One of you sent me a drunken email. And it's brutally honest.

"I'm three beers deep."

“Drinking a few beers listening to episode 1.”

That’s the title of an email I got from one of you last week. It was brutally honest. Radically vulnerable. And heartbreakingly familiar. Which is probably why it’s one of the most treasured emails I’ve ever received, while also being one of the most tragic.

I want to share the email with you. I’m going to keep it anonymous. And I’m going to put it behind the paywall. Not because I’m trying to make money off of it, but because I believe in some ways it should be reserved for those of us who are the “inner circle.” And then I’m going to share what I think about it, and why it shows one of the biggest, most frustrating, problems in the church today. And maybe you can relate to the email as well, or at least parts of it.

So, here it goes. Let’s call the emailer “Alex.”

“I used to be a part of a community that encouraged vulnerability, and now I work for a different church where that doesn’t appear to be encouraged at all, which feels like a big set back,” Alex begins. “I never would have thought that going to work for a church would feel like back sliding, but without a culture of vulnerability, confession doesn’t really come at all.”

I could write 1,000 words just responding to those two sentences. But he doesn’t stop there, so neither will I. Alex continues: