I’m an offbeat minister leading a non-traditional church.

When I started a church in 1995, I was already pretty disillusioned with organized religion. I’d been on staff at a really good church, but that really good church — wasn’t making us better human beings.

We couldn’t abide organized religion — but we weren’t ready to abandon it either. We’d had beautiful experiences inside religion. So when I came to Raleigh to try again, the people who joined in had had the same experience.

Beneath the ruins, we knew there was something worth rediscovering. So instead of exiting, we began to rethink our core assumptions. That’s a scary endeavor! And, it upsets a lot of people. But over the years, we’ve stripped things down to the essential, the beautiful, and the universal.

And we love what we’ve found. It is beautiful. It’s transformative. There is beauty under the ruins of religion.

So, we’ve been rebuilding healthy spiritual community.

If you’re working on that too, of if you want to, I’d love to chat — share experiences.