I’m not sure if you have read Sanders book or not but it might be helpful to understand what he means by “church community” before disregarding statement than it’s impossible to thrive outside of one. He is not a traditional church pastor and has no vested interest as you comment but cares that people are able to continuously grow and sustain long-term involvement in Kingdom work. He asserts (very well backed by scripture) that mission, worship and community are the ecclesial essentials of church amd that there are many groups, in many forms that can do these three things. It is a different image of church than just the buildings we picture in our minds. I think this is a fair interpretation of a few of his ideas…but I would encourage you to read the book if you haven’t.

If you’re looking for a place to go on Easter morning, I invite you to Church of the Angels, 1100 N. Avenue 64, Pasadena. We do the Great Vigil of Easter at 6 am, then move right into the Easter liturgy. Afterwards, we have breakfast in the Parish Hall.

We’ll also have the Easter liturgy at 10:15 am. I promise the homily will get you thinking.

http://home.earthlink.net/~chrisaskew/

Feel free to e-mail me if you have questions.

And as ever, I was glad to see you talk about things I’ve experienced myself. I know about being alienated from the church, and maybe a bit about always wanting to be in charge, so yes, can I say as a grateful reader that you’ll be in my prayers these next few weeks in the run up to Easter, but only if you want to be.

Exactly — not having to do anything trains you to “create quiet.” I agree that it’s probably not a long-term solution due to the lack of leadership positions and/or his activity level, but it might help on the quiet meditation front.

My faith is too fragile and too individual to get me to church as a “worshipper among worshippers”; being a leader is usually the only thing that will guarantee my appearance.

That really rubbed me the wrong way, and I say this as someone who has known you a long time and wtched your spiritual growth unfold. You were such an amazing and loving youth leader and I adored you when I was in high school. In so many ways I still do. But if there was one thing that even in high school I noticed is that you were better at practicing your faith when others were watching you. I remember when we got confirmed and it went on forever. Because you were needed, you were amazingly good at comforting and entertaining everybody during the service. You were focused and pressent. A few weeks later I saw you at a service by yourself, sitting and playing with your cell phone during the sermon. It made me feel as if when you couldn’ DO something, you had no interest at all.

Please don’t take this the wrong way, and you knw how much I love you, but after all this time I think you just need to buck up and figure out a way to be present and connected when it’s not all about you. You were such an important and loving part of my growth, but I think this is a place where you need to do some serious growing still yourself.