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Do you feel free to ask questions about the meaning of life, about where to find truth? Or has your quest for spirituality or faith been squelched by those around you who seem to have answers to all the questions?

The most exciting thing for me about our upcoming experience, “8 Weeks in the Red,” is the freedom to ask questions. Here are some that came up during our last planning meeting:

– What are churches currently doing that stunts our quest for spiritual growth? How can our Sunday morning experience change those things?
– Why do Muslims, Buddhists and eastern religions have such a good grasp on practices like meditation and prayer, while most Christians never or rarely practice them outside of crisis points?
– What is the connection between my body and my spirit? Can the physical posture of my body influence the position of my heart?
– How is our attitude toward postmodernism altered when we look at it as a world view? What if we look at it as an era in world history? What if we view it as a religion?
– At what point in the church’s history did the Christian worship experience become all about singing?
– Why did Jesus always use stories when he spoke?

Feel free to give your thoughts on any of these questions in the comments section below. Or go to The Red and start up a discussion on our Facebook discussion page. Or come on out to our first meeting on January 9th and help us further the conversation on faith and spirituality.

In 1965 Coca-Cola commissioned someone to write a Christmas special that they would pay for, promote, and then use to advertise their product during the holiday season. The special was put together in record time and submitted to CBS in time for Christmas, 1965.

But the professional TV people at CBS didn’t like it. They didn’t like the amateur voices, they thought the pace was too slow and they didn’t like the portion where one of the characters read from the King James Bible.  The homely, jazzy piano music catered to neither children nor adults. And the message was too traditional, didn’t line up with the commercial feel they were trying to generate.

But it was too late. They had already committed to Coca-Cola that they would have a Christmas special for them. They aired it.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” went on to become one of the most popular Christmas specials of all time, garnering a 50 on the overnight Neilsen rating – 50% of the households in the US that owned a television tuned in to watch. The show won an Emmy and a Peabody award.

It’s time for you to stop caring what the “professionals” think.

Do you ever decide not to do something because you think it could never turn out as well as you imagine?

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“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.” – Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird

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I remember staring at the garden plot in our yard last April. There is no way this is going to turn out well, I thought to myself, thinking of all the plants I had killed in my lifetime, just by looking at them. I wanted the garden to be perfect; I didn’t want a garden, I wanted Eden. I wanted tomatoes the size of bowling balls. I would pick every.single.weed. I would build a fence around my garden. The garden would be so perfect that we would live off it for the summer, spending no money on food.

I turned my back and walked away. Too much pressure.

* * * * *

Later, I decided to go ahead with it anyway. The broccoli got eaten by little yellow and black worms (the devils!), just before it was ready to be harvested. Most of the spinach developed small holes. The second batch of lettuce tasted bitter. The corn was attacked and decimated.

But we got some awesome zuchini and carrots and the first batch of lettuce was delicious. We had so many huge cucumbers that we gave many of them away. We probably got a few hundred tomatoes. The bell peppers did well. We had enough Thai chilis to affect the importation of chilis from Thailand. The habanera peppers nearly killed us, they were so hot and delicious.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was great. It was fun. It was a garden.

The seeds we planted magically transformed into things we could eat.

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Write already. Who cares if the first draft is like a muddy puddle. The second draft will be good, the third draft even better.

Go ahead and write. It doesn’t matter if it stinks. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. You have the words in your head, the ideas, the storyline. Don’t let perfectionism keep you stranded in that place. It’s a rotten place, when you turn your back on all that untilled ground.

Till it.

Plant it.

Harvest it.

Write it.

During the past six to eight months I’ve had some intriguing conversations with some very smart people about Jesus and church and religion: my friend Jason McCarty, an eastern religion-leaning therapist in British Columbia; Gwyn McVay, a buddhist poet here in Lancaster, PA; Ryan Dagen, the youth pastor at Gap Community Church. My dad, a pastor. And others.

