I wrote a book

It’s finally time to tell you something I’ve been holding back for #reasons:

I wrote a book. And somebody published it. And it’s going to exist in the real world, like, soon.

We Were Spiritual Refugees: A Story to Help You Believe in Church (Eerdmans, Feb. 2020) is a memoir of my beloved Galileo Church’s first five years. More than that: it’s an overflowing cup of memories, mostly lovely, some not so much, of my own journey from traditional, small-church pastor to next-church pioneer and planter. It’s my best effort to tell the truth about what it’s been like to extend a thousand-thousand ecclesial invitations to skeptical, scarred spiritual refugees. From, y’know, one spiritual refugee to another.

Because the thing is, even when the church didn’t really love me, I really loved the church. And I still do.

Not the politics or bureaucracy of it; not the hegemonic, power-trippy, patriarchal bullshit of it. But the simplicity of people eating and drinking together, remembering Jesus together, exploring the mystery of our existence together, doing life together, learning to trust God while we learn to trust each other – that’s the church I love.

And Galileo Church is like that, more than any church I’ve ever been a part of (and I’ve been part of some good ones over all these years). So this book kind of came out like a 350-page love letter. And I’m #notsorry.

I am nervous, though. What if you can’t see it like I can, because my words can’t do it justice? What if people get hung up on my potty-mouth and stop reading? What if the mistakes I’ve made and confessed in the pages of the book make Galileo’s flourishing seem like a fluke, an accident irrelevant to the wider church’s flourishing in this late modern cultural apocalypse? 

Maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe you’ll wanna read the damn thing and let me know?