Following Jesus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cSo like, how much longer do we have?\u201d I asked Andrew, in my best stoner-esque voice possible... He was cordial enough to give me a courtesy laugh... We\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/andygill\/following-jesus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Following Jesus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cSo like, how much longer do we have?\u201d I asked Andrew, in my best stoner-esque voice possible... He was cordial enough to give me a courtesy laugh... 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{"id":651218,"date":"2013-09-04T22:01:56","date_gmt":"2013-09-04T22:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/andygill\/?p=651218"},"modified":"2013-09-04T22:01:56","modified_gmt":"2013-09-04T22:01:56","slug":"following-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/andygill\/following-jesus\/","title":{"rendered":"Following Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201cSo like, how much longer do we have?\u201d I asked Andrew, in my best stoner-esque voice possible\u2026<\/p>\n

He was cordial enough to give me a courtesy laugh\u2026<\/p>\n

We had been driving for maybe 10 minutes at most, not yet even outside of Orange County, on our 9 hour journey up north.<\/p>\n

We started off talking about our mornings, the weather, and then it somehow, as it always does, ended up being about theology, church, and of course predestination, which annoyingly, always seems to wiggle its way in to our conversations.<\/p>\n

You see, a few months before I quit on the Church \u2013 or at least \u2013 so I had thought.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just some knee jerk over emotionalized decision. This was a thought out decision that took a couple of years. I prayed, I sought out wise council, I spoke about it with my pastors, friends, and family\u2026<\/p>\n

In the end I knew what I needed to do and which way I needed to go, the answer was clear to me. But there was some who still didn\u2019t see it as clearly as I \u2013 there were some who still disagreed with my choice. Andrew happened to be one of them.<\/p>\n

He spoke slowly, carefully choosing each word he said\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI can only speak for myself \u2013 when I see the flaws like hypocrisy, people missing the point, etc\u2026 it would take a lot for me personally to leave because I\u2019ve seen the institution do so many good things. I can understand walking away from a specific church, but not the institution.\u201d<\/p>\n

I paused and thought, still surprised with Andrew\u2019s disagreement and asked, \u201cSo do you think that it\u2019s outside of God to ask someone to do what I did?\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew quickly responded, \u201cNo\u2026 that\u2019s a good question\u2026 I haven\u2019t really thought of it in that way\u2026 but you might be an exception to the rule\u201d<\/p>\n

When I hear, exception to the rule<\/i>. I hear, I\u2019m just trying to be nice, and avoid any further damage that our disagreement may have already caused. <\/i>Knowing Andrew, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what he meant, but I was honestly shocked, because Andrew had the same exact issues with the Church as I did. We\u2019re around the same age. Both on staff in large, young evangelical communities, in the same county. The difference was Andrew decided to stay at his Church, while I decided to leave.<\/p>\n

I quietly sat in the car processing his words, asking if the institutional church, the traditions we currently follow, the programmatic rundown, if that was actually Church? Wondering, can we find this model in scripture? I thought about all the good things the institutional church has done, which made me ask\u2026<\/p>\n

How do we even measure good and bad? How do we determine if one out weighs the other? If good does out weigh the bad, then why not join other religious traditions such as a Buddhism<\/a>, Islam, or Mormonism<\/a>, that is, if we are basing our critique of the church off of what is \u201cgood\u201d?<\/p>\n

Then I thought about all of the bad things, the church has done, the oppression, the wars, the lives lost\u2026 Does this stuff out weigh the good stuff we\u2019ve done? Even if it does, does it excuse or come close to even dismissing the bad?<\/p>\n

I think Andrew was right.<\/p>\n

I think that both of us were right.<\/p>\n

The church is<\/i> doing good. Yes there are faults. No it\u2019s not perfect.<\/p>\n

But in the end we both agreed, there must<\/i>\u00a0be change\u2026<\/p>\n

This is about where things started to get interesting. Little did I know this was the beginning of a new season, a new adventure, an amazing friendship, and long journey ahead for the both of us\u2026<\/p>\n

(This is an excerpt out of my upcoming book I\u2019m coauthoring with Andrew Steven<\/a>, adapted for this blog \u2013 If you\u2019d like updates on the books release, and to be put on my weekly email list subscribe below!<\/strong>)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"