That Time We Started a Denomination

Inquiring minds want to know more....

The Ghent Altarpiece, Open - Jan Van Eyck, 1430 – 1432

“Okay, but what made you want to start a whole denomination?” a friend asked this week.

“I’m not sure…. I’m stupid?” I laughed, because this is mostly how I feel. And perhaps it’s because of this that I don’t actually do much talking about that topic here in my more “personal” Substack here. But I see that perhaps it could be helpful to talk about, or “show your work” as my mentor said.

It’s actually much more than stupidity that has brought me to this dream (though it’s definitely true that if you don’t feel dumber as you age, you’re not learning nearly enough) but also because I see a wide chasm opening up in culture/The Church, and nothing is stepping in to back fill this void. If not us, then whom? If not now, then when?

I also am not doing this project because I think everybody else is doing it wrong. I’m deeply committed to the belief that God meets us wherever and everywhere we seek Him, and that includes denominations and faiths (and non-faiths) of every stripe. I’m a big believer that much of our denominational and church choices boil down to personality and preference (I like organ music and ancient liturgy and you like drums and fog machines). Neither of those things is wrong, but just how we prefer to tell the story and participate in our beliefs. That said, I do think it’s worth having boundaries around belief. Not every so-called idea is of equal value. Some ideas are clearly garbage. “I believe I should key your car when you cut me off in traffic,” is rooted in goofy and selfish motives. I think we can agree on that. Yet we struggle to discern when religious ideas are not of equal weight. It’s important for us to consider these things, to decide what vision we have for our faith and what God is truly like as revealed in our underlying premises. We don’t have to accept every belief that tells us it’s in the bucket of Christianity, because not every idea that ended up there is even all that “Christian.”

While many people would still tell you they considered themselves Christian, I think if we pin them to the wall (that’d be weird) they probably couldn’t tell you the core beliefs that are Christian. Many would tell you they try to be good (not the goal of Christianity) or that they want to go to Heaven and not Hell when they die, or even Jesus died and was resurrected for our sins (whatever this means). None of those reasons inspire real fire in anybodies guts, and even less do they inspire us to attend church or be involved in a real way in the practice of religion. Not knowing why we consider ourselves Christian and not knowing how to talk about it, or practice it, is a problem. It leaves our lives bereft of foundation and anchor-less in a sea of competing ideas and ideologies. Which ones is true? Which one do we pick? Or do we pick “nothing” and just go with, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” We’ve tried that for a good decade (or six) and it hasn’t worked.

When the world is tossing and turning and full of difficulty, peril and suffering, I want something that’s bigger than me, and will outlast me — a God who can be Trusted, as practiced in a community (stretching out both eons behind me and eons ahead of me) that helps me learn to continue trusting Him. There is comfort in being part of a bigger thing than me and my wisdom (because again, as I age I realize there’s precious little I actually have to offer in this short time I have.) I think that’s part of the attraction of faith, that there’s more than me and my best efforts.

Coming back to a more liturgical expression of religious practice in my mid 30s helped me see how much of that structure we as Americans have off-loaded because it was too “catholic.” But the structure is the very thing we need to make life actually hold out in a storm. You can live in a space with just carpet and cushy furniture, but if it doesn’t have walls supporting a roof, then woe be to you when a two foot snow dump comes bringing -20F temperatures. Your cozy furnishings won’t hold. You need structure and insulation and real heat from somewhere outside your body! We are not enough to sustain our own lives in any other sense, so why would we think that religiously we could do it? We’re exhausted!

I think there’s a growing recognition that we need church. But how does church fit into our lives? How does Christian practice (crossing ourselves, praying structured prayers, silent time with God, fasting, feasting and the rhythm of the year, church involvement) fit into our lives? How do we understand what it truly means to trust God? Can He be trusted? And as we continue to enter an age where we’re struggling to understand even basic human to human relationships, how do we talk about a relationship with God? We need a training ground! We need a church. We need to build our lives around stick-built structure, and put in some insulation and a boiler! We need a place (both literally and figuratively) to gather and to be gathered; we need something to hold us and provide us with heat and protection. Only then will we find real peace, real comfort, real resilience through the storms of life.

I don’t think it’s by accident that people are more and more intrigued by highly structural faiths: Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox being high on those lists. But for many of us neither of those things is quite a fit. The Roman church is fraught with bureaucracy and is the very definition to me (as an American Protestant) of a too top heavy organization that moves slowly and often make self-protective decisions instead of choices for the good of the faith and people. The Eastern Orthodox church has much to be celebrated, but at the end of the day it’s very culturally different, and struggles from some of the same entrenched traditionalism. Neither of these traditions includes women as full and equal leaders, something I personally think is important. This isn’t because I want to fight for my right to part-tay serve, but because I don’t see God creating men and women as under and over each other but as co-workers in the work of revealing a loving God who can be trusted to a lonely and aching World.

The gospel is not that Jesus came to die and forgive us. The gospel is that God created us to love and be loved (see Genesis 1-2). He does everything possible to restore us to that loving relationship (including but not limited to how we see that play out in Christ’s life, death and resurrection), not only between Him and us but for us together. Heaven is not escaping our just desserts (we need to bring back this phrase!) but to be restored to our original place as friends and partners of God.

