I LOVE baseball, especially when my favorite team is still in the hunt this time of year. The goal in baseball is to score more runs than the other team, and you do that by running over top of the home plate without being tagged by the team with the ball. This is called being safe. Every strategy in the coach’s arsenal is geared towards getting more players home safe.
It’s a great way to win a baseball game, but it makes a lousy theology.
Don’t get me wrong. Every person deserves to live in a physically and emotionally safe place. Most of us also agree that no one deserves to live in a spiritually barren place. In the perfect world we would all have access to the basics of life and not have to navigate war zones. No more orphans. No more abuse. No more broken homes. No more mass shootings. No more taking advantage of those who cannot defend themselves.
Sounds nice, doesn’t it? I think it sounds perfect, like Eden.
The hard truth is, we don’t live in Eden. We live in a world where living in a war zone isn’t just a metaphor. We live in a world where physical, emotional, and spiritual needs go unmet. People spend their entire lives in unsafe places.
But what about you? How much of the day do you spend feeling safe? There’s nothing wrong with safety, unless it’s the only thing you know. Then it becomes a crutch, an anchor, and an idol.
To live seeking safety means avoiding the war zone. To live seeking safety, means denying God’s call to go after the one who is lost, even if you are squarely planted in the middle of the 99.
Running home isn’t always what we’re meant to do.
The desire to “Play it safe” and run for home plate is a distraction, not the reward of our Christian faith. Seeking safety creates distance between you and your calling. To be truly obedient, each of us must be willing to go where the Spirit calls (even if it’s into a war zone) because there are real people out there. For some of us it literally means moving to a war zone. For others, it means being vulnerable and sharing our struggles. The key is we can only change our world, if we get in it.
The world is messy, unsafe place, but when the Spirit calls, go anyway. For you were called to be a shepherd, not a baseball player.
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Angela J Herrington is a passionate coach who co-creates massive momentum with her clients. She loves moving women entrepreneurs from stuck to living their dream! Her ideal client is someone who is willing to embrace their creativity, explore life outside of the traditional box, and blaze their own trail! She helps coaches, authors, and business women break out of their warm market by leveraging the power of social media. She brings a powerful combination of 20+ years of business, marketing, customer service, event promotion, and administration to her coaching and consulting practice. Monthly she reaches 200,000 people in 40+ countries on her social media and blogging platforms.
Hey there friend! I’m Angela J Herrington, MA, LSCC and I’m a Faith Deconstruction coach who provides soul care for people who are untangling from toxic religion.
As a certified life coach and seminary-trained online pastor, I have a lot of experience helping people connect with God. But this is also a very personal journey for me.
For the last decade, I’ve been on my own journey to break free from learned smallness and step into wild sacred holy womanhood. Long story short, after finding faith in my early 30’s I began to realize that what I was hearing from the church about women didn’t always line up with what God was telling me. I loved God but realized the church was teaching some really toxic stuff.
So this Enneagram 8, first born, Gen Xer started deconstructing. I questioned and challenged everything I thought I knew about faith, gender, and myself.
It was messy and took a lot of work to sort it out. Therapy. Coaching. Bodywork. Spiritual healing. Conferences and retreats. And even a couple of college degrees.
You name it…I tried it.
But the thing that made the biggest difference was the presence and support of wise people who helped me up when I didn’t know where else to turn.
That’s why in September 2021, I created and hosted The Deconstructing Faith Summit. I gathered 20 phenomenal deconstruction experts to share their expertise and hosted over 1100 attendees in the week-long virtual event. Those who attended realized they weren’t alone, had a safe space to ask questions, learned dozens of strategies to help them deconstruct, and released tons of pent-up emotions they didn’t even know they were carrying around.
We laughed, we cried, and we danced, but the best part was…We did it together.
It was AMAZING and it was just the beginning.
So now, I’m doubling down on my commitment to create an inclusive support system for people, like you, who are longing to get away from toxic religion and cultivate a nourishing spiritual life.