What resonated with me the most is that, when I give people space and time to present their thoughts and ideas, I began to realize that MOST people are on a genuine search for Truth. We all have our prejudices and stereotypes and experiences, but most of these fade pretty quickly when we start conversing with someone who is open to hearing what we think about the world, someone who doesn’t condemn us or criticize us for where we are at but simply asks us probing questions.

Huh, that’s funny. That’s what Jesus did.

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I started to wonder – what if there was a place that people could go to talk about God that was like church but without the pretense, the pressure to conform, didn’t have the baseball bat waiting to whack you back into line as soon as you suggested something different or non-traditional or perhaps nonsensical? Some recent studies suggest that less than 17% of Americans attend church on a regular basis – what if it’s because the church is more about indoctrinating people with a set of beliefs than giving people the time and space they need to genuinely explore the issues they think are pretty important?

Is there space for an environment like this, where folks from all kinds of different backgrounds can share their stories and ask tough questions out loud and disagree nicely with one another, without blood pressures rising?

We’re going to give it a try.

* * * * *

Beginning January 9th, for 8 consecutive Sundays in January and February, Ryan Dagen and I are experimenting: it’s called 8 Weeks in the Red. We’re going to explore what Jesus had to say about 8 big topics. Some of the titles to the weeks are “Theological Humility,” “Approaching Jesus During a Dark Night,” “A Changing God – The Old and New Testament,” “Homosexuality,” “Acceptance (Not Tolerance),” and “The Big Question: What Do You Seek?”

We think our generation is more attracted to authentic community and the freedom to ask questions than a once-a-week one-hour Sunday morning service. We think that you can take what Jesus had to say about the world and look at it through a postmodern lense without minimizing its affect or watering down its truth. We think that opening the Sunday morning experience at 10am and going until 2pm (including a coffee hour in the beginning and a potluck lunch) is more appealing than going to a place where you try to slip in and out as quickly as possible, without being noticed.

* * * * *

We might be totally wrong. Maybe this isn’t what people are looking for at all. We’ll let you know how it goes.

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If this sounds intriguing, you can follow us at The Red on Facebook, or on 8weeksintheRed on Twitter. We’re going to try to keep those pages updated in real time during our meetings with questions and comments that come out, and even if you can’t make it to the actual meeting you can follow along or post questions on the page and we’ll try to address them. There’s also talk of turning the discussion times into a podcast and creating a web site, but we’ll see how things go.

I’m writing this on Tuesday night. Wednesday morning I’m having breakfast with Bryan Allain – he’s probably already ordered his healthy spinach and feta omelet, while I’m chowing down on my artery-clogging creamed dried beef on toast. That’s just how we roll.

While I’m on the subject, it turns out some of Bryan Allain’s “Truth About” videos make me laugh out loud. If somehow you’ve missed them up until now, here’s his first one just to give you a taste. Find the rest of his “Truth About” videos HERE (I can’t be held responsible if you wet yourself from laughing too hard):

By the way, for anyone keeping score, his last name is pronounced uh-lane, not allen. Seriously. I’m not joking. So if you’re ever leading a creative writing class and you invite him in as a guest speaker, don’t introduce him as Bryan Allen. Because he’ll tell you, in front of the entire class, that you’re wrong.

Last year my wife asked me if I wanted to get up with her and her brother and his wife at 3:30am on Black Friday to go shopping. I am not a shopping fan. I am not a get-up-early fan. I am certainly not a put-your-life-on-the-line-at-WalMart-for-a-flatscreen-you-can’t-afford fan.

So why did I go?

My choices were to get up early and go shopping, or stay home with the 7 grandchildren who were present. Both entailed a pre-6am wake-up call, trying to organize an unruly mob, and dealing with a lot of crap. Only the shopping option provided for the possibility for more sleep (albeit in the car) later in the morning. So, in direct conflict with everything I hold dear, I went shopping early on Black Friday morning.

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This was exactly one year after someone died a shopping-related death on Black Friday in New York: