For years, I felt like a fraud, an imposter. It’s something psychological like many people experience. I was a pastor, but deep down, my own beliefs were at odds with the doctrines I preached. I had a self-destructive habit of preventing myself from being fully authentic. I wasn’t healthy. Leading a church terrified me. This internal conflict eventually led to a breakdown, and it took a few rock bottoms to force me to confront my fears and issues within the church. I’m not the only one.

This is rambly. It’s a long one. Maybe it helps. Maybe it won’t and all it does is set some of the background I’m Drunk Pastor is coming from. Knowing each other’s stories helps us understand each other. I’m realizing I’m just arriving and I have a lot to learn.

Called To Step Up

Being “the leader” scares me. I always needed someone above me, an authority under whose umbrella I could feel safe. Being in the upper middle of an organization’s leadership was comfortable for me. When I was asked to plant a church in Missoula, I immediately said “no” because I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it.

We did do it. I took my ex-wife and kids, two close friends, and their family to Missoula. A bit over a year later, I was being forced into rehab. Me and the aftermath of my self-implosion ruined a lot of people’s hopes and life plans. I am far from repairing the damage I’ve brought on my circumstances – it’s a humbling thought to think how little my “damage” is compared to those who didn’t ask for my issues.

Starting my own business and Drunk Pastor would put me back in some very similar situations that I wasn’t able to do as a Church Planter. If I did it, I would have to be able to do all the things that scared me and I put off. I would have to learn new skills and habits. I would have to do sales and manage clients. I would have to manage myself. I would have to come out of the hermit hole I’ve found myself in and actually put myself in front of people again.

A Different Kind of Conversion

Easter came along and I made a decision to commit myself to my faith – Jesus and I had an experience and were going to try an experiment. Drunk Pastor was just launched the week before and I was just getting clients for Stigma Marketing. Sitting in an Evangelical church on Easter, I eavesdropped their gospel presentation while Jesus and I talked separately. He and I were going to try the Gospel differently than how I was raised, educated, trained, and practiced.

Fast forward to now: things are easier and more natural. Plans have worked and are working – it scares me. I find my groove and can get in my wheelhouse then I panic that I’m doing something wrong. Fuzzy abstract ideas formulating and maturing are being vetted and have teeth. There were things I could do, things I could say, finally that made me shake my head. The internal search for the old me to starve off and die has been tedious and good.

It required being transparent with my Christian community about some things they’d cringe at, and probably need to. Things would have to be said and ideas entertained that could label me as a heretic or living in sin by people who supported my church plant. Faith requires me to be honest about the doctrines, teachings, and church practices I simply don’t believe. The inverse is true – I believe some things that contradict my Evangelical friends.

Dealing with remaining echoes of ego often means I’m debating how I even perceive something someone said before I’m able to start thinking about what they said. Ego is small enough to infest everything. It is a lot easier just letting it be Lord & Savior for everyone. This path isn’t easy – it sucks. I am so far from what I thought was an answer.

Evangelicalism’s Existential Crisis

Millions have left the Evangelical movement and many more sense something is off. Active members agree there are problems but don’t have words for them. They also don’t feel like they can say or do anything about it. There’s a similar thing, an overlapping connection, to the dread and mania common in secular society – individuals feel lost so occupy their attention with ideas of being found.

Leadership and heresy have been concepts I’m wrestling with personally. What is heresy and who gets to define it? According to Evangelicals, I and others would be the heretics. That’s fine since my faith implies it’s Evangelicalism being heretical. Trying to do anything more with that thought frightens me. When the thoughts and ideas run to their full conclusions, it means decades of work just to hand it off for future generations to make their own and pass on.

A Denominational Mutt Pedigree

After his conversion, my stepdad started a homeless shelter. It was a few years after his conversion that I became a Christian. We were not a part of just one denomination. At the time, I was an eclectic assortment of teenage stereotypes: good grades, good wrestler, popular, stoner and aspiring dealer, shoplifting, and weird sciencey guy who liked to blow things up.

We attended a Christian & Missionary Alliance church. Before, we were a part of a Baptist church. When I became a Christian at the end of ninth grade, my Christian friend group had a lot of charismatics. I call myself a denominational mutt.

I don’t know about you, but something similar is where many come from. A bunch of churches trying to agree about saving people from Hell for Jesus, a semi-agreement on what that means, cultures of competing churches and their messages, and a bunch of disagreement on oddly specific doctrines, while most of us people drifted between them. I was a zealous dread-locked Jesus Freak who had a Bible Club and was a wrestler in high school. My stepdad’s homeless shelter helped ensure that we interacted with a cross-section of different Protestant denominations.

Bible College & Church Firings

For college, I ended up attending a Restoration Movement church. No idea at that time what that meant. I was a boy trying to do one college full-time and fit in another part-time, a middle school ministry, a part-time server at a French restaurant, and newly married. While being honest that I wasn’t Baptist, I was a youth pastor at a Baptist church.

A significant next chunk of my life, was me dragging my wife along while I tried to make a church job work and be okay with my life. Occasionally, I would dream. I could talk all day about ideas. I continued to smoke cigarettes behind people’s backs and kept it from my wife. It caused issues in my marriage and work.

