are goals, destinations & alternatives burdens?

(ORIGINAL POST ON JULY 20, 2006)

This post is in response to a few comments made on some previous posts. Comments like I am a church-basher, a cynic, overwhelmingly negative, and a deconstructionist. I am very, very grateful for the variety of comments being made, and I invite more. In fact, I am going to launch a contest soon in which all those who comment on one of my posts will be entered into a draw to win one of my original paintings! Stay tuned. Here s an apology in my defence: I decided long ago that the problem with the church isn t finding a way forward, or alternatives or revisions or renovations. In my opinion, the church doesn t need a destination, a goal, or a way forward, any more than a family does! I decided that my ministry is about the removal of all these obstacles. Jesus was highly critical of those who kept heaping more and more expectations, laws, requirements, mores, and guilt upon people. He saw them as harmful burdens. He invited people to follow him because his burden was light. So, I am convinced that my ministry s mandate is to strip people of all burdens, and to pare the church down, seriously, to practically nothing. It looks like church-bashing and deconstruction because we tend to equate all the unnecessary extras with the church. Hey, if you want to read a man who was a severe critic of the church while being a committed part of it, read William Stringfellow's AN ETHIC FOR CHRISTIANS AND OTHER ALIENS IN A STRANGE LAND! I believe in the gift of absolute liberty of the human being, and the real fellowship we all share in Christ. That s the church. Simple as that! What d ya think?

UPDATE: October 22, 2026

Immediately, I want to insist that I have not edited the blog post above at all. I was going through a quirky phase where I didn’t capitalize the letters in the title and didn’t use paragraphs. Frustrating now, but I leave it untouched (except for the addition of the cartoon) as a testament to something I said that long ago.

I can’t believe it’s been just over 20 years since I wrote this blog post. I wanted to draw attention to it because this was one of the first times I used the word “deconstruction” in reference to my spirituality, my relationship to Christianity, and to the Church. In fact, I suspect I might be one of the first to use it in this way.

The story behind it is I was invited to a theological workshop on hermeneutics held by my denomination at the time, the Vineyard movement. We were given a stack of textbooks to read in preparation for it which critiqued several hermeneutical methods, including “deconstruction”, a word coined by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. The intention was to warn us of the error of deconstruction because it claims that no idea or text is ever clear, solid, or stable, but full of cracks and contradictions, therefore always open for reinterpretation. Instead of successfully steering me away from deconstruction, it converted me to it because it precisely described my experience on my spiritual journey, even down to the way the Bible had become seriously problematic for me.

I borrowed the word from Derrida to describe my spirituality, my beliefs, and my relationship to the Church and to Christianity.

Of course, this upset many people, including other pastors and leaders in the Vineyard. I was accused of being a deconstructionist… something I didn’t deny then and won't now.

This, I believe, led to my eventual departure from the ministry and the church less than four years later.

So, this is timestamped long before deconstruction became a thing in the Church, and I think it is important to document it and bring it to your attention.