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:

It’s important at this point to define “success”.  Perhaps it may seem too shallow to say success equals finances and jobs, even though this seems to be what Charismatics generally are referring to when talking about things like “favor” and “provision”.  For the purposes of this article, let us simply define success as achieving a dream or goal, whatever that may be – whether that be a solid marriage, a six-figure income, or a thriving ministry to the homeless.

When I started looking for the common thread that actually makes people successful, I found a simple answer: they do things.

Mozart spent ten years learning to compose concertos before he wrote his first masterpiece at age 21.  Bill Gates spent his entire teenagerhood teaching himself how to use time-sharing computers – in one seven-month period in 1971, Gates and his friends ran up 1,575 hours of computer time (which averages out to eight hours a day, seven days a week).  The Beatles in their earlier years got a gig in Hamburg where they played 8 hours a day, seven days a week.  By the time they had their first success, they had already performed 1200 times!

I found this true in my own life as well.  I wrote a musical last year, which was performed in the Fringe Festival and went over really well. Multiple people described the musical as being a spiritual experience, and so it would naturally follow that I had a friend who asked me what my spiritual process was for writing the show. Did I fast? Did I sit around for hours begging God to give me inspiration? Did I wait for a download, and then write?

No. All I did was work extremely fricking hard. No magic formula. Did research, had no social life, spent hours staring at my arm hairs wondering why my songs made no sense, talked to God, or the wall, or my characters, watched historical movies, took walks…that’s it.

What I’ve seen far too much of among some church denominations is this idea that spiritual calisthenics – hours of prayer, fasting, and begging God to move mountains – is going to get the job done.  Hey, nothing is wrong with praying.  And yes, I know stories of people like Rees Howells and George Muller who had incredible stories of divine provision.  But for every Howells and Muller, I’ve got a hundred who have scrapped, clawed, made a million mistakes, and pushed on until they reached their dreams.

Sometimes it’s simpler than we make it.  If you need financial breakthrough, ask yourself if you’ve ever tried talking to your boss about a raise.  If you want to start a business, ask yourself if you’ve ever taken a business class or built connections with people who run successful businesses.  If you’ve been single your entire life and want to be in a relationship, ask yourself if you’ve ever legitimately pursued someone.

“But what if things don’t turn out?”  Since when do we EVER know how things will turn out?  As Helen Keller said, “Security is mostly a superstition…Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing”.

“But what if I’ve already tried that and it didn’t work?”  Herein lies another theological rub which I need to unpack.  I’ve found that there is a tendency to excuse a lack of discipline by saying “it’s the will of God”.  By this, I mean that when we hit resistance to our goals/dreams, we take this to mean “God must be leading me somewhere else”.  The only time when we push through this, it seems, is when we’re entirely convinced that our goal is of God – at which point, all resistance magically is credited to the devil. It seems rather flimsy reasoning to believe that the only difference between God’s work and the devil’s is the amount of confidence we have in our goals.

What I’m really getting at is summed up in a quote by Galileo that I often use: “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended for us to forgo their use”.  It didn’t take MLK much to realize he had a responsibility to right a wrong in the world.  And when he got thrown in jail he didn’t say, “well, I guess God’s telling us to quit”.  He kept on the road.  And maybe we should too.  What if success is as simple as looking for good we can do in the world, and doing it?  Like Reinhard Bonnke said, “Those who forever seek the will of God are overrun by those who do the will of God.”

Here’s a final thought, courtesy Bill Johnson: “God wants to renew your mind so much that He can do your will”. If you follow that line of thought to its completion, the implication is that you no longer ask God about anything, you just make decisions and work hard till you see them through.  Hmmm…

Sounds a lot like what successful people already do.

Prayer does not change God – it changes me.  -C.S. Lewis

They make glorious shipwreck who are lost in seeking worlds.

-G.E. Lessing

You may have noticed this is my first post in a year.  This is because I suddenly had a problem with the name of my site.  Or rather, it had a problem with me.  It’s not that I didn’t have things to write about; it’s more that every time I would think of something I wanted to write, “live it real” would stare me in the face and say “say what you’re actually thinking.  That’s why you started this site, wuss”.  To which I would reply, “no, it’s too radical, nobody is going to like what I have to say, I don’t know how to say it”, etc.

However, I recently came to terms with the fact that “disliked radical ideas” are also often the seeds of revolutions.  So with that, I pose to you the following questions.

Do you want to make the world a better place?

At what cost?

What if it costs you your reputation?

Your friends?

Your family?

Are you willing to pursue truth and goodness no matter what the cost?  No matter where it leads?  Really?

And WHY do you have this odd ambition?

Ok.  Once you’ve got those answers, read on.

A Pew research study in November reported something that many of us may already have been aware of: the US public is becoming less religious.  http://www.pewforum.org/2015/11/03/u-s-public-becoming-less-religious/

Since 2007, the amount of religiously unaffiliated adults has risen 7%, church attendees have dropped 4%, those who say religion is “very important to them” has dropped 3%.  It’s a long report, and not entirely bad news for churchgoers, but it should be enough for us to take a good, hard look at the future of the church.  I’d also like to add that a 2010 survey found that it’s those under 30 who are most religiously unaffiliated (25% of the total population).

Being a 25-year-old senior theater major at a secular college in Philadelphia, I have had a front-row seat to understand the issues that today’s millenials have with religion.  This was, in fact, one of the reasons I came to college – to understand how the secular world worked.  Having grown up in the Mennonite church (my parents were both pastors for a time), gone to a charismatic Bible school in California for a year, and traveled on numerous international missions trips, I couldn’t understand how something I had found so great could be so disdained by my fellow young folks.

Well, I do now.  At least, I understand it a lot better than I did before.  And it’s turned my world upside down.

See, the church teaches you that the reasons people don’t want to become Christians is that Christians are hypocrites, gay-haters, pedophiles, shysters, and so on.  But from sitting close and listening to what people actually have to say for themselves, I’ve realized that the world’s view of Christianity is much more complex than I ever imagined.  As such, the answers to the questions I’ve had are also complex, lengthy, and not altogether pretty.

But I do have some answers.  And with the articles I’ll be publishing over the next few months, I’m going to share them with you.

I’m committing this next phase of liveitreal to Christians who have felt perpetually frustrated by the fact they were told that they could turn the world upside down with their faith, but have realized – when they’re truly honest with themselves – that they generally feel ineffectual, confused, and stagnant.  I’m writing for people who felt like the “thrill of the hunt” disappeared when the responsibilities of adulthood came crashing down on them.  And I’m writing for those who have felt alone in their walk because they’re felt that maybe they’re the crazy one for thinking that maybe there’s something wrong with church.  You’re not alone.  So come what may, I invite you on this journey.

One more thing.  Since the articles to come are intended mainly for Christians, I feel it necessary to outline 10 characteristics of truth according to the Bible, so I can show you how I’ve arrived at my discoveries.  I hope to show you that nothing I’ve discovered falls outside of the calling of the Spirit.  You may think this is overdoing it, but I’m saying these now so that you won’t come crying to me and calling me a heretic when I start to say what I have to say.  All I’ve done is take these ideas and run with them…a little farther than I think many of us have been willing to go.

You can find these characteristics at the link below:

Ten Characteristics of Truth.

And with that, we take our first step.  This journey will certainly lead us into the unknown, but if there’s one thing through all this that I have come to believe in even more, it’s that when we know the Truth, it will set us free.

“Though it cost all you have, get understanding” (Proverbs 4:7).