As I’ve studied more, and considered the scope of the story the Bible is telling, I also think that the Church (however we view that) has neglected much of what God was teaching us about living in the Bible. We wanted to be a “new” (or different and separate) thing, but Jesus was a Jew and everything He taught and said was in His Jewish context. Have we really understood that? Have we bothered to see how the Biblical context is full of the story of how He loves us and delivers us lonnnnng before we’re “good” or “ready,” but now and ongoingly so? Why did we stop telling the whole story? Why did we stop understanding our faith through the root of the People of God? Why did we stop listening to what Jesus says in His specific context long before His death?

I don’t see another church/denomination really making these specific points in the context of structured rootedness.

Every age offers us a specific set of problems, challenges and opportunities. Ours is no different. We have amazing tools at our disposal. We have amazing ways to bring the truth that God is trustworthy to a confused World! How could we take these very ideas and also use our cultural moment and time to redefine what Church means and how it’s organized and how it’s managed? If Uber did to taxis and Airbnb did to hotels and Hers did to medicine, isn’t there space for us to build something new in a new way that hasn’t been done yet for Church? Could believers who commit to Trusting God find each other more easily and seamlessly? Could catechizing (training and learning) be made more easily accessible? Could a church remain agile with very little bureaucracy and also centralized and supportive? Can we help people approach faith before they’re even ready to be part of a church or attend a service? What if we could give everyone the tools to make community spaces happen in their context and location even if you don’t see yourself as a pastor/clergy member? What if it didn’t have to feel so alone and isolating and hard?

I didn’t set out to start a denomination. I didn’t even really want to start a local church. But circumstance and people close to me planted seeds, supported me and pushed me (read, kicked in pants) down this path, and God continues to open doors and close other ones… and I’ve met other people excited about this vision (shout out to Fr. Cathie Caimano for her passion, excitement and vision as she joins me on this journey) and here we are — working through some really complex hurdles and trying to clarify what this vision really is (and isn’t). The further I go down this road the more I realize that this vision could really be something, and a few other people are catching this dream too.

Interested? Let’s keep talking!

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Bits & Bobs

I know it’s trite to complain about the weather, but I’m going to complain about the weather…. spring is so hard here in the high planes and “mountains” (We’re at 5500’). 70F one week and 20F the next. Today it’s snowed and warmed up and snowed with bright sun three separate times. Last week the flowering trees were in full tilt only to experience a heavy deeply freezing week in the 20s and turn brown. It was both beautiful and tragic…. I’m having a bad case of seasonal whiplash…. okay, gripe over(ish).

I got stuck in East of Eden, it’s so so dark. I will finish it, but in the midst of this seasonal turmoil it was just too much. Maybe this is a summer book? I’ve found that I’m very seasonally gauged with what I can manage and enjoy.

So obviously (obviously!) I started reading a book about schizophrenia. Because that’s light and cheery right? I stumble across all kinds of random things on Libby so I thought I’d try it out and so far so good. “Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family” by Robert Kolker is about a family who’s twelve kids perfectly span the Baby Boom generation and who experienced that serious mental illness in six (!!) of them. Maybe because it’s non-fiction it’s not hitting so so heavy? Or it’s heavy in a different way? Spring is a “whimsical” season.

Parents of all ages and stages (especially ones homeschooling) often feel that they’re not making any progress or headway with their kids’ education. (Kid still can’t really identify successfully which number is 11 and 12 … yikes!) But then we pull our heads up out of the daily grind and remember that at the beginning of the year we also were still solidifying letters and their sounds, and now we’re confidently making our way through sentences like. “Pat has a cat. The cat has a hat.” Reading truly is a miracle. How we ever got to be part of a mostly completely literate society is truly a marvel. Just let that sink in for a minute.

A few weeks ago I mentioned a little Easter basket kerfuffle with Kid. I still feel bad about my behavior… but I tried to explain that it was in our long family tradition of gift surprising. I keep thinking of this story, and maybe I should save it for some longer letter or context but… too bad, I’m telling you now! Nobody was better at gift surprises than my mom. One year for Christmas when I was about ten or eleven she dreamed up this great project for me to make my sister an apron for Christmas. Sister was starting to get into cooking and we were both beginning to learn our way around the kitchen. Mom used some pretty scraps she had left over from a bigger project and helped me make a pattern and sew together the apron. We’d work on it a little bit every morning before Sister woke up and put it away to keep as a secret until Christmas if we heard her coming down the stairs. Christmas Eve came and I was super excited to see Sister’s reaction. Mom handed us two boxes and said we had to open at the same time. We were flabbergasted to find two similar (though not identical) aprons made with the same fabric scraps. “But how?!” we gasped! Turns out she’d been selling us the same idea and story, and whoever woke up first “secretly” worked on the “other’s” apron until gift day. Man, did we get had! We loved it, and this story is still a wonderful part of our Christmas family lore.

with love,

sierra