded. I would NEVER have done it. Moses had a way bigger sack than I will ever have!

Or those Jews, stuck in the dessert? Thousands and thousands of them. How dare they ever question the complete insanity of that situation! And then Sarah. She laughed when God told her she was going to have a baby. The woman was old enough to be a great-great grandmother. Seriously, that is some crazy shit!

I don’t know that this post has a point. I am thinking a lot about scripture lately. Thinking a lot about the stuff that i struggle to see fitting into reality. This list of people who doubted or questioned God’s plans are a few of the parts of the bible I think are perfectly realistic and sensible. I think if most of us were honest, or if we could live these stories, rather than reading them in our holy book, the reaction these people had to God’s plan would resonate with all of us.

One of the things I struggle with most concerning Christianity is why, when you look at what is called christian today, things are so different from what the early followers of Jesus experienced. What I’m saying is that, when you look at the New Testament, you see all this crazy stuff happening. You read about blind people being able to see, paraplegics being able to walk, people having demons cast out of them, dead people coming back to life, people having dreams and seeing visions that come true, people prophesying stuff that really ends up happening, and lots of other crazy stuff. There are millions of explanations for why this doesn’t happen now, or how it does and I just don’t see it, but I think a lot of that is bullshit, well intentioned bullshit, but bullshit nonetheless.

If you have fooled yourself into thinking this stuff still happens, you are clearly in denial of reality and the rest of this post will be meaningless to you. Healing bad backs and headaches is NOT the same as witnessing someone who was blind be able to see. I would seriously be freaked out if I witnessed something like that, and that is something I have never seen a healer man do.

So, I just keep coming back to this question in my mind: why is it different now? There are a few options that I think are at least somewhat possible: The Holy Spirit just doesn’t work that way anymore, We are just so screwed up as the Body of Christ that we are incapable of having that relationship and faith in the Holy Spirit, or simply the Bible isn’t true and all that stuff was made up in the first place.

The first option is the one that most seminary people like to go to. It is clean and neat and doesn’t require any accountability from God or us for the discrepancy we see between the Bible and modern Christianity. It works well as an argument, but it doesn’t sit well with me. I think it is reactionary, an answer to a problem, and not something anyone would think up unless they were confronted with this clear disparity between the church then and now. It is the typical use of fancy pseudo-intellectual nonsense that hopes to sound smart enough to be convincing, but at the end of the day I think it is just more Bullshit.

So really, in my mind, I think it comes down to option two or three. That is kinda scary. Basically the church is seriously off track, to the point that we are mostly useless, or the bible is a lie.

Well, as most of you know, I think the church is seriously messed up, but the Spirit can do whatever he wants, right? Yeah, he could, but if people won’t be the kind of people to go out there and do that stuff, then it won’t happen I guess. I believe the Bible. There are things, like this, that I struggle with, but I believe it is true. I can defend that belief intellectually, but at the end of the day it is just a matter of faith. So, I am stuck with option two. The church is so far gone, we don’t see any of the crazy stuff the Holy Spirit was doing in the New Testament.

I would love to leave it there, but, since the church is made of people, and I am a person, and I have never been used to do that cool stuff, I have to say that I am part of that screwed up group. So, what am I doing wrong? I have no idea. I know that the people who followed Jesus in the New Testament lived really differently than I do. Maybe I’m missing something huge, maybe we all are. I don’t know what it is, and obviously no one does, or things would be different, but it’s either that or the Bible isn’t true, and like I said, I don’t think that is the case.

 

So what is the answer? If everything is so messed up, how do we fix it? I don’t know if people ask me this stuff to try and prove that it is easy to expose problems, but difficult to provide solutions. Maybe they honestly want to know what I think. I doubt that. It doesn’t matter why anyone asks these types of questions, the important thing is to recognize that this is the obvious next step after burning down the system in the way that I have over the last few months.

There is a problem with this natural progression of thought: there is no answer. If the way we do it doesn’t work, then how should we do it so that it does work? The answer is that we can’t make it work. There is nothing we can do, no system, no approach, no program, no book, no conference. There is nothing we can do to make this thing work.

