Apparently, he had been chatting inappropriately with a “13 year old” girl, who was really an FBI agent in disguise. This was before “To Catch a Predator”, when the FBI did their own investigative work. When he actually called the girl, setting up a meeting, the FBI showed up.

He was forced to resign from the church, stop volunteering with the youth group, stop coaching, and move from his house which was right across the street from the Christian school. But, he still remained at the church. The leaders counseled him. He publicly repented, and the church gathered around him to help save his marriage, his family, and his life.

He will never be completely trusted again at this church, but he will always be welcome.

In terms of sustainability, I think it depends on the person. The person I had in mind in my previous comment never goes to church, but she has a Babette’s Feast way of creating meals that have healing qualities and that reflect her spirituality that keeps her focused on others. I have a great appreciation for her spirituality–though I also feel sad that she lacks a community that shares her perspective and that could serve to encourage her wonderful instincts for caring for others.

I guess I see religion as a form which needs to be broken in order for the vitality of the message to continue. For this reason I see organized religion as a necessary evil, but if you look at the various times in church history, it is in the big events like Luther’s nailing the theses on the door, the development of the Pentecostal church movement in California, the creation of the emergent church movement, etc. where religion creates a new possibility of becoming transparent to the Divine rather than simply stifling the Spirit by becoming entrenched in traditionalism. This is Tillich’s whole point about the Protestant Principle, that we are to resist any absolute claims about a relative reality. Religion is more likely than spirituality to attempt to nail down claims to absolute truth/certainty through dogmatic assertions, doctrinal statements, etc., which flies into the face of the notion that we are to live by faith rather than certainty.

Spirituality divorced from or in addition to participation in a religious community (in my experience of others) leads to an openness to mystery rather than a narrowing of one’s mind.

The desire for certainty is an aspect of imagination that we have by being created in the image of God. The fact that we are intertwined in ritual and narrative in our daily lives is reflected in religion. Not sure if it’s possible to separate these things out very well.

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For me, my religion provides the framework for whatever spirituality I have. It’s a communal thing, and while I’m obviously being idealistic here (because there is no perfect religion), I can’t see a way to abandon religion without abandoning the religious community.

I really shouldn’t post or respond while watching The Office, so I’ll stop here.

I don’t think that spirituality and religion are mutually exclusive, but I would say that religion, while a necessary evil in many ways, is much more susceptible to idolatry than spirituality because of the number of people involved and the role of tradition, social psychological theory of diffused responsibility, etc. However, Wink says that collective groups have a spirituality all to themselves, so maybe I’m wrong on this.

I think one of the key distinguishing factors is the openness to mystery that spirituality entails and the insistent focus on certainty that religion seems so obsessed with. That’s why you don’t see trials over heresy in spirituality or on Oprah.

I personally don’t have a problem with people who say they’re spiritual but not religious. I have friends who are more Christ-like and spiritual (including praying for me, etc.) than many of my Christian friends who wouldn’t call themselves religious (or even Christian for that matter).

Religion is made by humanity, and as such has always, is, and will ever be lacking, but it is the best we can do in response to a sensibility of the Divine.

I sat in a Barnes and Nobel a while back and read the preface to Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion”. In the preface, and later in the book, he asks readers to picture a world without religion, which is a world without religious-induced violence. He names some of the major problems in our world today, all of which are fueled by religion. If religion did not exist, does that mean these problems would not exist? Maybe, or maybe we would just find another outlet through which to fuel our hatred.

So, short answer to your question, religion is a necessary component to the universal message of the gospel. Long answer, it is not a necessary component.