The Gospel of the Cracked Floor

Beloved,

To the one who walked through the Church’s wide doors and left hungrier than when they entered

I write to you not to justify the space you left but to name the hunger you carry. Because it is not small. It is sacred. And I believe it is shared by Christ Himself.

You did not leave because you hate the Church. You left because it stopped tasting like home.

Because the hymns no longer matched the world outside.

Because the sermons named sins but not wounds.

Because the Eucharist was offered, but no one looked you in the eye.

You longed for bread but were given stone instead.

You asked for fire but were handed etiquette.

You came looking for Christ but found choreography.

Let me say this plainly:

You did not walk away from the Body.

You walked away from the theater.

And there is a difference.

We saw this long before it became a crisis.

I grieve the Church's tendency to substitute performance for presence.

I warn you: a faith that remains in the head but never touches the ground, the skin, the breath, or the wound ceases to be faith at all.

The Gospel is not an idea. It is an encounter. It is Christ, touched.

So when you say, “I can’t do this anymore,”

perhaps what you really mean is, “I can’t pretend this is all there is.”

And you're right. It isn’t.

The real Church does not begin in the sanctuary. It starts on the floor.

Do you remember the woman who crawled through the crowd to touch the hem of Christ’s robe?

She didn’t need a temple.

She needed a crack in the system large enough to fit her desperation.

That’s what the floor is.

It’s where all pretense falls away.

Where pride is impossible.

Where healing can begin.

But too many churches forgot their floor.

They remembered the ceiling, how high, how vaulted, how impressive.

But they forgot to stay low enough for the hemorrhaging to reach.

And when they forgot their floor, they forgot Christ.

I have sat in polished pews that reflected my shoes but not my soul.

I have heard prayers so clean they left no room for groaning.

I have knelt at altars that made room for doctrine but not for dirt.

Yet I have also seen communion passed in a rehab center, no incense, no vestments, just two trembling hands sharing a torn roll.

And I knew at that moment: the Church is not where we perform reverence.

The Church is where we risk presence.

Presence with the broken.

Presence with ourselves.

Presence with the Breath, who still descends, not into spotless sanctuaries, but into chaos, collapse, and humanity.

You are not wrong to desire more.

More than mood lighting.

More than theological monologues.

More than doctrinal purity at the cost of human touch.

You want something real.

And I believe the Spirit wants that too.

My dream is never to “fix” the Church, but to strip it back.

To make it again a place where a child could walk in barefoot,

where a poor man could ask a question without shame,

where women's laughter, addicts' pain, and doubters' silence would be held, not hushed.

I believe the Church should be the cracked floor where heaven meets hemorrhage.

Not a museum of saints. A shelter for the bleeding.

So, if you have stepped outside the doors, do not despair.

You may be closer to the threshold of the Church than those who sit comfortably inside it.

The Spirit does not belong to buildings.

She broods over margins.

She anoints the unwanted.

She lights fires not just on altars but in alleyways.

And if you are still aching for Christ,

perhaps it’s because He is aching with you.

Peace to your ache.

Shelter to your doubt.

Bread for your unrest.

And a Church not above you, but beside you.

Until we meet again,

A voice crying from the desert.