21

This week, i became a legally alcohol consuming citizen. As the days slid by and 20 came to an end, i found myself thinking a lot about the past few years and i can't help but view 20 as the least impressive of the bunch. In fact, it wasn't just that it didn't have the same rate of growth as the past years, it seemed to slip back and undo much that was accomplished in the past three. I beg Your forgiveness as i'm about to consider a long-winded, egotistic recollections of the past few years. I only hope they'll give You more insight into my current thoughts and actions.

17 

Ah, when everything was bright and new! I had just made the switch from being a depressed introvert into what seemed to be a charmingly outgoing, enthusiastically optimistic individual. (This surprised me more than anyone.) I entered an internship at New Life Church (Colorado Spring's largest mega church) and soon found myself as a poster child for the youth group and at the top of the social food chain. I went from having 3 friends (thank You Saralee, Will, and Hilary for sticking with me) to being introduced as "the guy who knows everyone." Music exploded as i found myself leading worship as often as 5 times a week, as well as leading a handful of Bible studies and prayer meetings.

18 

This year saw the culmination of my passion and popularity. I was invited to speak at two different events: City Wide Night of Worship (attendance: 700 some) and the Desperation Conference (attendance: 3000 some). I also started and ran a healing team at youth group as well as a prophecy group. 

During 17, i got involved in many prayer meetings in which i saw not only the physical results of prayer, but the intense uniting effect they had on the individuals who prayed together. I heard many churches talk on the importance of prayer and i read of it's importance in the Bible. Seeing the logic in this, i went to the many pastors i knew, asking them why the churches in Colorado Springs didn't get together to pray for our city. They all kindly told me it was a nice idea but no one was heading it up. So of course, since someone had to and i was someone, i started the Kingdom Come gatherings. We met on a quarterly basis, representing quite a few different churches from around the city, and had as many as a hundred some individuals there.

But, after a year, i hated it all. I remember sitting on the floor, watching the proceedings of our fourth event and thinking how it would be impossible for me to be more involved with church and yet i hated my life more than ever. I was exhausted and burnt out. The team i had started Kingdom Come with had all eventually bailed and i was running everything myself.

Not only that, but i had long sat in the chairs of youth groups,  taking everything my pastors said to heart and running with it. I could not be more involved or committed to church yet there was no support or accountability. There was no community. The other groups i was running (which, while verbally encouraged by my pastors, they had no time or help to offer me in their sustenance)  were having visibly good, life-changing effects in the lives of my friends, but were being run by little more than a combination of my social charisma and passionate dedication to ideals i knew were worthwhile. They couldn't be sustained. Soon, i stepped out of it all.

As i struggled with growing doubts and began ending the groups i had ran, i found no comfort in the church. I remember opening up a message (there were others like it) that read along the of "Whatever You're going through, You need to get over it. Lots of Your peers look up to You and You're being a bad example." There was no offer of advise or of meeting together to help me get better, just the idea that i needed to suck it up. Fuck it, i thought.  If i had consider going back, now it was decided; i'd had enough of churches.

Around this time, i started going to Manitou, a part of the city that's known for it's artsiness and hippiness. It's seen as the anti-Christian side of town. Yet, time after time, i found myself experiencing a closeness with strangers that i hadn't found in the churches i frequented. I'd sit in coffee shops breaking bread with people i'd only met that night as we talked about life; i was offered wine (and weed) by strangers i played music with under the bandshell. I found acceptance and joy. I found community.

19 

19 was very good for my ego - or very bad, depending how You look at it! I seemed to accomplish everything churches should but didn't. It reenforced a pattern that has confused and saddened me through my life. While i believe it'd be best to submit to older, wiser leaders and support them in their efforts, the lives of my friends seem transformed not when i connect them to a certain church or pastor but when i take matters into my own foolish, enthusiastic hands.

At the beginning of the year, i was given a book, Beautiful Outlaw by John Eldredge, that  did much to refresh my spirits. I began gathering a handful of friends - individuals like me who had been burnt - to share a meal and study the book. Soon, though, our get togethers quickly became less and less about reading a set chapter and more and more about ministering to whatever needs someone might have that night. Our focus was on community and following the Holy Spirit's leading. Our size exploded as in the youth of the city we stumbled across a vein of desperate, unmet hunger for authentic Christian community.

I became interested in sustainability and different ways of doing life than the self-centered, materialistic, suburban world i had been raised in. I started boring many friends with long talks of theoretical economics and how society should be set up. I got rid of many my belonging and had lots of friends live at my house for extended periods. Some never left.

By summer time, Ekklesia had 75 some members, with as many as 45 showing up to cram into the basement each night. I was dating a beautiful girl who i was convinced i would marry, my friends lives were being transformed, i was leading (with the help of two dear friends) a ministry - no, a movement, rather - that seemed to only be growing and gaining momentum. And, and long last, it seemed that i had  finally found community.

20

And then came 20. Beautiful women had broken my heart twice, closing me to love and romance. Ministry wise, it seemed like i was just repeating the patterns of 18, in which i poured everything i had into a a group and there was great success in the lives of those involved, yet it was sustained by my drive alone. I had assumed that if i sacrificed long enough, the vision would catch on and others would join in, yet so few saw need to support the thing that benefitted them. I became bitter at the people i served, seeing them as lazy and selfish for i wasn't older or wiser or smarter than them. I was just dedicated. I would show up to the building that we were now based out of, do my part, and head home as soon as possible. The community i had fought so hard to create had turned into little more than a social club.

It was said by outsiders that i was starting a cult, that we were heretical, that we were rebellious. Perhaps that last one wasn't false. I had rebelled against the dead, lonely churches i had been a part of, trying to salvage both the religion of the God i loved and as many of the beautiful souls as i could that cold, institutionalize churches had injured. Yet i saw all my efforts, all my drive, all my sacrifice as worthless. There had been so much potential; we had been part of something that could have done so much, and we settled for okay. I endured from the inside watching what i had worked for turn into something i hated. I didn't hate it for what it was, but for what it could have been but wasn't. Finally, i felt God's release and i withdrew from Ekklesia, from most of my friendships, from anything that would remind me of my weakness, failure, and inability to create the world i desired, or of the apathy of those around me. Seeing the world and those in it as less than they could be was torment. So i simply withdrew from it.

21

Yet, as a new year begins, i find myself drawn once again to the ideals of community and the beauty and potential of life. God seems to have planted them not in my mind where ideas come and go, but in my very heart, where, for a time, they can be hidden and buried by the course of life and hope deferred, but never truly escaped. While the results of my efforts to change my bit of the world fell far short of my ambitions, they were not empty, although it is my tendency to view them as such. My heart is stilled pained but now it seems more akin to that experienced when feeling begins to creep back into the fingers after one steps near a fire after a cold night outside. Numbness gives way to feeling, and feeling to pain, but pain gives way to health and wholeness.

I've spent my past years teaching before i had really learned; healing others before i was healed; trying to giving others what i didn't quite yet have myself. I long to regain my youthful enthusiasm and optimism for life and i endeavor to go wherever i must to find it. I'll learn from what's passed and eagerly set out to find what's ahead. This year i plan to travel, to grow, and to learn from those around me. I won't fall into the trap of structuring my life around what's safe, practical and already in place but rather, with God's help and the love of You, my dear friends and family, continue seeking until my dying day to create the best world possible. Won't You join me?