I had a conversation with a couple of friends the other night about salvation, and how it does not exist out side of community. I am really starting to believe this. For so long we have been preached this individual gospel. Where we have been told that salvation is a personal experience, an individual life change, a heart-transformation; granted salvation maybe all these things, but what if all these things; spiritual formation that is, is supposes to happen in the context of a faith community.

Reading the New Testament I find that Jesus' ministry existed more in the context of a macro level then a micro level. Meaning that, Jesus spends the majority of his time with more than 3 or 4 people. Jesus believed in community.

Enter ‘the church’.

To be honest, in the past couple of months I have all but given up on the church. I found church to be boring, impotent, passionless and self-seeking.

I hear stories about scandals in the Southern Baptist Convention, the biggest denomination in the world and how SBC are hiring pastors that have convicted of child abuse in other states.

I listen to Christian Radio (American Family Radio) and hear them bash Godly, prophetic leaders that have played such important role in my life. Men like Rob Bell, Erwin McManus and Brian Mclaren to name a few. They ignorantly accuse them of being pluralists and heretics all because they have a different methodology. With a little research, they would find that this isn’t true at all. It amazes me how men like this and the verbiage and rhetoric they use parallel the words of the Pharisees in the new-testament.

Now that I have digital cable, I have been casually watching TBN on and off, just to learn and whiteness first hand the manipulation that they broadcast 24-hours a day, 7 days a week. Every program ends with an offering, some programs the whole show is nothing but fundraising. Where is this money going, how is it expanding the kingdom of God, how is God being glorified? How is it helping people?

I hate all this; I don’t want to have anything to do with these people. But at the same time I stand back and I look back at my own life and as I examine my own junk, and my own sins, I find it hard to judge them as harshly.

Their sins and their issues are just more public than mine. If my sins and my issues were as open and as obvious as theirs, I would hold just as much distain for my self as I do them.

So where do I go from here.

This is the question that I have been wrestling with for a while. Do I participate in this thing we call Christianity (or the church) even though the majority of people (including myself) don’t reflect Christ?

Do I associate myself with the SBC, with biased Christian journalists, with corrupt child-abusing pastors, with ignorant right-wing fundamentalists?

How do I fit in with all of them? How do I love them? How do I extend grace to them, the same grace that has been extended to me?

I would like nothing more than to chuck a few stones at certain prominent “Christian” leaders; but I’m terrified God might give them a few stones to throw back.