Losing faith...

It has been creeping up on me for a very long time, but you try and ignore those niggling doubts, to get on with life and deny the cloud on the horizon. But it has been looming ever closer, and I have to face up to my loss of faith.

Not a loss of faith in God, but a loss of faith in what I do each Sunday in church. If I were not the one up the front would I want to go to traditional church? Personally I don't feel drawn into God's presence by the usual services, and I find myself wondering if everyone else feels the same?

Maybe it is the effect of being the minister, of services being work rather than personal worship. Or maybe I am merely embracing what it is to be part of my generation -  not relating to a being 'talked at' culture.

I don't want to preach, I want to debate, to explore together. My training may mean that I have read more books, or heard of other ideas, that I can share - but not that I have the answers or am the definitive voice of the pulpit that others might want me to be.

I look at what I do and say on a Sunday morning and recognise that despite my efforts, and the integrity of all who make it happen week by week, it isn't going to make any sense to those who were not brought up in this strange world.

But I do have faith that faith is still relevant, that there are spiritual questions that can find a peace in Christ.  But how do I make sense of that, or offer spaces to ask the questions and encounter God, when tied into the 'stand and sit, sing someone else's words and listen to someone else's ideas of what God says' way of being church?

Is this a God given discomfort to provoke me to action, or just me going through a cynical stage? The latter would be easier, it doesn't ask me to live as stranger both to the church as we know it as well as to the wider world. Easier than the uncharted waters.