I am beginning to flesh out my book more. The working title is What Happened to My Church? Holding Onto Your Spiritual Family Without Tossing Out Your Faith.

The intimidation factor is great. What do I have to say? What do I have to add? How do I write so I don’t sound angry or bitter and have no solutions?

Then, I had a dream last night. My dreams never make sense and even if I remember them, they are partial and I can never try and fully understand or “interpret” them. But this one I remember and it hit directly at why I need to write this book.

In the dream, the group I was with needed to get across a ravine of some sort. The “why” isn’t in my dream. There was a giant redwood that had fallen to make a bridge across. It looked solid from the outside, so we began to crawl across. This is a dream because I would never attempt that in reality, and I would certainly not attempt to go first.

As I am out a bit over the ravine, but not halfway, the realization hits us and someone actually says, “It’s rotten at the core!” I look up and the tree has begun splitting in some way that was causing upheaval on the far end and the break up of the tree was moving toward us. We began frantically trying to back up as the upheaval moved toward us.

Physically, I was on all fours on my bed when I woke up. As I woke up, I heard these words: “The redwood is the Church. Rotten at the core.”

That’s it. I can ponder it and come up with my own interpretation, but that’s all I have with that dream. But still, it’s a lot.

Anyone who has followed me long enough knows when I refer to my “former denomination” and my “current denomination” knows I refer to the Assemblies of God (former) and the Anglican Church in North America (current). Both are “dealing” with deep problems. I use the quote marks because I don’t think the top leadership in the Assemblies of God has any godly sense of what is going on and they are in “too big to fail” mode right now. I think the bishops of the ACNA are struggling with old systems and new realities and quite of few of them are deeply aware, but there are still quite a few who need a radical “come to Jesus” meeting at some point.

So, when I write either here or form my new book, I am not talking about “radically liberal” organizations. These are theologically conservative groups. And yet… there are deep issues that at the core and the Lord is starting to reveal those issues in a very public way.

I have no interpretation as to what that means for me or for followers of Jesus. And I KNOW it’s not just with these two denominations. It is the American Church. It’s been in trouble, the upheaval as been evident for at least the first 25 years of this millennium, and yet we are still seeing hard hearts.

But as I keep plowing through this book and trying to get energy to write and overcome imposter syndrome, I have this dream and the Lord motivating me through it. There is a core that is rotten. Healing is needed. And there is work to do.