When a reunion of people who have past history of friendship, fellowship, faith, and inner tensions happens, how does one act when the inner tensions seem to be the primary thing you remember from the past friendships and fellowship?

Within the past five months, I have had to wrestle with that hard question on Sunday mornings?

It seemed much like that famous church scene from the Blues Brothers movie where at the Triple Rock Baptist Church, Jake and Elwood Blues are standing in the narthex hearing the preacher start preaching his sermon which leads into the choir singing the ole-time spiritual “Old Landmark”. It is during the middle of this song that the sun shines through the clouds striking the church, radiating through the stained glass window, and gleams it’s ray of light on Jake and the idea on how to save the orphanage hits him….

THE BAND………

Jake goes through some ecstatic experiences with dancing and goes back to the lobby where they are standing and finally convinces his brother Elwood that reuniting their old band for a concert gig to raise money is the way to go.

Five months ago, a very prominent person that had left my current church and had been gone for almost twenty years felt called by God to come back to my current church. I personally have no problem with that decision and like that person very much.

In the following months I started to see very slowly, many (not all) of these same friends I mentioned in my first paragraph leave their churches and starting to attend my church to eventually join the church in part because that prominent person decided to come back. To be very honest with you, I have seen these people from a distance from my perspective of being in the balcony. However, I have never approached them after all of these years to just say “Hi”.

It is very easy to wrongfully apply “Charismatic Replacement Theology” to the text in Isaiah 43 (especially verses 5-7) and replace the terms “sons” and “daughters” with our names and claim a greater restoration and destiny that what we envisioned ten to fifteen years ago when 1 Corinthians tells us otherwise.

But it is harder to just “move on” when those “inner tensions” seem to be re-triggered when you see them almost in a sense of a spiritualized version of PTSD. The inner tensions were not “acts of wrongfulness”, but slight differences in theology as I wrestled back then between a more charismatic and chaotic style of worship when I felt that I needed a calm and stability type of Christian lifestyle.

I have this “fear” that if I did go up to some of these same people I fellowshipped with ten to fifteen years ago to try to re-acquaint myself with them that

The ‘inner tensions’ would rise up again where years ago, I left with what appeared to be intact friendships that now have the potential to become more irreconcilable

or

The idea of ‘recreating the band (church)’ in order to recreate some good time of past history when all I want to do is like the title of this blog , go “Onward, Forward, Toward…” what God really wants me to do

or

The idea of ‘recreating the band (church)’ in order to claim and fulfill some spiritualized “manifest prophecy / destiny” of agenda that they felt should have already been obtained and in practice; when that “manifested destiny” is no longer in my spiritual goals towards wholeness, marriage to a hot Christian wife, stability, healing, safety, sanity, order, and proper Biblical interpretation by the progression from a charismatic mindset to a more reformed mindset but still open to proper spiritual gifts and true Biblical healing.

I really want to speak and say hello to these people again with no obligations on either side to recreate a past band/church or to recreate a future manifested prophecy / destiny consisting of an agenda army because the fellowship aspects of just being friends was something I really enjoyed. And I really do not know if this is possible or not. I really do not know if the friendship reunion can be separate from the agenda army…

There is a part of me that wants to follow Baretta’s advice in reference to crime… “Don’t Do it” and leave life alone to keep what little sense of stability intact while there is a part of me that feels like the risk for re-acquaintance has to be taken with the preparation of either outright rejection, saying no to the agenda army aspects and risk losing what little friendship was left, or figuring out a way to separate friendship from agenda. Not for the sake of recreating the band, but for the sake of knowing that we can truly have Christian fellowship and unity without mistaking these terms for agenda army and unanimity.

Do I risk taking the risk???? That is the question