My Evolution into Integral Christianity

The Evolution of the Integral Church
Part Three 

I was a Southern Baptist before I was born. My mother enrolled me in the nursery of her Southern Baptist Church while she was pregnant, and I worked in Southern Baptist churches for the next 60 years until the Southern Baptists kicked me out.

My journey away from traditional Christianity started early when, as a young teenager, I kept asking my Sunday School teachers why we only studied about the mystical experiences of Jesus, Paul, and the early church—instead of having those same experiences ourselves. I was told those things didn’t happen anymore now that we had the right doctrines and rules.

I went to seminary looking for that kind of Christianity but did not find it there. More things to believe and behaviors to do or not do — but little depth of a more profound experience of God. After seminary, at the Southern Baptist Church in Kansas City that called me to pastor for the next 49 years, I slowly evolved in what I would later call stages or worldviews in my understanding of the Christian path. I didn’t seem to grow much into the mystical experience of God, or what I would later call states of consciousness. 

Ordaining women

I stayed with my life-long instinct that there was more to the Christian life than what we currently saw, and I began an evolving stage path of developing into a healthier and better version of Christianity. I told our all-male board that we were as male-dominated as our society, and we should also have women in our leadership. We should also begin ordaining women as clergy. Surprisingly, they went along. Eventually, four of the eight pastors on our staff were women. The local Baptists rumbled about excluding us, but their wives prevailed!

The Charismatic Movement

I had been interested, for some time, in the charismatic movement that emerged in the 1960s in many traditional Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical churches. Here were people having dynamic spiritual experiences that changed their lives from ordinary Christians to people in love with God. It was so explosive that it divided many churches. Therefore, I introduced it slowly, and as more and more of our members had awakening experiences with God, our Sunday morning worship became filled with devotion in motion —lively joy and enthusiasm. Folks clapped along with our pipe organ and orchestra during hymns and songs and often raised their hands in worship. One of our new members, a young millionaire businessman, asked me why we had to sing so loudly on Sunday mornings. He said he was embarrassed to bring his business friends to church. When he couldn’t get the response he wanted from me, he left for a church that didn’t sing loudly at all. However, the local Baptists made another attempt at removing us. It failed. Of course, we knew we were not very Baptist-like, but we were waiting to be kicked out – it seemed the more honorable thing to do – not to mention the good press given to us as “those troublemakers.”

Amidst all my lovely fellow and sister church members who were experiencing God in deeper ways, I found myself in something of a “flow state” during worship, but not much else. It seemed more and more like I was driving my spiritual life with my brakes on!

When it comes to God, she is both beyond us and beside us!

I decided that, if not state growth in awakening consciousness, then on with stage growth in more inclusive practices! I began noticing our religious language and hymns spoke of an exclusively male image of God. After two years of debating whether it was okay to call God “her” and “she” in Sunday morning services, the church voted to do that very thing. A few men left with their families, saying, “Nobody’s going to tell my wife I’m not in charge.”

Since that time, I have either used feminine gender or neutral language for God in speaking and writing and never masculine. Nor do I capitalize pronouns for God or spirit, lessening the distance between God and God being us.

Gehenna, the town garbage dump outside Jerusalem where “the worm never dies, and the fire never goes out” (Mark 9 :48). Translated as “hell” in the NT, this “hell” today is a nice place for a picnic.

Hell? No!

Next was hell. Over the centuries, hell has become a herd management tool for the Church.

I believed we had it all wrong. I began teaching that Jesus did not have in mind what we today mean by hell when he spoke of ending up in the town garbage dump (Gehenna – hell). His view of garbage dump existence was not about what one believed but about oppressing the vulnerable. I became known theologically as a universalist — no one gets left behind, and everyone is destined for heaven.

My booklet, Hell? No! (available on my website) caused the Southern Baptists to try to get rid of us again, but they couldn’t muster much enthusiasm among other local pastors who wondered if I was right.

