Print this in the “Wanted” section of an old-fashioned newspaper – you know, the kind that nobody makes anymore? Or perhaps this is a post on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace:

Disillusioned with American Christianity, and yet hopeful about Jesus. Looking for a group of like-minded people.

Even better yet, this could be a “Help Wanted” ad from some local church down the road, asking for a little guidance. “Could we have some help over here at our church? We are burned out on American cultural Christianity and just want to be more like Jesus. We don’t know what we are doing anymore.” Do you know of any churches that are this transparent or desperate? I can’t seem to find them. But if you know of a place that is ready to take their church off life support so that something better can be resurrected in its place, please let me know.

I’m looking for a church. I don’t care about the size of the congregation or the preaching. I don’t care about how educated or erudite the pastor is in expounding on the “word of God.” I don’t care about programs and events, budgets and building funds. I don’t even care how many people they are sending out to take the Gospel around the world.

I sure as hell do not care about the “battle to save America” from the fascists, liberals, degenerates, or illegal immigrants. I’m just trying to keep my sanity and my soul intact. I’m not looking to pour my future into someone else’s pockets. I have deconstructed things down to one last thing that I believe is still worth holding on to. I am disillusioned by all trivial pursuits that have not led us into being better, more generous and merciful people. I just want a community that gets together because we believe that Jesus is actually right about everything. Love and forgiveness, peace and mercy, really is the only way to break out of the hopeless power struggle that this world is obsessed with.

What do I want? Well, I’m glad you asked. I’m looking for a church that takes the following seriously:

1. First and foremost, before any other consideration, God is Love.
2. Love looks like Jesus being crucified by an angry mob, and choosing not to retaliate, but to forgive so that the way to a reconciliation would always be open.
3. This was God’s will from the very start. God has always been like Jesus. We could not see it before, but we see it now and it must change everything.
4. God’s desire is for everyone to abandon the angry mob of humanity and return to a reconciled relationship with God and all creation.
5. Every single person is a dearly beloved child of God, created in God’s image, and worthy of unending respect and love.
6. We can walk out on God, but God never walks away from us. God’s side of this relationship is always open.
7. Therefore, we choose not to walk out on each other, even when reconciliation and love is difficult.

I feel like these are some grounding principles that the church has lost sight of in pursuit of other concerns. Which concerns? Things like whose interpretation of Scripture is more correct. That our morality and choices changes how God sees and feels about us. That sin still needs to be punished, even though God made things abundantly clear on the cross.

How should these central considerations shape and guide the future of our churches?

Reconciliation and restoration should be the primary pursuit of the church collectively, as well as the responsibility of each Christ follower in their personal life.

The hope of Christianity is that because of who Jesus revealed the Father to be on the cross, we have nothing to fear from life or from death. Therefore, filled with hope and compassion, we work for the reconciliation of all people to God. Likewise, our responsibility is to seek restoration of all people and things to that which is both vibrant and whole. I believe that this is the mission that we are invited to join God in.

Everyone is invited to a seat at the table of the Lord. He turns nobody away who seeks a place with him. We must do likewise.

The very second that the Church put qualifications on who could approach Christ’s communion table, was the second that we rejected our role as ambassadors of reconciliation. We created an artificial separation between God and God’s children. This was on the belief that God is not fully Love, but is actually Justice, as if the two were pitted against one another. Justice does not clear the way for Love, but the other way around. In this Love, we invite all people into the mystical time and space where hope is restored and we all find our ultimate belonging in God.

What unites and binds us together in Christ is more powerful than that which seeks to tear us apart.

We are all transformed as we let go of our petty judgements of one other, and take hold of the shared connection to God in Christ. This is both our personal and collective lifeline to that which will hold the church together. If we ever let go of the realization that this communion between God and each other is in fact the essence of the Body of Christ, we will devolve back into lesser considerations and form competing tribes based on our warped sense of justice.

Christ-like love and compassion must be our primary lens for interpretation of both Scripture and Christian morality.

I believe that we have been missing the forest for the trees when it comes to Biblical interpretation and it’s bearing on morality and social ethics. In our Modernist enthusiasm for the material basis of understanding Scripture, we have lost touch of the immaterial reality of God as the Spirit of Life itself. The Christian mystics of yore understood this implicitly, understanding the Scripture and traditions of the Church through the reality of union with God experienced in Christ. We have made the Bible a system in which we define who God is, rather than working to understand and experience the revelation of who Christ is in us as our interpretive lens for knowing God and interpreting the Bible.

Admit that we don’t have all the answers. Admit that the Bible does not have all the answers. Rather, we put our trust in Jesus and his way of doing things, and embrace the mystery within the margins of life.

At some point, the American church replaced faith with having the right answers. Faith, rather than being the trust and hope we place in the ultimate goodness of God, became believing in the right things about God. That is not faith, that is arrogance. And in our arrogance we misplaced a faith that required anything from us besides saying some words and maybe standing in front of a bunch of people who approve of us. We tidied faith up so nicely that it could be commoditized and sold like a membership to a spiritual fitness club. No wonder so many of us ended up disillusioned. Nothing could be further from the truth! Likewise, our association to the “right” group of people is just tribalism, no matter what label we attach to it. Watching the American church lose its way among the thorny path of political power is the outcome of this falsity. We need to rediscover a faith that can hold on to God in the middle of a collapsing society.

Can you imagine how this would change the priorities and pursuits of the body of Christ in our time of history? I’m not saying that nobody out there is doing this, or that every church is in the same pit. I am just saying that as I look for a local church that is letting go of the past to take hold of new life, I cannot really find anything. Is all hopeless and lost? I don’t think so. In place of an established local church institution that is doing this, I am finding believers of every kind that are looking for a new place to gather. Perhaps, in time, we will find ourselves ready to stand together in the same place.