I’ve been attending churches again. I’ve been calling it “research.”

Ever since my collapse under alcohol, finding a local church body where I feel comfortable and that aligns enough with my beliefs has been difficult. At first, it was the general shame of being a failed pastor attending another church where someone might recognize me. The perceived and imagined whispers and awkward glances were too much to think about. AA meetings provided crucial shared vulnerable community experiences I needed, especially early in sobriety.

Leading into the 2023 holidays, I was becoming increasingly more frustrated about how I had failed to improve the circumstances of my life any further, especially with my children and professionally. I wasn’t able to make enough and didn’t have enough time to make the life I wanted, to fix the things I needed to. The ache quickly turned into an existential scream that didn’t let up for months…I had people tell me they thought I wanted to burn the world down. It felt like God was leaning on it too. It’s as if things were settling up from my past.

I was not where I thought I should be for the journey I was on – things had to change again. One of the areas in the category of “Things That Have To Change” was my public posture and putting my voice back out there, taking risks, more relationships, and doing some of the things I love to do but don’t have an outlet for, Drunk Pastor being a part of that. Going to churches and figuring out how to engage with people on spiritual and theological matters again is another part of it.

Much has been for research: hearing what’s coming from pulpits and seeing how churches communicate and engage with people. The pastor in me never died. I’m just as big of a Bible nerd now as I was when I was sitting in Intro to Theology twenty years ago. Today, I have a host of ideas and need to see what’s happening in churches.

There’s something too about trying to figure out a community’s role in supporting someone’s spirituality. I know for Christians this might seem a no-brainer from within the black-and-white, cookie-cutter frame of American religion. There has been a lot of thinking since sobriety – much had to be done. It was good for me not to have the threat of a job or a public position to explore beliefs in ways I needed to. However, ultimately, we are humans, social beings. Ideas within a mirrored vacuum are delusional and impotent.

Secondly, even the most truthful and practical of ideas is only an idea until tested and practiced to the point of eventuality, where it becomes how one walks and breathes. There is that part of me that is too much of a coward to throw myself out there for the hungry Christian mob who will quickly overlook its unbiblical choice for a president while I question their incredibly nuanced stance on soteriology or how some gaslight people into subjection then call it Gospel. Conversations can be awkward, sometimes funny. I don’t help the situation. Hiding back beliefs because someone will be uncomfortable with them isn’t the kind of life I want either. It’s not how ideas are tested, molded, thrown out, and revived. I need people who speak Truth and Love, who act as another being who can check my existence against their own.

One thing I have kept coming back to leading up to Easter is that churches don’t know why Jesus matters to people today. It feels like Evangelical churches don’t know why Jesus practically matters to people in today’s real, connected, and evolving world. We talk of Heaven and the guilt of sin, of forgiveness from God and how He loves, but in the tone that we are bad little kids who should feel ashamed…I’m sorry, but that’s not right, it’s not Biblical. The “gospel” message is a curated selection of misquoted Bible verses to reframe a new narrative that doesn’t exist in Scripture. It’s abusive. No longer is the gospel about “faith in Christ” – it’s about Christ AND something else to be a part of this group of people who have the sole claim on Truth.

We have made the Gospel and Christ into things they are not. We project in terms and loops to make our faith and theology feel secure. We make our problems other peoples’. We practice what we can to make our group feel safe so we can blame the world for its issues. We tell people how they should relate to Church and never try to relate to people. We project back on the world worse than most abusers… It sounds like an alcoholic.

The angriest calls in Scripture are from God to His people who should know better and they are about how we treat people in society. Jesus’ only “new” command was that we would love people like he loved us. Even that love has been twisted so much that people don’t know what it means. If you were to look at how Jesus actually treated and spoke to people in the gospels and then compare that to churches today, you will find little an inversal. We have flipped the Gospel around to secure all the problems Jesus wanted to fix. It’s wrong.

The fact that Trump is the Republican’s pick again for president has clearly shown the failure and emptiness of the American Evangelical Church’s “faith.” We screwed up and we are the ones lost. We got things wrong and until we get the planks out of our eyes, we’re useless gongs beating to a different “gospel.” The American Church is more in sin than it’d like to believe and its political actions have made it clear. Its Gospel is empty, a fraud, much like its choice for a president.