Sense of purpose/meaningful contribution

Remember what I wrote yesterday about leaving a church community? I listed three reasons: consumerism, lack of meaningful engagement, and incompatibility.

Well, I read this nice little interview with Bob Weir last night, and it sparked a tad more clarity (yes, the former Grateful Dead co-founder sparked clarity).

Weir says you need to do three things in life to be happy. He says you need to (1) dedicate your life to the pursuit of a sense of purpose, (2) meditate, and (3) work out (I do #2 and #3).

I prefer "sense of purpose" to "meaningful engagement" from yesterday's post. It describes more what I was trying to say. It also makes it a more legitimate reason, in my opinion.

Now, I say all this, and I don't know that I/we are looking for happiness necessarily. I'm also not looking for any particular church community to meet every single need we have. And, everyone is different. So... speaking for myself, a sense of purpose is pretty important to my life and livelihood. I need to feel like I am making a meaningful contribution (and maybe 'contribution' is better than engagement too!).

I don't know that this is the main reason for our unhappiness, but it doesn't help. There are simply no expectations whatsoever placed on people at this church. And even when you do things - like we were doing with finding people to pray and serve communion and the parking lot and whatnot - there was no sense of purpose to any of it. It was fairly meaningless work that didn't matter. Plus, the pastor treats just about everything in the same manner. It's like nothing matters! And I think that's his theological position. God/Jesus has already done everything that needs doing, and there's nothing we can do to add or take away from that. I'd say this not only leaves "man" out of the equation, but the Spirit as well. I mean, what did Jesus mean by us doing "even greater things than he"?

So, I'm debating whether to go back and 'update' yesterday's post, or just leave it. It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme, but I think this is an important distinction for me).

Reasons to leave a church community:

- CONSUMERISM (not valid)
- LACK SENSE OF PURPOSE OR MEANINGFUL CONTRIBUTION (somewhat valid)
- INCOMPATIBILITY (valid)