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 ...

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...