Daniel Rose: The Pastor Next Door

Hey, welcome to the Pastor Next Door.

This is a podcast for honest conversations about faith, especially when faith feels complicated, uncertain, or worn down.

I’m not here to give you easy answers or to fix anything.

I’m here to sit with you for a bit, ask good questions, and make room for grace and honesty along the way.

Wherever you’re coming from today, I’m really glad you’re here.

Let’s get started.

Reconstruction can oftentimes feel harder than deconstruction.

You see, taking something apart is clear.

Rebuilding, that requires courage.

And there’s a tension in the reconstruction.

You don’t want to go back.

You don’t want to go back to the old broken patterns.

But you also don’t want to stay untethered, as though you are lost in space.

You want something real.

Reconstruction isn’t about returning to who you were.

It’s about becoming who you’re becoming.

It’s about becoming who you’re becoming.

It is this next step in your growth and in your maturity, becoming the person who you are meant to be.

There is an emotional reality in reconstruction that makes it feel so uncertain, because you’ve seen behind the curtain.

And now you can’t unknow what you know.

You’ve seen the hurt.

You’ve seen the brokenness.

You’ve seen the messy.

Simplistic answers no longer satisfy.

And as a result, there might be some fear that is just kind of bubbling under the surface.

You know, like, what if I rebuild and the whole thing collapses again?

What if I get hurt again?

Those are real questions, and there’s nothing certain.

There’s no easy answer to them.

You might rebuild, and you, as you do, you will probably need to deconstruct some of your reconstruction and grow again.

It’s part of maturing.

And because we live in a world with people who hurt one another, oftentimes unintentionally, sometimes intentionally, the reality is, is that you probably will get hurt again.

Because a mature faith is rarely tidy.

Now, as we move into this next stage of growth after a season of deconstruction, what we are entering into is faith after innocence.

Right?

There is this innocence that we bring into life.

And then as we grow and we mature and as we come of age, we lose that innocence, and we can see the messiness and the brokenness all around us.

And so we need to recognize the reality that there is a difference, a significant difference, between a childlike faith and a childish faith.

You see, childlike faith is trusting, open, and honest.

A childish faith is fragile, defensive, certain without depth.

And what is interesting is as you move into a season of deconstruction, you begin to realize that so many people who you thought were mature in their faith, so many people who demonstrated absolute certainty, you begin to realize that they do not have a childlike faith.

They have a childish faith, one that is fragile, defensive, and certain without depth.

And you realize that you too had that kind of faith.

And so as we mature, we move from a childish faith to a childlike faith.

We move from fragile to trusting, from defensive to open, from certainty without depth to honesty.

Reconstruction moves us towards humility, patience, and a deeper trust.

Faith after innocence is often quieter, but it is stronger.

And so we need to begin to hold tension without collapsing.

And I think this is one of the things that is beautiful about mature faith, about a resilient faith.

It is a faith that can hold things in tension.

It can hold to mystery and conviction.

We can look at something and say, Ah, I’m not sure, and yet at the same time, we can hold on to some things with conviction.

We can live in doubt.

And embrace devotion.

We can wonder and not feel as though we have certainty, and yet our hearts can indeed be devoted to God.

We can ask questions and we can trust.

We can go and we can ask all the questions we want, and yet in the midst of those questions, we can have a sense of trust in the faithfulness of our covenantal God.

And there can be pain alongside hope.

We can hurt and acknowledge real pain, and we can also embrace a sense of hope that is rooted in the resurrection.

Because here’s the thing: you don’t have to resolve every tension to remain faithful.

In John chapter 20, verses 24 through 29, this is after Jesus’ resurrection.

Thomas is doubting.

You know, he says, Hey, I gotta see.

I gotta see where the nails went in his hands and his side.

Thomas doubts.

He questions.

And then what happens?

Jesus shows up.

He shows up.

He shows up and meets Thomas in his doubt.

There’s no rebuke.

Jesus doesn’t say, Oh, Thomas, you have failed me.

No, he simply offers him his hands and his feet and his side.

It is only invitation in the midst of doubt and in the midst of struggle.

And there, we are reminded that resurrection faith still has scars.

Jesus still bore the scars, even after resurrection.

And so this resurrection hope that we embrace is one that is real.

It is one that embraces the pain of life and the sorrow of life and says, on the other side, there is more life.

This is where our hope is rooted.

So what does reconstruction look like practically?

Well, I think a few things.

First, there is a returning to worship, and we do so cautiously.

Because to live out our faith, we need to do so with other people.

We need to do so in community.

And so we return to worship cautiously.

This doesn’t mean you go back to your old church or old—because there you may have experienced some deep wounding and hurts.

And so you discover new places, new people with whom to worship, but you do so cautiously.

Maybe we pray differently.

We pray more honestly and with less flowery language.

We just pray like it is.

We read Scripture with new lenses.

We read it a little bit differently, not out of this place of absolute certainty and through a lens of the scaffolding that we previously held, but maybe we read Scripture with new lenses, looking there and trying to understand how grace and love are centered.

We hold on to doctrine with humility.

We realize that the various doctrines that we hold, that are important, that help point us in the right direction, they’re not the absolute truth, that our doctrines are not absolutes.

And so we hold them with humility.

And we stay in community imperfectly.

We continue to move towards other people.

We don’t live in isolation.

And in the midst of all this, we need to remember that we are not rebuilding certainty.

The goal here is not to rebuild a new certainty.

It’s not to reconstruct a new certainty.

It is to rebuild trust.

Trust with the covenantal God, trust in ourselves, trust in community with others.

And I think what we begin to find is that trust is stronger than certainty.

We need to understand that in the center of our reconstruction is grace.

Because reconstruction is not a process where we prove that we still belong.

That’s why probably going back to an old community is not the way.

You’re going to need new wineskins.

You’re going to need something new, a new community to connect to.

But reconstruction isn’t about proving we still belong.

It’s not about earning our way back, where all of a sudden we go, Oh, I backslid for so long, and now I need to earn my way back.

That’s not it either.

What it is, it is a responding to a God who never left.

It is realizing the faithful God.

The covenantal, faithful God, who loves us without condition, is still there, arms wide open, ready to engage with us, ready to show us God’s own scars in the face of Jesus.

Because God’s faithfulness did not deconstruct when our framework did, and we need to remember that.

God’s faithfulness did not deconstruct when our framework did.

So let’s rebuild from the center.

We talked about that in last week’s episode.

What is the center?

The center, the center around which we reconstruct, is around the crucified and risen Christ, the self-sacrificial, loving Christ who offers grace before effort.

He just says, Come, come to me, anyone who is weary and heavy laden.

There is simply invitation from Jesus to come and experience self-sacrificial love rooted in grace.

At the center, we need to be reminded that love is the measure.

Love is the end of our faith.

It is the end of our doctrine.

It is the end of our theology.

Love is the greatest of things in the way of Jesus.

And so love is the measure.

There is no other thing to measure by.

How are we loving?

And our hope is rooted in resurrection.

This life beyond pain, this life beyond sorrow, this life beyond death.

Our reconstruction is rooted around those four things: Christ crucified and risen, grace before effort, love as the measure, and resurrection as hope.

So start at the center in your reconstruction.

Stay near Jesus.

And as you do, it’s okay to let the rest settle slowly.

So if you’re rebuilding right now, take your time.

You don’t need to be certain.

You don’t need to have answers for anyone or everyone.

All you need to do is stay honest.

And on the next episode, we’ll talk about community.

How do we stay connected when church has become complicated?

For now, remember this: faith with scars is still indeed faith.

I look forward to talking to you next time here on The Pastor Next Door.