That sounds really shitty, but I don’t think it is. It is contrary to everything that we understand as modern day consumer christians, but it is actually pretty awesome. It is pretty freeing. i feel like I have brought up freedom before on the blog. I think it’s really important. It enables us to grow in different and powerful ways. It exchanges the heavy burden of guilt and shame with the light load of following Christ. I feel like he spent some time talking about this stuff too. But, I don’t have a quiet time, so I’m probably just remembering stuff wrong.

Christ died to set us free from the Law, from the hierarchy of religious leaders that stood between us and God, from the burdens and pains of guilt and shame, from the incredibly destructive need to make ourselves good enough and holy enough and pretty enough and fancy enough for God to recognize us. That crap kills, literally, I know that is somewhere in the bible.

So we’re free from all that junk. How do we celebrate this? We set up new hierarchies and new holy places and new holy books and holy days. That doesn’t make any sense! How do we miss that? Maybe we should simply recognize that we are all one in Christ, that Christ is head of the body, that Christ is our High Priest, that Christ is the firstborn, that Christ is the bridegroom. I think you get the picture. We recognize one, and only one, spiritual authority, Christ. We do this because it is freeing to us and glorifying to Him.

I don’t know what God wants you to do. I don’t know what God wants me to do. I’m fairly sure that I fail at that on a regular basis. Who doesn’t? We’re all in this together. God gave every single one of us His Holy Spirit and the scripture. He makes the blind see and those with sight he makes blind. The people who think they know have no idea, they’re the only one’s who don’t get that. The people who realize that we’re all dysfunctional and serious failures, well, maybe we’ll see God do some awesome stuff.

 

I recently came across this link: Is Your Church Interested in Becoming A Part of Mars Hill and upon reading the content, realized that this was a hack on their site, either done as a simple prank, or as a malicious attempt to discredit this very godly organization. Either way, I knew the only right thing to do was to let them know. Please follow the above link to read their original post and then read my email to them below:

I just wanted to let you guys know that your site has been hacked. Someone broke in and wrote this off the wall post about churches becoming part of Mars Hill. I thought it might be a real opportunity at first but as I read on I knew it must be a hack because there were so many unbiblical elements to it. I have noted a few:

Point number two states that churches are closing. I am not sure how a group of people, the biblical definition of a church, can close. I knew that the leaders at Mars Hill wouldn’t make a mistake like referring to an organization or building as a church.

Point number three seems to equate success with numbers of converts. By this standard the dozen disciples that appeared to be dedicated to Jesus would seem like quite a ministry failure. Mars Hill has far too much respect for Jesus to ever imply such an absurd notion.

Point number four is clearly written to make people feel like Mars Hill is focused on name dropping. We all know that humility and submission are the things most valued by Christ, so Mars Hill would never take an entire paragraph to promote their cause by sharing names of their top leaders.

Point number five is where I really started to realize that this must be some attempt to discredit Mars Hill because it seems to imply the laughable idea that churches are like businesses and pastors are like managers of those businesses. The idea that a pastor would be bogged down with “website, finances, human resources, real estate negotiations, technology” is obviously ridiculous, as we all know that, biblically speaking (as Mars Hill is a Bible based church) pastoring is about ministering to others, not silly things like finances and websites and land negotiations.

Point number six is another absurd one, as it seems to indicate that Mars Hill is concerned about the welfare of their organization. For a business it would be quite imprudent to get involved with another business without all the legalities being fulfilled, but for a church, a body that demonstrates Christ’s love, there is no danger, as there is no concern for their own well being. We all know there is no room for self-concern when we demonstrate Christ’s love. This was how I knew Mars Hill could not have written this.

Point number seven’s focus on resources and professionally trained specialist who can offer official establishment of local church leaders is so preposterous that I finally decided I had to let you folks know about the hack. I felt it would not be right to leave Mars Hill open to the condemnations that would surely come when others saw this falsified page on your site.

I hope this helps.

Thanks.

Dan

UPDATE: I sent this to Mars Hill via their online contact form and an email address on their post. That was over two weeks ago. I’m sure that they received several similar emails and messages. I’m sure many of them were more articulate and intelligent than mine. I don’t know if they replied to all those other ones, but they have not, as of yet, replied to mine.

