Introduction

I better give some background.

I was raised in a small-town Methodist church. I loved church as a kid. But when I became a teenager, and people were going to try to start getting into my business, I quit attending. When I was in college I felt a tug back and attended a couple of Sundays at a local church, alone. Then after I got married and had two children I started attending church again, alone, without my husband. Then he and I divorced.

It was during this time that I came to really know the Lord. I got all into Him. I met my current husband on a church retreat and he and I made sure that our faith was a leading point in our marriage.

We moved from Missouri to Oklahoma and started attending a church regularly. As is my custom, we got ALL INTO it! We taught college Sunday school, worked in the nursery and children's department, and then I signed on to co-direct VBS. The VBS at this church served at least 500 kids every summer, not to mention the kids that volunteered at it. It was a big deal!

We started to see a shift in our church when they decided to start construction on a $10 million church building. The building campaign started. We felt uneasy. The pledges they received from the congregation were $1 million, which meant the church was willingly going to go into debt to the tune of $9 million. The plan to sell the existing church was now, all of a sudden, a necessity.

We felt the church was heading in a direction that was just plain wrong. The icing on the cake was when I had requested that VBS be prayed over during service on the Sunday before it was to begin. I was told they did not have time to put it in the service plan. Then at the end of the service, that day, the pastor stood at the pulpit and asked for the congregation to pray for the building committee! I was stunned and angry! I started to stand up right then and leave. My husband put his hand on my knee to keep me sitting.

I worked at VBS that next week. And then we left the church.

We started attending an Assembly of God church. Waaaaayyyyy out of my comfort zone, but we did it. We were impressed with their prayer time and their missions giving. But about five years into it we saw ourselves acting elitist, like many there. I was obsessed with dressing my kids a certain way, buying certain things, acting a certain way and we were prideful in our giving. We saw the pastoral staff lifting up "certain kinds" of people. And we saw them dropping others flat on their butts when they fell down in life. God was getting none of the glory for what was going on. It was all about how good we all looked. It was so fake and superficial that we just had to get out! When we left, we knew of at least five strong marriages that were on the brink of failure. Ours was one of them. But nobody cared. The church didn't have time to care because they were so concerned with what rank they were in the Assembly for amount of missions given that year.

We didn't know where to go or what to do. Since my best friend was the wife of the associate pastor at our old church, we decided to head back there. Do you know that within two weeks the sermon series began about another building campaign??? We were right back where we started. And I couldn't take it. I stopped attending. Rick took the kids for a couple more months until he had just had enough, as well.

And we haven't been back in a church building now for over a year.

This same church recently church planted their second campus in the middle of one of the most affluent neighborhoods in our city of 30,000. And they hired on their staff a pastor that was on The Biggest Loser. I guess now they have their celebrity endorsement. They are consumed with being a mega church.

My friendship with my best friend has ended. I couldn't stand the changes in her, and she couldn't stand the changes in me.

I still feel a deep need and desire to be in church. But where is the church that God intended?

I love the Lord. I do not love people. {These are two incredibly hard things for me to reconcile! How can you say you love the Lord if you don't love His people?} I have been hurt by those I trust most, especially in the church buildings. And my trust of people is shattered. I guess that's my only weak way to justify it.

But I still love the Lord.

I have a few problems with reading this book:

1. I was annoyed when Francis Chan received so much glory for writing a book about loving people. Didn't God already write that book? I am afraid I am going to feel the same way about David Platt. He is writing a book about how we should be radically following Jesus. But didn't God already write that book? Will Mr. Platt receive the glory for this book and its message, or will God get His due credit? I am reluctant.

2. I am so afraid that I will be annoyed reading the blog posts by others reading this book with us. I am a "tell-it-like-it-is" kind of girl. What I write will not always (if ever) be pretty. I will be completely transparant! Will others? Or will it be a lot of fluff writing about how God is calling him or her to do this or that and he or she is joyfully and willingly doing this or that? That won't be me because of .....

3. I am having enough trouble loving people in my surrounding community, let alone on the other side of the world. I desperately need a revelation about how to love people here! I don't have expectations to sell all I have and move to a foregin country. I don't even want to do anything close to that! I just want to regain a love of people and a compassion for them and re-figure out how to reach out to them here. I am afraid I am going to feel pressure, by God and others reading this book, to be radical in their way. For me, being radical means just learning to obey God in the small things, on a day-to-day basis. Believe me, that's struggle enough.

I love the Lord. I want to do His will. But I am weak. I am worthless. I am not willing to do all He will call me to do.

This is going to be a rough road for me, don't you think?

But I am ready to get started and see where it leads.

My name is Nicole. And I am Radical-ish.