In December of 2004, as a newlywed and recent college graduate, I felt like the world and its mysteries belonged to me. Having spent years studying such things as Greek; biblical, historical, and systematic theology; and philosophy I naively assumed that I had things all figured out.
The following spring I would accept a call from a local church to serve as pastor. It was an experience that was trying and humbling for someone such as myself. Following a period of sever conflict, I stepped down as pastor with the hope of starting a fresh, new, and rather hip expression of church.
A crumbling housing market kept said plans from moving forward.
Disconnected from ministry in a local church, Crystal and I floated from church to church. Life seemed desolate. It felt as of we were alone on an island.
To pay the bills, I worked four jobs, while Crystal worked one.
All-the-while dreams of planting a church danced around in our minds.
We explored some church planting possibilities with friends. Yet, nothing was a ‘good fit’.
Amid the pain and isolation, we tried to get pregnant- only to be told that we had a miscarriage.
Isolation gave way to despair.
Theological certainty gave way to a plethora of questions that seemed to defy any semblance of an answer.
Who is God?
Why was this happening?
Did God will these things?
How did God’s omniscience and omnipotence play into all of this?
And so it was that the work of deconstruction began. It was at this pivotal time in my life that I was introduced to and became well acquainted with the emerging church movement, in general, and the Emergent Village (as it is now known), in particular.
In this movement and the community that was birthed out of it, I found kindred spirits. I found people who were tired of the pat answers.
Together we voiced our disapproval over such things.
Through wikis, forums, blogs, books, and conferences we began to call into question the theology and church structures that we had been steeped in.
Deconstruction abounded.
Theologically, everything was called into question. Nothing was off limits.
While my own journey of deconstruction did not last quite as long as others, it was a journey that characterized a few years of my life.
Yet, at the end, with everything deconstructed, I was equally unsatisfied. Some of the theology that I had been peddled was exposed for the weak, happy-go-lucky garbage that it was. My understanding of who God was had changed (although it hasn’t been until much more recently that I have begun to come to grips with just how much it has changed).
Standing amid the last remaining vestiges of my old theological framework, I had far more questions than I had answers. That was neither a troublesome or disconcerting thing, however. Instead, for possibly the first time in my life I stood in awe of God. I trembled before the mysterious God who defies being explained away.
While the lingering questions weren’t troublesome, there was something completely in satisfying about that which remained after the process of deconstruction. It seemed as if the process itself was not finished. That there was something more that was in need of accomplishing.
And so it is, that deconstruction has paved the way for the work of reconstruction. The death of previously held ideas and beliefs has made room for the birth of new ideas and theological formulations.
