What made me leave my apostolic 5-fold church way back in 2004?
Was it the lack of fruit? The little or no impact of our faith community on our city? Was it the lack of focus on our poor neighbours and friends? Any of these would have been reason enough to move on, but it was something else.
It was the absolute failure of leadership during a big financial scandal that hit the church.
It seems that a man that the church leadership totally trusted walked away with 100s of thousands of dollars of the people’s money in a church-promoted ponzi scheme. (Fortunately, I missed out on this ’great’ investment opportunity)
It wasn’t so much that the church leadership got conned by this guy, that can happen, but it was the fact that there was no pastoring of the flock after it was fleeced.
That is to say, no one in leadership stepped up to talk about it, not one attempt was made to figure out how this could happen. No dialogue, no questions, no responsibility, nothing.
We were all left wondering how this could happen. Was it bad luck? Bad theology? (Eg. The wealth of the wicked would be transferred to the righteous)
Whatever it was, it woke me up and got me off the bus.
And once off, I realized what a soul-crushing, spiritually abusive, top-down system church leadership can be.
And I never, ever, want to get involved in that again.
The other thing I noticed, once the koolaid had worn off, was what a wonderful and diverse world God has created. It is a world of promise, not agendas, of multi cultures, not monoculture. The walls of evangelicalism kept all but a few approved ideas on the outside. And the tiny branch that I was part of, was even more compacted. Once I got outside the walls it was almost overwhelming. It was a place where people exchanged ideas, where you were allowed to discuss things, even question them, where you actually could use ALL THE WORDS, not just a tiny subset of coded texts. It was like spending years inside a room reading about the world and then suddenly, going outside and experiencing it.
It was great. I felt that I could now go directly to my maker, one on one, without the middleman, or any side agenda. The air was fresher, and the music outside of the church…. oh the music.
And with part of that new freedom, I was able to step out in my life and in business, unfettered, like never before. Like I was unplugging from an old, dried up vine, into a new one. (I threw this line in for the evangelicals)
That is when myself, and two partners, who were also Christians, created Club Penguin.
Now I don’t think that getting out of church helped me create this company, it’s obviously not as simple as that. But, what did help was that my creative lens had changed, from seeing everything faith-related through a limited “church lens” to seeing everything through a new lens, a lens that presented a much bigger God, and a world with far more opportunities.
And now, my city has become my new community, unfettered from dogma, where everyone was welcome to hang out with anyone, a diverse and level field with Christ at my centre.
I remain highly suspicious of all church leadership, agendas, and their controlling words and phrases.
I have found a role that suits me better. One I am far more comfortable in, that is far more real and authentic. With a faith that I am way more passionate about, with nothing to prove, and nothing to lose. The good and the bad. A simple follower of Jesus, trying to live with a heart for others, as natural as I can.
