I'll be honest, we've screwed up at Renovatus...well, duh. I'm pretty sure the nature of church planting is that you try just about everything, do everything wrong, and eventually get led to what works for you. But I think somehow we've missed morality. Maybe it was because we oppose the type of Christianity that is pretty much only about being a good person (haven't we all fallen into this one at one point or another?), for so often we defined our faith and our God based on what we do rather than in who he is and what he's done. We (Renovatus) didn't really swing the pendulum the other direction, we kind of just forgot to talk about the pendulum. We were too caught up in grace, love, beauty, hope, and all that other stuff (I guess that's not too bad! And I hope you sense some sarcasm here).
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I had a surprising revelation the other day that not all Christ Followers think the same as me! I know right, crazy isn't it? I took for granted that people who followed Jesus knew certain things about the type of life Jesus wants us to live. I won't get into specifics, there's no reason to. It was just a shock, that's all. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm perfect or that I perfectly understand what a Christ centered life looks like. It's just that there are some things that I took for granted as obvious unhealthy or destructive choices for Christ Followers to make. That's all. And its not that I'm shocked that Christ Followers make poor choices. Please, we all screw up. No, the part I am hung up on is that some don't consider it a screw up, or at the very least they've justified it enough in their minds to push the guilt way way back into the coat closet of their brain so as to leave them free to do what they want.
Anyway, I guess I should spend more time evaluating my own life to see if or where I'm doing this same thing. Maybe I should read the Bible some more and see what JC has to say about it.

While I was preparing for my message on Sunday I was impressed by one overwhelming thought that a lot of our shortcomings in faith have to do with us telling the Holy Spirit of God to shut the hell up. We hear his/her/its voice whispering something to us and we instead choose to act out of fear. We hear that voice and instead choose to act out of passion, lust, or greed. We silence the voice of God so we can do what we want, when we want, and however we want. Training ourselves to disregard God's voice is a scary road to go down, it's a scary habit to form.