One of the most common criticisms I get for the way this blog is written is that I spend so much time criticizing and exposing the problem and not enough time giving solutions. This criticism in itself enrages a part of me, but that part of me is largely rooted in pride and due to several recent conversations with various individuals that I care for and respect deeply, I have seen that this criticism might be legitimate. None of us like to hear that we are wrong, but that is what I am asking many people to consider, so it is only fitting that I get a dose myself.

I think one important thing to explain is why I write this blog. The reasons have evolved over time and where it is now is nowhere near where it was when I began. I think it is worthwhile to explain that evolution.

I started writing a blog about the church a couple years ago. That was when the blog was titled The Ekklesia in Southern Maine. Prior to that I had spent a couple years in seminary in North Carolina, had gone through a seriously difficult time where everything I had planned fell apart and then, through God’s grace, He put new things, much better things, in my life. After going through a painful divorce and leaving seminary a semester short of graduation I was left very confused and afraid of what the future would hold for me. Then Stephanie sent me a message on Facebook one day. We started talking and spending time together and we decided to start a family. She is everything to me. Our family is everything to me. As we started to have kids I realized that I couldn’t just opt out of Christian community forever, as this would be very detrimental to both her and our children. This was the point when I started The Ekklesia in Southern Maine blog. The intent was to journal our process of trying to reach out to other believers and become part of a Christian community. Early on I shared weekly updates as to the things that we were doing in that process and found many opportunities to meet others in our area interested in gathering outside of the traditional church system. That was hard work and slowly that started to fade to the background to the point where it was no longer part of what we were doing and therefore no longer part of the blog.

After this the blog, still under the same name became a place to discuss these issues in a theological framework. Many people who both agreed and disagreed with me were engaging on the blog and discussing these issues primarily from an intellectual/theological approach. I enjoyed those conversations and learned things from them that helped me to understand where I was and where the church was better, but then my family went through a difficult time and I stopped writing.

I left the blog dormant for quite awhile as I invested my writing into less personal things like zombie fiction and book and music reviews. I enjoy writing that stuff, but it was hard to be disengaged from the conversation. Surprisingly I found that the blog had become a place where I had a community of people to interact with about theological issues and I missed that, but the truth is that it was serving no one in my family but me. I was meeting many interesting and intelligent people online who helped me think through things, but we did not share a life together and my family did not have anyone to interact with. I was starting to feel the way they felt all along and I knew that it was important to start thinking of how we would get involved with other believers. I thought a lot about it, but did nothing about it.

The struggles that we went through during that time exposed, in a real way, a lot of the issues I had been writing about. I was starting to see that the theological errors I saw were impacting people in their real lives, and were not simply intellectual exercises for many including my family. As this realization began to dawn in me, my disagreement with the church system moved from my mind to my heart. I was, and am, very saddened and angry at the way that the system has misrepresented Christ and has hurt people in His name. I think it does severe damage to the leaders, the followers, the cast offs, and Christ.

As this anger and sadness grew in me, I felt like it might help to write this stuff down. I thought that it might help make a little more sense of the jumbled emotional and intellectual struggles I was having inside me. That it might help bring it all together and make sense of it. That was when I started writing again. That was when I changed the blog to Some Church Stuff. The intent was to write my thoughts and work through them. It was not meant to impact other people, and the only reason that I wanted others to read it was to help me work through this stuff. I decided that it was important, for that reason, to share straight from my heart, and not to water it down or make it palatable for others.

This helped me a lot. It helped me to connect my emotional and intellectual struggles and see that they were one-in-the-same, just expressed and felt differently. The problem was that it was also pissing some people off. Honestly I didn’t expect anyone to pay much attention to my ramblings but some people did. Due to this, more people started finding my blog. More people started contacting me to criticize, but also to encourage me.

