Wade Poe

Moving on in deconstruction and rebuilding is a combination of grieving what you left behind and moving toward where you're going. Seems simple enough, but it's challenging because you realize it's not simply leaving a long career in ministry, but a whole worldview that can never be entertained as valid or experienced the same way again. History is rewritten and understood from a different point of view, to some degree. Relationships are given a different flavor or color than they had before.  It's just very different. In the past month or two, I made it a goal to get things out in the clear daylight for myself. What part of the journey so far has been theological, per se? What part was relational? I think I finally boiled it down to a very few personalities that I was regularly running counter with in my heart and mind and I had to own my frustration, anger, and disappointment with them.  __________ In reflection, I think that in a "church context" we put a l...

Looking back on the process over the years, one of the things I realized more deeply was that walking in trust and dependence on God doesn't mean you won't go through some awful things AND that you're not necessarily given extra protection from bad situations. Romans 8 has that great passage from the apostle Paul (seen below) where he talks about NOT being separated from the love of God that we have in Christ and he points out that NOTHING will separate us from his love - absolutely NOTHING... ...and yet, his love doesn't separate us from bad things. Paul even lists off a bunch of bad things that will not separate us from God's love BUT that God's love does not separate us from the possibility of those bad things. In fact, he says it's probably the case you'll have bad things. A LOT of believers live on a razor's edge of trying to know what to think or believe about that. A LOT of unbelievers don't get why they should trust and depend on God if t...

Change is hard. Or at least it can be. Old habits and patterns of thinking step in as if they still have the final say in anything. The new, chosen directions and ways of thinking need regular support and permission to own the way forward. I still regularly dream of people and situations "at church" some of it good, some of it not. I still occasionally have the old feelings of "Oh, I messed up and need to ask for forgiveness for _____."  I still wonder what people would think of how I think and believe. Leaving behind is a choice. Moving forward it a choice.  One thing I've discovered about those choices is that you must move in action on them daily, if not hourly at times. If you don't get up in the AM and choose how you think, remember what is important, and do something about it, it's so easy to step back those comfortable shoes that take you nowhere. __________ Leaning forward into some familiar scriptures more lately - all those that speak to being ...