Twenty Years

The envelope was hand addressed to The Rev. Kevin Jones in a black ball point pen. The cursive mailing address filled most of the front. The back flap was imprinted with the return address from the Seminary Relations department. Usually that meant a letter asking for a donation of some sort but this was a card-sized envelope; maybe an invitation to a fund raising event of some sort.

The flap wasn’t sealed all the way around so I skipped the letter opener and slid my finger inside tearing a jagged line along the top. I pulled out a folded card. On the front was a picture of the entrance to the one building on the seminary campus with the traditional roman columns seen on campuses across the country. In the upper left hand corner the seminary logo on a mustard yellow background and on the bottom the word “CONGRATULATIONS.”

With Apologies

Recently I have read some blogs by people who, by all accounts I can see, are God-centered people. What they have been writing about is why they, or others, have left the church. (Here are a couple by Christian Piatt: Seven Reasons Why Young Adults Quit Church and Four More BIG Reasons Young Adults Quit Church and one by Rachel Held Evans: 15 Reasons I Left the Church.)

My first response to these articles is, “Yeah. Me too.” These are the reasons I want to leave the church. But I can’t seem to do it for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that, as a pastor, my family and I depend on the paycheck that I collect for being a part of the church.  I truly believe that the Holy Spirit it at work outside of the institutional church and I want to be at work where the Holy Spirit is but I’m genuinely having trouble making the transition.

My second response is that I want to apologize. I want to apologize on behalf of the Church. But I can't. I can only apologize for the way that I have represented the Church as a leader and for the way that I have participated in the very things that have driven people away. I apologize for: