The Institutional Church
I made it back to Michigan after the short rendezvous up in the Rocky Mountains. It had been a very picturesque few days. Without many distractions and free from the demands of ordinary life, we were able to be alone together for a short time. With a six man tent set up, just a few feet from a cold, fast moving stream, it was truly a campers paradise. The gravel road stretching upwards into the mountains alongside of the stream from the nearest blacktop road to town was called the panhandle, near Aspen, Colorado. It was spring time, about the first week in May, when there was still a thin edge of ice along the sides of the stream in the morning.
It didn't take us long to realize that our differences out weighed our similarities... She flew home to Michigan and I drove, at least part of the way anyway. My car gave up along the freeway about four in the morning, somewhere deep in the grassy plains of Nebraska. After selling it for thirty dollars that day, I hitch hiked the rest of the way back to Michigan. It was a tiring trip the rest of the way home, to say the least, but only an inconvenience compared to a lot of other much more worrisome things I'd already been through...
After making it back to Michigan, I decided to stay in the small town of Ionia for awhile, where I was born. I got a cheap room at the local downtown hotel. I didn't let anyone know I was back and preferred to start a new life without having to explain any details. I had to cut my hair in order to get a job. My values and beliefs had changed a lot since my stay in West Hollywood, and from all outward appearances, I was beginning to blend in with the rest of the community. After finding a job, I was making money that I really didn't know what to do with. When I had a few days off work, I didn't know where to go or what to do. The musical talent here in Michigan would've been much less exciting compared to the talent on Sunset strip in LA, so there was definitely no need to go to bars for entertainment. I didn't drink or do other drugs, and so there was no partying with anyone. It was a lot like coming back from the war, finding myself distantly removed from family and friends who couldn't identify with who I was anymore. They had no knowledge of what I'd been through, or the person I'd become. This time however, God was filling in the gap between us...
Without thinking of myself as such, I was now a full fledged Christian. Ordinarily, Christians usually meet with other Christians, but I really didn't know any, other than one set of grandparents and an aunt of mine. My surrender to God had been such a radical experience that I was sure there would be no one who could fully appreciate it. About a year later, I was sensing the need to meet some other Christians, mainly to see if I could find someone that I could get on the same wave length with. However, After being picked up by the baptist minister who chewed me out and took me way out of my way when I was hitch hiking back from Washington D.C., I wanted nothing to do with organized religion... If it hadn't been for a sweet old aunt of mine, I probably never would've set foot in a church. She invited me to go with her one evening and I accepted the invitation. That was approximately one year after I'd surrendered my life to God. In other words, I already had my relationship with Him when I started going to church. I don't think the churches that I attended could ever quite fully understand that. They said they did, but I don't think that was exactly what they were looking for when it came to receiving full acceptance into their church...
Organized religion and the institutional church was a whole different ballgame than just having a personal relationship with God. I was coming at it from a totally different direction than the majority of the people attending church. Most of them were going because it was what their parents had told them was the right thing to do. Others were going, looking for spiritual fulfillment, or to find something that made sense in the crazy world we live in. Some were going just to find a mate, and then some, especially entrepreneurs, were going because there's much to gain by doing that which is socially acceptable...
Aside from going to church out of curiosity, I was hoping to find others who'd also gone through a born again change in their lives that I could enjoy exchanging experiences with. Unfortunately, there were only a few who could even begin to identify with having a thorough change in their life. Most had been going to church for the majority of their lives, living a very sheltered and protected life style, not seeing themselves in need of any kind of drastic change. Even though they are all well aware that Jesus clearly stated that we must "all" be born again, I don't think the majority of them can identify with original sin, or that we are all in need of being born again. This is the state of the organized, institutional church that we have in this world. I say this from the perspective of one who has tested the spirits, and the churches...
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