I was cited for not adhering to the ideals of the group. By this what they meant was I did not blindly follow or accept their beliefs. My writing and my questioning was not liberal enough and thus they found it offensive. They censored me in internal conversations, they told me I was not to express my opinion on certain issues; and ultimately I was told that my questions offended them.

To my liberal friends I am a conservative. To my conservative friends I am a liberal. Thus is the plight of one who finds himself in the proverbial middle. Why the middle? Because it is always between the antithetical extremes where one locates what’s real and true.

The middle is hard to maintain. Both sides are always seducing you in their direction in a never ending war for your soul and mind. The middle is also a lonely place. You tend to make more enemies than friends.

Making matters more complicated are when you live in a socially polarizing time. The middle becomes stretched thin as people retreat to the edges. Instead of being viewed as a moderate you tend to be viewed as a traitor.

Emerging Church

About 15 years ago I found myself slowly drifting away from my conservative roots as I began to ask questions about certain ideas that seemed contradictory to what I read in scripture and how I experienced my faith. I quickly learned that my questions were looked at as doubts about God and Christianity when in fact they were doubts about the Church in general and Evangelicalism specifically. There is little room in American Evangelicalism for one who questions.

So there existed a period of time where I wandered. I struggled to find an identity and my life’s purpose became much more ambiguous. It was at this point where I discovered the “emerging church” – the real one, not the one evangelicals caricature. Even though the emerging church was in a very real sense a way of doing church, it was different for me. The emerging church was more about ideas. Authors claiming to be a part of this movement were asking all of the same questions I was. I found them to be a bold and courageous people who were tired of the politics and inauthenticity of the church.

Throughout the years the emerging church has taken various forms and their direction has become increasingly unclear. Much of emergent thought was conveyed through their official blog The Emergent Village, of which I had contributed several articles (one of which has been the highest shared article in the last three years with over 23K shares.)

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