Does it have to be church?

This is the question that comes back to me, pretty often, when I am
talking with people about dreams: for a community that knows how to play
and loves to work together (and vice versa), eats together and feeds
other hungry people, infects with laughter and deals with tears, loves
and is loving, accepts and is accepting. The list goes on, but those are
the basics.

Given that the Spirit has been whispering in my ears since childhood,
I want God to be at the center of all that … mostly I think God already
is at the center of all that … but for folks who have only
ever found life outside the church, putting the C word on these dreams
kills it for them.

Church shouldn’t hurt. Loving God shouldn’t be an oxymoron. Atheism shouldn’t be the only alternative to Christianity as usual.