When I left the institutional church, I wasn't bitter or hurt. We had our share of letdowns and painful events while in that system, but our leaving had nothing to do with that. I had merely come to a point in my life where I was so sick and tired of Church, I never wanted to go back.

After being away from the institution for about six months, I started to see how deeply it affected me. I felt like a tiger born in captivity, growing up in a zoo, and one day, someone left the cage door open. I walked through it innocently and unknowingly. Once I was out of the cage and in the wild, I began to discover that, for my entire life, I hadn't been a tiger. I was just a stuffed animal on the shelf. It wasn't until I was in the wild that I found the true meaning of "Tiger." In my freedom, I learned that the very essence of who I was created to be had been stolen from me by the institution.

I think we spend a lot of time trying to make "church" better and more tolerable. Every year, there are more and more conferences presenting new, improved ways to "do Church." It reminds me of zoo-keepers who decorate the tiger's cage to look as much like the tigers' natural habitat as possible. Thick trees, a pond, grass and a cave for privacy, are all lovingly placed around the pit so the tiger won't know the difference. The one ingredient, however, that cannot be given to the tiger is freedom. Sadly, this is what makes him a tiger. You can't cage something that was intended to be wild. When you do, the TIGER inside the tiger dies and all you have is a lazy stuffed animal with matted fur and a hollow, far-away look in its eyes.

In the wild, a herd of zebras may stop to drink at a watering hole. If you're on an African safari and witness that, it's an amazing sight. That doesn't mean that by catching ten zebras, putting them in a pen, and sticking a bucket of water in front of them, we can rightfully say, "Oh look - a herd of zebras has stopped to drink from a watering hole." That's a lie! This is exactly what we do with what we call "church." We capture a group of Christians, put them in the same room and say, "Oh look - a bunch of Christians gathering for fellowship." It's a lie! What is sad is that we justify it by telling ourselves that we are not to forsake the gathering at the water hole. The very thing that would have happened naturally becomes scheduled, mapped-out and dictated.

Christians who have the living love of God in their hearts will naturally connect with people and have relationship. They don't need to be monitored and dictated by a hierarchy. Things that happen naturally don't need any help or assistance from an outside source in order to make sure they continue. Any form of assistance on the part of humans will inevitably kill the essence of a natural thing.

It's that "NATURAL" part that I want to get at. When I talk about living in the wild as a Christian, some people immediately associate that with some sort of vicious, drooling beast that lives alone in a cave and lashes out, mauling everything crossing its path. Wild does not mean rabid. It's simply means free. Free to be what you will. Even a flower can be wild. I cannot stress the importance of this in the life of a Christian. Institutionalism has done everything to insure that this freedom is never realized in the heart of one Christian. That wild essence must be strangled because the heart in which it dwells will naturally demand freedom. Know this: Until a Christian is free from organized and planned religion, he or she will never really know what it means to be a Christian. They'll just sit in their pews week after week, like stuffed humans with matted fur and a hollow look in their eyes. Many will not even know that they're missing anything. They'll drink when they're told and they'll eat and fellowship upon command without having the slightest idea what true Christianity is all about. This caging of the natural is perhaps most heartbreaking of all.

Sometimes I feel like the tiger who escaped captivity and tasted freedom for the first time. Now I'm back at the zoo trying to convince the other tigers to leave with me. The problem is that the tiger in them is comatose, so they neither have the will nor the desire to experience the wild. They're not even sure I'm telling the truth and everything within them suspects that I'm not. They are slothfully satisfied in their captivity. The thought of having to hunt for their own food sounds too much like work. They wouldn't even know where to begin. The zoo has made life easy for them. Why leave? The zoo has convinced them that their cage IS the wild.

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