This was when the focus of the blog shifted yet again. Many of the people who contacted me with encouragement shared their struggles with me. They shared their personal stories of hurt and condemnation from various churches all over the country. This did two things. It fueled and legitimized my anger, and it got me to start thinking about how I could maybe encourage those people who have been cast off by the church. I thought that maybe if they saw that the church system did not represent God or true Biblical Christianity that they might be willing to reconsider their faith. That is a very high hope and I don’t know if I am or am not doing that, but that is my desire.

Now I feel like the blog might be moving into a new season. I feel like I have clearly stated what I believe is the problem. This has helped me substantially, and now I feel like my heart is moving on. Moving on from anger toward the system to peace in Him. This, in no way, means that my feelings have changed about the problems, about how grave and destructive they are. It simply means that there is One who has overcome these things, can teach us what no system of the world can teach, to truly trust in Him and Him alone.

I’m sure that I will still write things that piss off people. I’m sure that many do not and will not agree with me. I’m not sure if this will or won’t help anyone, but I feel like it is time to start shifting toward Him as I shift away from the system that, as I have explained plainly, does not represent Him.

So, this post is meant as an apology in the sense of an explanation. Explaining why I write what I do and why I write the way I do and explaining where I intend to go. My writing has flowed from my heart. I hope to continue that. The scary thing is what my writing will expose of where my heart is. If I struggle to find hope and strength in Him and continually go back to my anger toward the system I am afraid of what that might say to me about me, but it will be where my heart is and understanding that is very valuable to me. I hope that we can all grow together. Many of you have been a huge encouragement to me and taught me many important things. Thank you for that, and please, both critics and supporters, please continue to share your thoughts.

In the modern church people celebrate the best and brightest. The pastor is a good speaker or a good organizer or a good people manager. The people leading the music are the best singers and musicians that group has to offer (which sometimes isn’t much, but that is not the point). The guys who stand before the congregation to read that week’s bible passage are the best orators, the James Earl Jones of the group so to speak. Everyone puts on their best clothes and their best attitude and everyone comes together and celebrates the best.

Jesus hung out with drunks and thieves and prostitutes. He called uneducated fishermen to follow him and to share his message with the rest of us. He washed these people’s feet. He died in the most inglorious manner. he talked about the poor and the weak being blessed.

Paul carried on this concept. He told the people he wrote to that they didn’t have a lot of smart or rich people in their group. He said it like they knew it. He said it was good when we were weak. He said that his weakness showed God’s glory.

Now we celebrate the great speakers and the great writers. We buy their books and their mp3s and we go to their conferences. We eat up every word they say. We walk around telling everyone what these celebrities of the faith have to say.

Finally we’ve got things right. The weak move aside for the strong. The poor get pushed out to make room for the rich. The great speakers stand before us to show us the truth. The great singers and musicians step in to show us all how to properly worship. Finally this Christian thing is set straight. The least are made the least again.

Let me ask you a question. Are all believers equal before God? I assume you would say yes. If not, I would be very interested to hear your opinion. Most Christians know that the right answer to this question is yes, we are all equal before God. We have all been redeemed by Christ and are seen equally through his righteousness. It is good when we know the right things to say, but sometimes our actions, and structures expose what we really think.

I have no right to be saying the things I say because I am a mere laymen. I was a semester away from getting my bible college degree and making it into the upper echelon of the clergy or ministry or whatever you want to call it, but I fell short, so I am not a pastor in their system. So, having said that, you must understand that my words are written in ignorance and immaturity as I am a meager layman. My responsibility is to get my friends to come to church to hear the pastor proclaim the gospel to them. Maybe I should also sponsor an orphan and maybe even sing a special song during the offering on Sunday, but I should leave the teaching up to the pastors. Why?

Because, even though we all have the Spirit of God in us, and even though we all have the scriptures available to us, and although we are all cleansed and redeemed through the blood of Christ, and although when God sees us we all are clothed in the righteousness of his son, and although scripture tells us that we are all priests, that we are all the temple of the living God, that we are all his children without distinction, in spite of ALL this, what the Bible REALLY means is that the pastor is above the rest of us in some way. I don’t know what way. Maybe he is smarter (although I would say most pastors are of average intelligence) or maybe he is holier, or maybe he is a better leader or better speaker or better human being. I don’t know why, but even though we are all equal, the pastor is more equal. he alone is set apart to lead the rest of us.

