Nerd Rage and a Statement of Purpose

You wanna make a nerd mad? Get his obsession wrong.

You can take the easy way out - asking about the latest episode of "Star Track" is a pretty popular choice - or you can get really advanced and spend over 250 million dollars on an unholy abomination that ruins whatever credibility was built up with the first two movies...

I can't say enough about how wrong Spider-Man 3 was. And it's not just that 3 was so horrible on its own that makes it sting the most... The real salt in the wound is that Spider-Man 2 was nigh-upon perfect. Doctor Octopus is my favorite Spider-Man villain, and the flawless portrayal by Alfred Molina fit seamlessly into an outstanding story that balanced action, romance, personal pathos, and just the right amount of comedy.

But Spider-Man 3... Oh, goodness. That really set a standard for bad movies as far as I'm concerned. The third X-Men movie, X-Men: The Last Stand, was pretty bad. The Roger Moore James Bond movies start off pretty terrible and get worse as they go along. Beer For My Horses was so bad that it wasn't even worth mocking. But none of those are as bad as Spider-Man 3. It's a disaster.

There are a lot of reasons for the 2 hours and 19 minutes of torture found in Spider-Man 3, but it mostly boils down to the studio folks shoving the Venom character into the script against director Sam Raimi's wishes. Sam Raimi felt (correctly) that Venom is a pretty dumb character who wouldn't really work with the style of Spider-Man stories he had told with the first two movies. The studio guys didn't care about that - they just knew that Venom was a hugely popular character (mainly among people who don't actually read Spider-Man comics and just have vague recollections of the '90s cartoon and video games) who could sell a lot of toys on the cheap, because hey, it's Spider-Man painted black.

So the studio guys force Venom on Raimi, Raimi forces Venom onto his version of Spider-Man, and the whole thing comes out an ugly mess.

And whaddya know, a convenient metaphor for the church in today's world just showed up!

I think most of you reading this have already seen this somewhere else, but I didn't get the job with the church in Oregon.

For the record, I also didn't get the job with the church in Tennessee, California, Montana, Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Hawaii, Arizona, Mississippi or Ontario. I'm sure I've left a few out, but it really doesn't matter - I didn't get the job there, either.

I don't want people to think I'm harboring any sort of negativity to any of the churches that have turned me down in the past two years. God has a plan for those congregations, and I'm not a part of that plan. That's OK, because God also has a plan for me, and it's really starting to look like part of God's plan for me is to bypass working at an established congregation of any kind and plant one of my own.

Like Paul leaving the Jews to reach the Gentiles, I'm leaving the churched to reach the unchurched.

It has become very obvious to me, through an occasionally painful and disheartening series of lessons, that I am not cut out for institutional preaching. For a long time I had hoped that I would be able to find that one church, wherever they were, that would be just crazy enough to trust that God would actually speak to them through me, but that door has been pretty firmly shut. The youth ministry door - the one I was originally trying to enter - was apparently never even as open as I'd thought! For whatever reason (and it's not like a shortage of options), I just am not what churches are looking for.

BUT!

It's absolutely undeniable that God has equipped me to do something for Him. I don't really care what you think about my blog - I'm mostly writing this for myself - but I definitely care what you think about God. And for whatever reason, people are generally willing to talk with me about God. Sometimes they're even eager. I can't tell you how many people I've met through just the experience of following one particular band who are open to the questions of God - and are actually seeking out someone to help them find their own answers!

I can't tell you how many people have introduced themselves to me through Facebook or the PGroove message board or even in person who have said that they specifically wanted to get to know me because they want to talk to "the preacher." Some of them want to encourage me to keep sharing my faith in an environment that might not always be as accepting of religion as some others. Some of them come to me for encouragement to hold fast to the faith that they're struggling with holding on to. Some of them just have questions.

Do I have to work at a church to share the gospel with those folks?

Back to the Spider-Man 3 metaphor now...

I'm a God nerd, and a lot of churches (not all, but a lot) are really making me mad because they're getting my obsession wrong. I am completely obsessed with God, and other people are messing it up.

And I want to assure you that it doesn't have as much to do with churches not hiring me as it does with my thinking that I've actually got anything to say to churches in the first place. I know I don't look the part of a preacher. Like, at all. I can totally understand a church's hesitancy to take a chance on a guy like me. But what I don't understand is a church's hesitancy to take a chance on God.

I am not the second coming of Jesus, nor do I think myself to have any sort of extra-Biblical revelation to the Will of God. I just think that a lot of people aren't paying attention to what the Bible actually says, and therefore distorting Christianity into a wrecked mockery of itself. Churches have become so caught up in things that shouldn't even be an issue (like what version of the Bible we use, what clothes we wear to church, whether or not a preacher can actually be effective if he's single, etc...) that we've missed the real point.

We've become so caught up in what the world thinks church should be about that we've missed so much of what God said the church should be about.

Love God, Love Others. There you go. That's it.

Musical instruments don't matter. The name on the sign in front of the building doesn't matter. The mistakes of the past don't matter. The only thing - the only thing - that matters at all is Love.

So... I'm moving to Texas.

It's not gonna happen right away, but it is going to happen, hopefully by the summer. Specifically, I'll be moving to Arlington. I've got some people down there who are itching to help me in my efforts to reach out to the people that churches have, at best, not known how to reach or, at worst, completely ignored and maybe even maligned. It's going to be a thing.

The healthy don't need a doctor. I'm going after the sick.

In the process of doing that, I'm probably going to get a little "out there." I'm probably going to be hanging out with some (more) folks that a lot of pew-fillers are pretty uncomfortable with. I'm probably going to look like someone that is rejected by the legalistic standards of people who think that following God is about following rules. I'm probably going to be surrounded by sinners. I'm probably going to drink a lot of beer.

But I think I'm in good company, because I can think of at least one other person who did all of that. Do you know who I'm thinking of?

Let me give you a hint: starts with a "J," ends with "esus Christ of Nazareth, the crucified and resurrected Son of God."

Pray for me. Pray for my efforts to reach the lost. Pray for Christians the world over who need to be reminded that our faith is not about how good we can be for God, but instead about how good God has been to us, and the responsibility we've been given to take that goodness to others.

I love you all.