Whenever I wake up on Sunday I realize that I simply don’t fit into any church environment. I’ve looked, I’ve visited and none of them are right. Not one community. Stand, sit, stand, sing, pray, sing, stand, give, sit – listen to a speaker talk at you for 45 minutes to 1 hour doesn’t work for me anymore.  Even if the format was right will the theology match? Maybe, maybe not. Historically we as African Americans lean more towards conservatism. I’m pretty liberal just in case you couldn’t tell….lol

I know people like me exist. We’re usually the ones in church working in some form of ministry on a Sunday. We’ve reached a point where we don’t learn much in church anymore so instead we put our heads down and work. From time to time we’ll get a message but we’ve gotten to a point where we know exactly where the preacher is going with his/her message. We’ll continue to go to church out of habit even if we’re not being challenged. Our weekly work will replace our desires to be pushed in the church setting. We’ll then either push ourselves outside of church or we’ll burn ourselves out from working too hard. Once this happens, we’ll develop a dislike for the church because we know, as it relates to teaching, we’re not being told the whole story.

So here’s the wrestling match I’m having:
I know I’m called to create the environment
vs
God, why do I have to create the environment

At this point I have no doubt what God is asking me to do but I also realize that this is no small task.  I appreciate the wrestling match that I’m having.  I appreciate the struggle because it would be dangerous to approach this from a point of overconfidence.  Often times when we feel God has called us to a task we dive in head first without caution.  When we dive into our calling without being ready or without God actually preparing the way, we can not only hurt ourselves but we can hurt the people around us.  When the timing is off we may hurt our family members, our friends or even the community we are serving.

This struggle that I’m having lets me know that I am not exactly ready to create and lead this new spiritual community.  Although I may be in a wrestling match with God, I’m still working to prepare myself just in case I wake up one day fully ready to move forward.  I’d be wasting my time if the only thing I did was meditate, contemplate, and prayed about my calling.  There are plenty of things to work on while I’m in this gray area.