What an Andy Griffith Movie Taught Me About Church was the first blog of what was supposed to be a 12-part series where I’d unleash my fury at the ignorance and hypocrisy of every church everywhere.

Only, someone commented on it. A pastor, in fact. A comment was actually rather thoughtful.

The idea that a pastor of an actual church would bother to find common ground and not paint me, a church renegade, as evil caught me a little off guard. To be sure, I still had my questions (and have since written a better blog on it), but the more I got to know Pastor Jonny and Circle of Hope, the more I wondered if yelling angry generalizations about church into the void via a 12-part blog series was a great use of my time. (I retired the effort two entries later).

These days, while it’s certainly still easy to steam about church hypocrisy, I’ve been devoting more of my efforts to create music and a book which I hope can help people navigating doubt, questions, and a crisis of faith. Part of the preparation for that is a podcast series interviewing those with stories and insight on these topics – and Jonny became my first guest!

In the interview, Jonny explains some of what I was experiencing when I was writing that blog series – I was seeing things in very black-and-white:

“If your faith is too rigid – sometimes our fundamentalist faith is – instead of adapting or flexing, it breaks. It can’t handle resistance. For a lot of people, when you get out of this fundamentalist bubble, where you were told “this is the only way”, it’s very hard to keep your faith. I grew up being taught Catholics weren’t Christians, Episcopalians weren’t Christians. So if you grow up in an enclave where the “only people” are in a certain segment, once you leave that segment then you don’t think you’re a Christian anymore. Being able to explore the vast tradition of Christianity for 2000 years that far exceeds this fairly recent fundamentalist movement can help you.”

For those of us who are steamed about church, confused, disillusioned, or simply asking questions, perhaps Jonny’s analogy could be useful to you:

“Your faith is like a plant. And no matter what container you put your faith in, it’s going to outgrow that container, that pot, and you’re going to need to repot it. You’re going to need to plant it somewhere else. And if you don’t, it will die or stay at a certain size.”

Looking back, I see that’s where I was when I wrote that blog. I’m glad I was willing to voice my opinion, but I’m equally glad Jonny was also willing to be vulnerable and share his. His approach to faith and church has certainly made a difference for me.

I think that if we consider doubt or a loss of faith as something to avoid – because if we ever acknowledge that it’s there, that will be the end of us – I think that raises the intensity of the doubt more. But if you consider it to be just a normal part of faith, that helps you endure it.”

Full episode here: