From simplicity to complexity and back to simplicity again. That's basically the story of my life as far as my Christian experience is concerned. Hi, my name's Mike. This is the Un Sunday show. I want to welcome you. I want to talk to you about that simple formula from simplicity to complexity to simplicity, because I think I'm not, in fact, I know I'm not the only one who's experienced this. My Christian walk, my Christian experience, my time in Christ started very simply, which is as it should be. The gospel is extremely simple. Life in Christ is extremely simple. But over time and slowly, that changed. That changed for me because after the first few years of my Christian walk, of my Christian life, I started getting absorbed in the church experience, in religious experience. And slowly, the freedom that I had prior to that, the simplicity that I was experiencing Christ prior to that, began to get complicated. It began to get complex. It moved from simplicity to complexity. And I spent years in complexity, and I didn't know I was even there because everybody around me was there too. You know, we're all in this thing together. And we all thought, well, this is how it is. You know, you get involved in uh church things and religious things. And by church, I don't mean the body of Christ. By church, I mean the institutional setting, the institutional church setting, whatever that looks like for you. We get involved in that church setting, that religious environment, and things get piled on to the simplicity that is in Christ. And that simplicity becomes complexity. It can happen slowly or it can happen quickly. But when we're all in it together, which, you know, both me and my wife and all of our friends, you know, we all experienced this about the same time and in the same way, in a lot of ways. And we didn't, we didn't know that we weren't uh free to not do that. Nobody stood up and questioned it, including me. No one said, hey, wait a minute. Is this really what we need to be about? These external rules, these additional things and burdens that are put on us to conform to the rules and the regulations of whatever that denomination or the religious environment that we find ourselves in, whatever it's telling us that we need to do, is that legitimate? None of us really thought about that. We just kind of went with the flow. And I suppose it was okay for a while. You know, maybe a few years it was alright. It wasn't all bad experience for me. But eventually you start to catch on. And eventually for me, it was you know, a lot of decades later. I became a believer in 1973 and I left institutional religion in 2009. So that's a while. I was there a while. I've been gone a while now, too. But my life was that little formula. It was started out in simplicity, the simple gospel, grace, the forgiveness of sins, the new you, um, the resurrected life of God in you. It went from that into complexity to conforming to rules, to doing everything that I was told I needed to do in the religious settings that I was in. And then in 2009, the Holy Spirit started to show me some things about the simplicity of Christ, and he reminded me gently, nudgingly, he reminded me of the simplicity that is in Jesus. And I began to see things. And when I began to talk about those things, I was in a position of leadership, so I suppose that that uh added its own layer of complexity. But as soon as I started talking about these things, I kind of got marked out. Beware of Mike. He's fringe. That was a word that was used a lot. He's blowing off Sundays. That was another phrase that was used a lot. I blow off every Sunday now. But you kind of you you you get marked out. You you get labeled as fringe, you get labeled as a troublemaker because all of a sudden, when the Holy Spirit starts to remind you of the simplicity that is yours in Christ, you can't be controlled. The institutional box church setting loses control of you. And that's what happens. It just is. I know that's happened to a lot of you. I'd like to hear your experiences in the comments below if that's true. By the way, I really enjoy my community here. I enjoy uh reading your comments. I do read them. I'll either give them a heart or a like or I'll answer them if I have time. It kind of depends on what's going on in my life at the moment. But I really enjoy the community that I have here, and I like that you are talking to each other too in those comments. So what's your experience been? Speaking of comments, let me know. Let me know if you're resonating with this whole idea of simplicity to complexity and then back to simplicity again. Is that does that describe you? Does that describe your life in Christ? Does that describe your experience? I think it probably does. So let me know in the comments below. But when we come back to the simplicity, so I'm talking about the other side of things now. We've we've we started in simplicity, we spent decades in complexity, and now we're back in simplify in simplicity. What is that like for you? What is it like now for you? I can tell you what it's like for me. At first, it was, I suppose on one level it was a little bit scary because you're alone. You know, my wife and I left, and our friends dropped us like a hot potato. Because we found out quickly that these friends, and I'm using air quotes here if you're listening to this on the audio podcast. By the way, it's available on video. I'll put a link to that video in the description of the audio, huh? So you can see both. Anyway, you know, we got lot we got kind of ditched by people that we thought were friends. It turns out these friends were only friends in the sense of being stuck in complex in complexity, of being stuck in that system of being told to conform. These were conformity friends. They weren't real friends. I mean we had a few real friends, and they're still with us today because they saw the same things going on. But for the most part, you know, the people that I did ministry with and, you know, that we actually vacationed with and spent time with and traveled with dropped us immediately because they had no use for us, because we had moved back into simplicity and our eyes were opened to the error of complexity that we were stuck in, if that makes sense. And so when we went back to simplicity, we weren't of value anymore. We didn't matter anymore, we weren't useful anymore because they couldn't use us. We weren't part of the thing that was going on there. We weren't we weren't being controlled anymore. We were thinking freely. I've said a zillion times on here that you know the church and religion don't teach you how to think, they teach you what to think. And we moved when we moved from complexity back into simplicity, we started learning how to think again. We started opening the pages of scripture and looking at them differently because we didn't have to conform to the group think, to the group think tank. Suddenly we were free to have independent thoughts. And the religious system and the church, when you do that, they look at you and they say, Well, you're really going into dangerous territory. You need someone to uh straighten you out, you need someone to make sure that you stay on the straight and arrow, and hey, that's someone is us, you see. And so you're labeled as a heretic. Do you know heresy just simply means to have an opinion? And that's what you get when you move back from complexity back into simplicity, is you you regain your opinions and you become unafraid, unencumbered to talk about those opinions. Because those opinions matter, those opinions are important, those opinions are part of who you are as a believer, and they're part of your journey. And so when we embrace those things and we start to talk about them as part of our journey, it makes those still stuck in the system really nervous. And so, you know, things start happening like excommunication, which I don't even think is a new covenant deal. Excommunication and you know, mudslinging, name calling. I was called names on the internet in sermons, you know, by name for a long time. You know, but uh the mud slinging starts because they don't know what else to do, they can't control you anymore. And so it begins. But then as time goes on, you become less and less important. At least that's what I've found. You know, it's been, like I said, since 2009. Here we are in 2026. So you become less and less important, and that helps because you you become more and more free, at least in your own thinking. You become bolder, you become things, things take clarity. They begin to they begin to get more clear. You gain more clarity as time marches on. So, hey, I just wanted to talk about that today. You know, sitting here in the car, beautiful day outside. It's in the mid-60s here. I was over at a park earlier, but I was gonna film there, but then uh a bunch of people came and sat down right beside me. I'm like, man, it's a gigantic park. You know, can't you go somewhere else? And it was pretty loud, so I moved back into my car here, which is fine. I love doing car videos. Absolutely love this. I love doing any kind of video. So let me know in the comments below what you think. What's your experience been? And if you like this video, make sure you subscribe and share it with someone if you're so inclined. And again, this will be available on both audio and video. Video on my YouTube channel and audio on the Un Sunday Show podcast. So I guess that's all I have for you right now. I'm gonna let you go. And grace and peace to you. Thank you for watching. I really appreciate it. And until next time, y'all take care.