This is the fourth post on my emotional journey of leaving church-as-I-knew-it to become a missionary-as-a-way-of-life in Los Angeles.  To read the first post click here.  Second post, click here.  Third, here.  Thanks for reading… 

“Something’s crossed over in me…  I can’t go back.” 
- Thelma & Louise the movie

PART 2: RAVENOUS

Section A: Not on bread alone

It has not been easy to sacrifice my favorite church traditions to reach God’s missing ones.  I liken the experience to fasting. When you fast for an extended period of time from food, a “mild panic” can settle in, especially if you’ve never allowed yourself to go without for very long.  You think you’re starving when you’re not.  You find yourself saying, “I really want to eat that!” even at times of day when under normal circumstances you would not reach for food.  In those moments, you can either get obsessed about your lack of nourishment, or you can turn to the Lord and learn from experience what the Bible means by “people do not live on bread alone.”

• The culture of maintaining a constant flow of social events with churchy people (to the exclusion of meaningful time with non-churchy people). 

• The culture of requiring a church building and making it the epicenter of church activity. 

• The culture of viewing limited seating and parking as obstacles to church growth.

• The culture of the clergy-laity system. 

• The cultural language of “going to church” and speaking of “worship” as an event. 

• The culture of pouring a large percentage of our time, energy and resources into the 90-minute Sunday morning experience (and feeling totally wiped out by it). 

• The culture of doing evangelism through attraction (“if we build it they will come”) and extraction (leading individuals to Christ vs leading entire groups/households to Christ).

• The culture of deferring to ministers and official church leaders to study the Bible with people and baptize them. 

• The culture of bowing our heads and closing our eyes to pray (not a bad thing, but not in the Bible). [Thank you to David Watson for showing me the value of asking people first, “If this scripture is true, how would you pray to this God?”]

• The culture of practicing the “Lord’s Supper” as a time of silent introspection (as opposed to an interactive meal like in the New Testament).

• The cultural expectation that sermons will be delivered and heard. 

• The cultural expectation that church gatherings and small group Bible studies are best achieved by establishing a fixed schedule and location.  (same time, same place, every week…) 

• The culture of using a myriad of church programs to assist us in identifying and training more church leaders. 

• The culture of celebrating “bigness” as a goal.  (big crowds, big programs, big budgets, big buildings, etc)

• The list goes on. 

During our ‘fast’ my team and I found that the intensity of our hunger surprised us.  To quote my teammate Ed again, “we became ravenous.”  But not necessarily ravenous for the things on the list above.  Ravenous for God. 

This is not to say that we had never been hungry for or dependent on God prior to this missionary adventure.  But there is something to be said for the experience of leaving the very churched lifestyle to be church among the community.  It does a number on you. 

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