A few weeks ago I met up with the Vicar (I shall have to come up with some way to distinguish him from the Other Vicar who was with me through most of the time I was unchurched but whose parish is much too far away for me to consider going on a regular basis) and spoke to him about my reservations about joining a church and also about my lifestyle choices and what could politely be called the churches reservations about them.
It went rather well all things considered, some of the things which would be issues in another church are non-issues here and as for the rest all I asked was that while they may not understand the things that I do that they not consider me to be unchristian because of them. After living in a conservative evangelical environment for years I've been left with a rather low tolerance for spiritual hypocrisy; while I understand that I am often alone at the very edge of some fairly liberal ideas I never want to be in a place where I'm required to lie for two hours a week about who I am and how I think my life should be lived and then ignore it the rest of the time. I also understand that in some cases the leadership are far more liberal than the congregation however, and this may be old fashioned of me, I still consider them to be the spiritual heart of the church and if they're able to cope with my peculiar ways then I will be satisfied with that.
It went rather well all things considered, some of the things which would be issues in another church are non-issues here and as for the rest all I asked was that while they may not understand the things that I do that they not consider me to be unchristian because of them. After living in a conservative evangelical environment for years I've been left with a rather low tolerance for spiritual hypocrisy; while I understand that I am often alone at the very edge of some fairly liberal ideas I never want to be in a place where I'm required to lie for two hours a week about who I am and how I think my life should be lived and then ignore it the rest of the time. I also understand that in some cases the leadership are far more liberal than the congregation however, and this may be old fashioned of me, I still consider them to be the spiritual heart of the church and if they're able to cope with my peculiar ways then I will be satisfied with that.
We also discussed how the church was run, what I could and would be able to do as I was choosing to become more involved. There are some things which I find interesting and may want to look at in the future, there are some about which I am dubious about and need more time to consider. In January I shall be putting myself on the electoral roll and we'll see how things go from there.
It will be a difficult time for me as while I have a very strong idea of what it is I'm standing against I'm now having to explore what I'm standing for and what that means for me in more detail. It may not be a comfortable process but it's a necessary one so I expect a spiritual crisis of some sort is looming on the horizon as I tend to trip over them during times of upheaval.
It will be a difficult time for me as while I have a very strong idea of what it is I'm standing against I'm now having to explore what I'm standing for and what that means for me in more detail. It may not be a comfortable process but it's a necessary one so I expect a spiritual crisis of some sort is looming on the horizon as I tend to trip over them during times of upheaval.
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