After the excitement of a new adventure wears off, reality begins to set in; the brand new “church” we created always seemed better in our imaginations. Our gatherings would start with anticipation and excitement but would end with disappointing feelings and discouragement. The couple hours we were together each week wasn’t enough to grow and sustain our faith.
We wanted something more.
But we didn’t know exactly what that “more” was, and we wouldn’t know for many years to come.
In the meantime, we were tempted to merely change things we didn’t like, to build our structure to avoid dissatisfaction or engineer our way around disappointment. But this not knowing what we were looking for turned out to be a blessing in disguise – it kept us present to our dissatisfaction. It helped us walk through it instead of running away from it.
The more we wanted something we knew we didn’t have, the more we were faced with our disappointment. Until we just embraced it as a crucial part of our own transformation. The only way to real change was to go through disappointment.
Trying to change dissatisfaction without going through disappointment often usually deepens both.
We started to see dissatisfaction as something to be embraced and a normal part of our experience together. It became our teacher and kept us from going off course by making thousands of small, shallow changes that didn’t get to the heart of what we were really after.
Change that happened too fast was almost always premature. It fizzle out quickly and lead to more disappointment. But the second, third or fourth time around was usually with less hope.
We discovered change had to come on its own; we couldn’t force it or rush it.
We could only try to be ready for it.
We are a group of families striving to live an authentic faith free from artificial social constructs. We do not go to church, rather, we are the church. For 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, we struggle with and how to grow in this reality. We are Liquid.