nakedpastor interviewed by Recovering Agnostic

Hi everyone! I just wanted to share an interview the Recovering Agnostic did with me. You can read it HERE. Here’s a quote:

Despite that belief, it seems that the church often fails to work in the way you describe. What do you think it would look like if the church was doing things right?

I don’t have a manifesto of a working church. As soon as you define what churches “should” be, you form a pattern of expectation which does violence to the way a local church actually is. I often compare church to marriage. I reject all notions such as “the wife should be in the kitchen…” etc, as I believe most people do. So we reject too detailed gender role stuff. However, on a deeper level we do have some ideas about what a good marriage would be, such as mutual respect, unconditional love, freedom to be uniquely you, etc – church is the same way. Don’t talk about vision, because once you do you set up an ideal expectation, then you set up the well defined business plan to get there. Throw all that away and just learn about mutual respect, freedom, love, etc – we did this in my last church and there were frequent moments of incredible beauty.

Read the entire interview over on Recovering Agnostic.

(Also, for a more intense depth of conversation and for ongoing supply of resources for your spiritual transition, please join davidhayward.ca.)