Have you ever read Animal Farm by George Orwell? The animals were sick of the oppression of the farmer so they made a plan to get rid of him and have a free and equal farm. Soon after the farmer got the boot, the pigs took over as the natural leaders as they were the smartest of all the animals. Everyone had work to do, theirs was just to lead, but all animals were equal on this farm, and their leadership was just a service to the other animals. Soon these leaders started having special privileges to help them focus on the Word and prayer, sorry, I mean focus on leading, they could not take part in the lowly services the other animals performed, as it would reduce their ability to lead, a role they were set apart for. One day the pigs announced a modification to their original claim that all animals were equal. Now “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”

I think these pigs would make good pastors. They understood something that I can’t. How one group can be more equal than others. Pastors get this. They are set apart to serve the flock. They must not serve tables, as they are called to peach and pray and lead. Sure we are all equally equipped and equally enabled and equally righteous before God, but they are special, they are more equal. At the end of the day we end up with a priesthood of pigs.

I don’t know what could be more arrogant than to think that a group of people would want to pay you to stand in front of them and tell them what is right and what is wrong. The sad thing is that this is exactly what a pastor does and is. They say the right stuff like, “challenge what I say” and “I struggle with this stuff too” but the fact is that they think that they are more qualified to speak than you which is why they are doing it and you are not.

Why are they more qualified? Because they have the answers. If they didn’t think they had the answers then they would stand in front of the church and say something like, “I don’t know why you are looking at me, like I know anything more than anybody else” and then they would sit down and be done with it. Of course this would result in those pastors losing their jobs, which wouldn’t be really great for them financially.

Why can’t other people stand up and speak in church? Because they might say something heretical. Here’s a question: how do you know the pastor isn’t preaching heresy? If you are able to discern heresy from truth from the pastor then why can’t you do the same with anyone who speaks? This whole one dude speaking at a gathering of believers is completely contrary to Scripture which explains that when the body gathered the body ministered to each other.

So what do we have in the modern pastor? We have a guy who thinks that he alone can fulfill the calling of the body to minister to one another. We have a guy who thinks he has something more important to say than everyone else. We have a guy who thinks that his words are so valuable that he has to get paid by the church so he can spend all his time formulating them.

Seriously, how arrogant can you be? How self-important can you get? If you don’t have all the answers, then sit down and shut up and make room for others to speak. If you don’t do that then your words of “I don’t know everything” ring false and empty. You really think that it is better for the body for you alone to speak? You think your words are that valuable? they aren’t.

 

It means a lot to me that many people who have been hurt by churches have shared their support of my writing. At the same time, it bugs the hell out of me to be labelled by certain opponents as some cynical jaded victim. I assume that the intention of these opponents is to discredit the content of what I write by writing me off as some loony who is lashing out because he got hurt. Here’s the thing, even if that was the person that I am, it has no bearing on the validity of my claims.

Here’s the deal. The hurt that so many people feel when they are cast out or cast aside or rejected or oppressed by religious leaders in the church, is all just symptomatic of a very big problem. The false structures that are set up in the church all work toward promoting the authority of human leaders. This raising up of human authority in the church ruins everything. It is contrary to everything that Christ intends to see in his church.

• It contradicts the authority of the church’s only true head, Jesus.
• It contradicts the goal of growth for all believers.
• It contradicts the embracing of the hurt and downtrodden.
• It contradicts the call of all believers to minister to each other.
• It contradicts the natural relationship between God and man.
• It contradicts the freedom of the believer in Christ.
• It contradicts the priesthood of all believers.
• It contradicts the connection that God has created between himself and his people.
• It contradicts the true value of the cross.

These are just some of the very detrimental characteristics of the modern church system. Man has always sought to have authority over his fellow man. Christ tells us that if we desire to lead we must serve. We must submit to the least, to the lowest, to the weakest. Everything Christ told us that leadership looked like, is contradicted by the human authority in the church. By contradicting Christ’s call to leaders the church damages people and damages God’s reputation among humanity. These are not things to be taken lightly.