Wade Poe

Today is one year since I left "full time ministry" after 35 years. Deconstruction and rebuilding is still ongoing, though heavier into the rebuilding side in recent days. I realize, the longer I'm in this process, how foreign and frightening it is to a lot of people - especially church people. I still believe in scripture, God, grace, God's people as his family, and all those good things. I still believe in the complete forgiveness of sin, the gift of God's Spirit, the gift of being in his family, and that we live in trust and dependence on him, through and because of Jesus. I have watched others going through deconstruction be labeled as heretics by well meaning people who want to protect "the institutional church" and hope that they can scare the deconstructionists back into line so they don't cause waves, lose their salvation, etc. I think most of those people are well meaning. I do believe they believe that to break ranks on some things is just ...

What we know  now is our guide for what we learn next... ...and then we learn more and it re-shapes what we knew before.  And that process continues and takes turns and moves that we don't always understand  or anticipate. Sometimes it appears we are adding knowledge and  then we look back and see that what we know has expanded exponentially, not just a little. An example  of this over my lifetime has been looking at land and  locations.  I "feel" places a lot.  To a degree that can be unhelpful, I associate locations and situations and ideas. Being in the area where my earliest years unfolded can call up emotions that are familiar and strange all at once.  Seeing the places we lived, driving the roads we traveled - it all stirs up the ingredients of fragments of memories and experiences that eventually formed into ideas, directions, etc. __________ A part of growing through deconstruction and rebuilding for me has been making a place for ret...

A lot of people feel God is not a fan of them.  They feel that because they don't walk perfectly or "really good", that he's got them on a permanent "performance improvement plan" with little hope that they'll make it. That group of people includes people who "go to church", those who don't, many who never did, and many who did for a while but quit because "what's the point?". But God IS someone who loves people -- all of'm.  After all these years, I'm still amazed at John 3:16 where Jesus said that God so loved the world...   He said the world, not just some--the whole world.  All the people. Not just those who "get it all right" and are an active part of a church. Not just those who struggle to get it right, but mess up a lot and make up for it by keeping on trying. All the people.  Even people you and I might think, "Hmmmm...well, maybe not them." I think of a lot of people I know who "turne...

I was packing an overnight bag recently for a speaking engagement and when I came across my shaving kit/the bag you put your toothbrush, cologne and such in, I found a squeaky toy from several years back. It gave me pause for a moment - how did that get there?  And why is it there now? Then I remembered back three or four years when we'd got a dog toy that had a squeaky thing in it that dogs like to squeeze and that can make it more fun to play with. After having it out for about ten minutes, our dogs had tussled over who'd play with it and had a little tug of war and then tore it open and the squeaker fell out.  And then they wanted that! So as to keep them from playing with it and swallowing it, I put it on a shelf in our bedroom with the intention of seeing if it could be put back in later and sewed in such a way that it wouldn't fall out. As time goes by, it got moved from the bedroom and into the bathroom for some reason. And after a while, it got moved from the bathro...

A couple decades ago, a friend and I were talking about an upcoming trip we were taking individually with our families and how we might meet up and see it as a trip we were all taking together. As we began to unpack some details, we both realized, eventually, we were talking about going to the same state on the same weekend, but to two completely different events in two completely different cities. Needless to say, that was a funny and, at least initially, an awkward moment. We had a laugh and moved on with our lives, glad that we had clarified the two different stories we were living in. __________ Kind of a side note to some of the "quickening" revelations of the last few weeks is the idea of the story we buy into and live by.  I've mentioned it before in some other contexts, but it strikes me that I am now seeing it all around in culture, and not just in the religious/church sphere. Most striking has been a Twitter debate amongst generations about who has given who th...

A lot of people get snagged on whether Jonah was swallowed by a fish or a whale or whatever...and miss God's heart for terrible people and the massive revelation God gave Jonah about himself. Elijah thought he was alone and "done for" in a time of desperation and depression and God let him know that there were a LOT more people who, like him, were trusting God still - he wasn't alone after all. There's a lot of stories like that in the Bible that show God working with people to reveal to them their own heart and let them see what they need to see about themselves and about God himself. It's fascinating - either people taught those stories in a way that we focused on the fish/whale debate or other "action oriented" parts of the story OR we're just not ready to see the other story God is telling. A big part of deconstruction, for me, has been the process of rebuilding. Like, do you really want to rebuild? And what do you want to build in place of w...

 “That’s my secret Cap’. I’m always angry.” - The Hulk, The Avengers There's a great scene in The Avengers where a massive army of bad guys and all their destructive stuff is coming to destroy everything and Bruce Banner shows up as, well Bruce Banner.  Captain America and the other Avengers are ready for him to "suit up" and encourage him to "get angry" and he turns and says, "That's my secret Cap'. I'm always angry."  And turns into the Hulk just in time to do some serious business. It's finally, actually a moment when everyone wants him to be angry and we find out he always is... __________ Scrolling through old journals, drafts of ideas/posts/emails, handwritten and online, over the past few weeks - looking for wisdom, patterns, and such - as the Spirit has been taking me on a personal tour of me, showing me what I’ve been asking to see… “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any o...

In my experience, small groups are as different as people.   If you're joining a group in progress - doesn't matter what you call it - house church, small group, disciple group, huddle group or whatever - you don't know what it is until you get into it and see for yourself. If you're starting a new group, it will be what you make it to be. A lot of times groups are started without clarity on what they're going to be like and might or might not be a good experience, "successful", or even helpful. Expectations and assumptions vary greatly.  What I've seen for the most part are groups that are: 1) a kind of a Bible study with cheese dip or cookies, 2) a social group with religious flavoring/occasional "devotional" time, or 3) a home version of a very formal Sunday AM service (which is thankfully more rare). I went through a lot of training for developing and maintaining small groups for churches over the decades and even a good bit of study of n...