As I was writing in the previous post, the notion of God moving and working amongst “the Gentiles” (the “non-Chosen”; in this case, the “unChurched” or the “ex-Churched”) is becoming a bigger deal to me. The “secular humanists” whom the fundamentalists rant against are looking a lot better to me (I never shunned them like the fundamentalists do, recognizing that there was a desire and an affinity to “help people” whose motives I find hard to question ). I belive it is God, at work in them. They may refute that notion, since, after all, they feel God has abandoned them, or that God is irrelevant, due to some pretty sadly shabby jobs done by some pretty unconcerned and self-justifying Churches.

These people, angry and offended by the disengagement of the Church from the world, look elsewhere. Many people today are “meeting up” with the Democratic activist groups that are mobilizing to get Bush out of office. I have felt more spiritually at home with the Democrats (some of them) than I have with the Churches (many of them). Many Church leaders have condemned and called for change in the policies of the US government, but the local Churches continue to say nothing. In those Churches where pastors may be “biting their tongue” and “keeping the reigns in” on their real doubts and oppostions to what many in our country are “caught up in”; these silent leaders are in a tough spot. Brian McLaren wrote an article in Sojourners recently on how to preach in times like these.

Right now, the spirtual centers of the country are popping up almost like “synagogues”; centers of worship and orthodoxy that serve as outposts that are subservient to “The Temple” in Judaism. God is in the holy of Holies, and the people who are heeding the call to proclaim a message of peace are dispersed, all too thinly. I read postings from various concerned bloggers out there and recognize that at this time in history, these people are my Church, where our common concerns are finding dialogue on the Net; and I am wondering about how the notion of “Where two or three are gathered” is not becoming more literally true and less “virtually True”. “Where two or three are gathered, I am in their midst”, and I sense it. And all of us are struggling to find ways to mobilize SOMETHING; SOMEBODY in the FTF (face to face) world. I started to write “the real world”, but right now, what is more REAL and what is UNREAL? The world, and our own country, has been taken over by men seriously tending toward a level of madness in their blind zeal and greed.