This is exactly what I would love to see happen in churches everywhere. I think that any of us that carry wounds and scars from church are looking for this very thing. I’m. Thankful today for my online community – I’m finding the embodiment of this there. Thankful that you are a part of it as well.

“For a moment, let me frame this in light of the broader tradition: Pentecostalism, rightly understood, is a critique of/radical alternative to evangelicalism, not a subset of it. Pentecostals who act like fundamentalists while simply adding speaking in tongues don’t understand their own tradition. Pentecostalism, at its core, is misfit religion; it is spirituality on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. When people who can’t find any other place to belong elsewhere come together and share a combustible experience of the Spirit, Pentecost happens. Pentecost is what happens in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Revelation,” when Ruby Turpin gets hit upside the head by grace, enabling her to finally see the heavenly battalion of freaks, misfits, and nice respectable people, too—all together on their march to glory.

The Spirit is the ultimate non-conformist, the archenemy of the efficiency so much contemporary church culture prizes above all else. To be clear, there are many deeply Pentecostal people that are not in Pentecostal churches. The Spirit people—the subversive people—are in all parts of the Church. But I am especially grateful we have had more than our fair share of them in community with us here.

Whenever and wherever people don’t domesticate the Spirit—when they say yes to God where the system says no—that’s Pentecost. When old ecclesiastical power structures burn down, there’s a big tent underneath the night sky where the Spirit says, “come on in.” That’s Pentecost. Pentecost is big tent religion. It’s an open tent with no sides to it. Everyone is welcome. As it was in Acts when the Spirit fell on the house of Cornelius, and the “wrong people” were then participating in the power of God … as it was in 1906 when the Spirit fell at Azuza Street, shocking the world with its multi-ethnic worship and its women preachers … Pentecost is scandal. It seems you can’t get more progressive than the Spirit of God, because the Spirit brings the future reign of God into the present, disrupting all our existing categories of left and right and Jew and Gentile and male and female and slave and free, making all things new.”

Taken from: http://renovatuschurch.com/#/newsevents/a-letter-from-pastor

I love the local church and I think it is incredibly important. I have been part of the church my entire life and I never plan on that changing. DJ and I are dedicated to serving the church and teaching our kids to do the same. Not because it’s some building – but because of what it can do.

People want to be a part of something, they want to feel loved and welcomed, they want to build relationships – the church can provide that, and should provide that to all people.

The relationships I have built within the church have saved me in some of the most unsure times in my life. I know I have benefited from the “barns.”

It’s when the church becomes an inward focused, “members only” club that things get weird. When churches use their resources to make themselves bigger and better, or to offer another seminar to keep their members “comfy” – I don’t like that.

That’s why I love NWLife so much. Our doors are open, we’re looking outside of our own little walls, we’re not interested in “bigger and better”, we’re all about those bridges. By the grace of God we’re providing meals and backpacks, and groceries, and the hope that people may need that day.

It’s not about making a name for ourselves, it’s about loving people.

So for me and my house – we’re going to stay focused on building those bridges. To make everyone we can feel loved and accepted just as they are, to not worry about a name, a brand, an empire, a popularity contest.

We’re simply trying to point people to Jesus. I don’t got time for that other stuff.