Becoming gay welcoming

All this change from traditional Christianity led some of the gays in the church to say to me, “Paul, you’ve changed your mind about lots of things. How about us?” We had what I thought was a rather benign “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. However, we were still part of the vast majority of churches in the world who are not gay-affirming. I took a year to study that very thing. I discovered that the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible didn’t even have a word for “homosexuality,” nor a concept of it. Ah, I had found one more thing I needed to change my mind about — what the word “repent” really means. This was a big one, loaded with our culture’s shadow. We had a surprising coup lead by several long-time angry members that used this controversial issue to try to get me and half of our staff fired. They lost, but the church also lost half of its members, most of whom, understandably, found both the gay issue and the coup too much to handle at the same time.

My conversion to being pro-gay had dynamic results in my life. When I took the theological grid off my life-long repressed feelings that said, “gay was wrong,” I realized I was gay. My wife and two grown children were very accepting, as were the remaining half of the church. When I announced this to the congregation, no one left.  However, for me, the most exciting thing that happened was this: When I took the lid off my sexuality, I also took the lid off my spirituality. At long last, I began having life-changing experiences of the presence of God, Jesus, spiritual guides, and my own inner divinity.

For a brief time, I was the only openly gay Southern Baptist pastor in the world, until the Southern Baptists finally succeeded in kicking me and my church out!  What a relief!

Finding Ken Wilber

It was also about this time I found the integral path of Ken Wilber. Not only did he have a framework that provided a way of understanding and integrating just about everything, he was much at home in the mystical experiences I longed for. Between finding Wilber, who is now a friend and wrote the Afterword to my most recent book, and my wonderful partner of seventeen years, Ivan, I was free to expand sexually, inwardly, and spiritually. The brakes were off!

I became serious about meditation because I saw the results in my Buddhist friend, Ken. Integrating Jesus, prayer and meditation, and Ken’s “Three Faces of Spirit,” gave me the practice and framework I needed to begin experiencing God beyond me, beside me, and being me — the most fulfilling and joyous adventure of my life!

The Many Faces of Jesus

I have had a life-long fascination with Jesus and a continuing journey to differentiate him from many of the dimensions of the religion that has grown up around him. For the last fifty years, I have collected images of Jesus from around the world. I installed 240 of them in the hallways of my church I (all in high resolution my personal website). Since retiring, they were donated to and installed in their own dedicated gallery on the campus of the Presbyterian related Missouri Valley College and insured for a quarter of a million dollars. 

I had often wondered why I had this five-decade pursuit. I recently realized I actually did not like most the images I had collected! I liked the messages they had about such things as compassion or inclusion. But none of them really connected to me.

Then I recently found the culturally appropriate image of a Jewish Jesus pictured here.  I resonated incredibly with it. It was then I recognized that was what I had been searching for. I had unconsciously been looking for an image of Jesus that I could more deeply and personally connect with. I say “goodnight” to this icon hanging in our living room every night.

Jesus by Bas Uterwijk

Even without a visual image of Jesus for the last few years, I have constantly experienced Jesus touching my right arm. There are also other spiritual presences, especially Abba. There is an endless radiance of love and bliss flowing from deep in my heart. The regular practice of Whole-Body Mystical Awakening continues to powerfully wake me up.

A Creative Partnership

Three years ago, I met Luke Healy, and we had the instant bond of soulmates. Ever since then, the vision of Integral Christian Network and its spiritual practices have flowed out of our shared vision, diverse gifts, and the dynamic, energetic field between us of love and creativity. Luke is a gifted spiritual gatherer and pioneering creator. We formed the first WeSpace group in our town of Kansas City with a few others. Luke and I continue to meet every week for integral prayer and the continued visioning that comes out of our sharing together.

What ICN has become has emerged from our on-going research, mutual practice, and experience now with the ever-increasing numbers of WeSpace groups. We meet with folks from all around the world, practicing Whole-Body Mystical Awakening, sharing a deeper “We,” and participating in the divine life of mystical Christianity!

We invite you to join us on this Integral Christian voyage, offering your story and evolving life journey into this network, for the loving evolution of Christianity and ourselves.