Categotry Archives: My Story

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Stomping Grounds: Scene of the Crimes

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Categories: Meanderings (look it up), My Story

It’s Labor Day.  And you’ll never guess where I am…

…Blogging from a coffee shop in Tulsa.

It’s been five years, almost to the day, that my family and I left this place, shaking the dust off our feet.  That day ended a 10-year struggle that I’d never want to re-live.  We’d been faithful, done everything we felt God wanted us to do, but we had seen very little visible fruit, and in the face of it we’d encountered everything from subtle resistance to outright hostility from the religious community. In short–Tulsa kicked our arses.  We left free, but bruised and broken.

This is a preview of Stomping Grounds: Scene of the Crimes. Read the full post (975 words, estimated 3:54 mins reading time)

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Personal Victory (The Long Awaited Update)

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Categories: My Story, Things that are too good to keep

For those who have been waiting with baited breath for my long-awaited personal update–you can exhale now.  And sorry for the discomfort I may have caused you.

🙂

For the past couple of months, I’ve been working on something (and waiting for the results), keeping fairly quiet because I wanted to be able to tell the whole story. Now, I finally feel I can talk about it.

We became homeowners this week, for the first time in nearly 20 years. We bought the townhome we’ve been renting for the past 2 years from our landlord.

This is a preview of Personal Victory (The Long Awaited Update). Read the full post (1420 words, estimated 5:41 mins reading time)

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The Elusive Variable of Time (part 2)–Faulty Theology

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Categories: Meanderings (look it up), My Story

In my earlier, incredibly rambling post about the elusive variable of time, I mentioned that I’d try to make things more tangible by sharing an example of how faulty theology about time can be a bad thing….using an example from my own life.

This is a preview of The Elusive Variable of Time (part 2)–Faulty Theology. Read the full post (2068 words, 1 image, estimated 8:16 mins reading time)

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Balancing a Thirst For Significance with Great Expectations

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Categories: General, My Story

I’m a little hesitant to write this post, mostly because I’m concerned it will sound a bit narcissistic. But please understand that I’m just writing it to process some thoughts, and to let others in on it just in case others feel the same way, and perhaps can relate it to their own story.

This is a preview of Balancing a Thirst For Significance with Great Expectations. Read the full post (1287 words, estimated 5:09 mins reading time)

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The Path Toward Healing part 4: A New Community

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Categories: healing wounds, My Story

In case you’re just tuning in, you might want to start with Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. This post isn’t officially part of the Path Toward Healing series, but it’s apropos as well.

In the previous posts, I’ve largely dealt with the fallout associated with my departure from institutional Christianity, particularly in suffering at the hands of institutional churches and leaders who for one reason or another felt threatened by that decision. Today, I’m going to begin turning the focus less toward what was behind me, and more toward where I found myself, and my new spiritual surroundings, if you will.

This is a preview of The Path Toward Healing part 4: A New Community. Read the full post (890 words, estimated 3:34 mins reading time)

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The Path Toward Healing part 2: Those We Left Behind

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Categories: General, My Story

I started generalizing a few weeks ago about my journey of deconstruction, and how it is ultimately a path toward healing, and how healing really should be the goal of anyone following a similar path. I decided to turn this into a series of posts, for two reasons: 1) I’m on the threshold of a lot of new things personally, and I think it is a good time to stop and take inventory of where I’ve been and how I got here; and 2) I know a lot of people reading this blog are on a similar journey, and I feel that documenting what I’ve learned in this process could be helpful. Ironically, while I mentioned in the last post that the path toward healing is a progression from looking backward to looking forward, initially in this series there will be a bit of looking back. I say this because coming to grips with the past (so far as it depends on me) has been a key to my ability to embrace my future. Hope that makes sense.

This is a preview of The Path Toward Healing part 2: Those We Left Behind. Read the full post (2233 words, estimated 8:56 mins reading time)

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What Do I Really Want to Do?

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Categories: My Story

In times past on this here blog (you can find it in the archives, I’m too lazy this morning to find specific examples for you), I’ve processed thoughts about Christians and “calling.” Just one of the many things I’ve been re-thinking over the years. I’m sort of re-visiting this subject this morning.

A huge switch in my thinking regarding my own calling began a few years ago when I was hosting a men’s study group for some young guys as part of our outreach in our house church. We were working through a popular men’s book at that time, Wild at Heart by John Eldredge. In the book, John presented a quote by Howard Thurman:

This is a preview of What Do I Really Want to Do?. Read the full post (1514 words, estimated 6:03 mins reading time)

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Four Years

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Categories: My Story, Things that Are Amazingly Awesome

Four years.

Nearly 700 posts.

Four years ago today, I began documenting my deconstruction from traditional church by launching this blog.

I had a lot to say.

For the first two years, there was hardly a day when I didn’t post. I had so much to say, and it was coming out so furiously, that friends were telling me they couldn’t keep up. Emotions were rampant–anger, pain, joy, and peace–often changing from day to day as I processed my journey.

This is a preview of Four Years. Read the full post (258 words, estimated 1:02 mins reading time)

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Closing One Chapter and Opening a New One

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Categories: My Story, Tags: , ,

The walls are plain and bare.

Over the past couple of years, the walls of our little flat have filled up with fine art photographs and paintings that my wife, The Wild One, has created.  Now all those pieces are safely bubble-wrapped and waiting to be moved.

When we first moved into this place, there were literally boxes floor to ceiling, so many that we could barely move. It’s starting to get that way again, as we pack up our stuff. It’s getting harder to figure out how to move from one side of the apartment to the other–a stark reminder of how tiny this place really is.

This is a preview of Closing One Chapter and Opening a New One. Read the full post (1130 words, estimated 4:31 mins reading time)

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The Next Step

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Categories: How I am, Meanderings (look it up), My Story

So for those of you who have been tracking along on my journey…first of all, my apologies. Thirteen-days-no-blogging-here has to be a personal record for me.

Shortly after moving to Denver a year ago (!), I mentioned here that I was helping some friends with worship at a church plant they were/are doing–an…um…institutional church. I’ve talked on occasion about the irony and tension associated with that relationship, the various discussions we’ve had from differing points of view. After a year there, I’m still scratching my head a little, because I’m still a little baffled as to how I got the job in the first place. These guys know about my deconstruction and my feelings about institutional Christianity, and furthermore, they read this blog. If I had been them, I probably wouldn’t have asked me, because I would have assumed I would be trouble. 🙂 But for some reason, they did ask…and I’d have to say it’s been a healthy exchange all around.

This is a preview of The Next Step. Read the full post (761 words, 1 image, estimated 3:03 mins reading time)
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