After being canned from a second church, my wife and I had given up hope that I could ever function in a church. I did some graphic design and web stuff before ending up as a front-of-house manager. My drinking started to take off during this time and keeping nicotine from my wife was already a habit. The first vape devices started coming out then. I enjoyed that job and felt like I was coming alive but I was also still spiraling towards alcoholism because of my unresolved inner-mess.

Called To Make Waves

Out of the blue, I was invited to work at a church where a good friend from Bible college was working. I was so not open to the idea. He reassured me this church was better. Neither my ex-wife nor I wanted the job. It scared the hell out of us…so we took it. It was a better church where I started to learn about vulnerability. I had room to think and grow. The preaching team I was allowed to be a part of, the depth of study, and the passion for historical and cultural context were things I owe a lot to… people I learned a lot from.

It wasn’t perfect. There were still issues and off-limit ideas. I tried to be comfortable in my position – having some leadership influence but not enough to have to push myself. My ex-wife and I were incredibly nervous about my first annual staff review. She asked me to call her immediately after it was done to let her know if I still had a job.

The “one thing” from my review was that I should be making more waves. There were plenty of other “growth areas” but what I was called out for was that I wasn’t taking more swings. I was told by the Senior Minister that he should be having to apologize more for me and not pushing me to take risks. I told my ex-wife this and her response was something like, “What’s with this church?”

The thing is that he was right. I am that way. He wasn’t the first to notice or say it. Without all the layers of shame and fear, I understand the rebel, the heretic, in me. I understand why it scared me so much back then. I never fully gave myself to all that I am capable of because I was so afraid of people.

Alcoholic Church Planter

My behavior personally kept spiraling. Alcohol was now a thing-thing. The behavior started when we were at the restaurant but it started to become much more. I started sneaking drinks and planning when I could have more. If I was not already an alcoholic I was on my way, just functional. Alcohol turned off parts of my brain and helped me feel comfortable – something I only just now, after almost 3 years of being sober, feel like I have a grip on.

That church thought I’d be the guy to start a church in Missoula. They were wrong…and right. I did have what it took but I was so aware of that part in me that would break. By that point in my story, my ex-wife and I were both familiar with it and understood it was a risk. We again resisted the idea. My ex-wife had to put up with me. I can see how much my ex-wife believed in me and how much I missed out on it.

Starting the church, there were doctrines I hadn’t come to terms with, others I wanted to let go of and some to hold with an open hand. I had always struggled with how to talk about the Holy Spirit. In certain teachings like Creation and Eschatology, I wanted a church that was not about the extensions we’ve attached to Jesus over 2000 years. I wanted a vulnerable church making a difference in the world, not bait-and-switch Evangelism, and where anyone could feel welcome.

On Being An Imposter

The problem was that I was the biggest of hypocrites. I’ve always been afraid of committing fully to the ideas in my head. For one, an evangelical church world full of differing opinions already has a border of unacceptable behavior and inexcusable beliefs. Secondly, working for a church where changing an opinion, or even entertaining one, can be grounds for termination is a serious thing. Thirdly, and most significantly, it would require me to do it.

Moving to Missoula meant I had no authority above me to blame – it was me and if I failed there was no one to save me. Wanting to believe in what we were doing and what I was preaching, and the people I roped into all of it, I tried to be open about some things from my past but wasn’t ready. My pre-existing imposter syndrome and child-like denial couldn’t maintain the structure alcohol had both perpetuated and then dissolved from under me.

That was a long time ago. I’ve been coming to terms with where I am now on this journey. It’s a journey just starting and it’s overwhelming at times. If the last three years were just to get me to where I am now, where I can finally be past some things and not be a complete jackass, and even do some good work and enjoy it, while slowly stooping with broken tools to try to fix my mess and rebuild a life where my kids can have a better father than what they’ve had….if this is just a beginning…

My Story Is Not Unique

As I’ve been taking baby-step risks and trying to lean into things, I am learning more and more that my story is not unique. There are truths and tangible implications, even a direction and a call, that we talk around. It’s in our language, music, and the way we point to problems. There is a problem in churches, maybe even with churches. It’s a problem Christians talk about away from their pastors and between each other. Pastors from other churches recognize it and have small talk about it over coffee. It’s a problem everyone sees but they all know that the Emperor’s clothes are there – they just can’t see it.

I’m not sure, after the work I wasn’t ready for, what to do with a lot of things and ideas. I am a failed pastor and recovering alcoholic trying to get his life together. I’m bootstrapping a young independent marketing and development company and taking personal risks. I feel unworthy still of experiencing the bits of happiness I do. I’m an insecure shit-show trying to enjoy the process of cleaning up the wreckage of his past and learning how to make some good waves.

It’s about more than me now. There’s a call. I got so twisted and it’s embarrassing. I missed out on a lot and the people who loved me and whom I loved missed out on me. Right now, just the checkboxes and timeframe for my goals can rush up shame. Some things I can’t get away from. While oftentimes it feels like a looming cloud, there are more and more times it feels like an exciting future horizon of possibilities.

It’s amazing what a simple shift in perspective can do. It’s amazing how unsimple we make maintaining a good perspective, for ourselves and others…eh, church?