From Craig
When Elesha and I returned to Southern California in 2003, we were ready for something new. We had just gone through a quarter-century stretch in the American Southwest, Southeast, and Midwest, while I practiced my craft as a theologian in centers of power of the Church of the Nazarene. We landed in Azusa, both of us working at APU, with a low pain threshold for a certain kind of evangelical church culture. We were not looking to cut off our ties to the Church of the Nazarene, but we did have trouble walking into a local Nazarene church without feeling an immediate urge to leave. We drove to San Diego about once a month, where we attended The Church of the Nazarene in Mid-City, a struggling urban body made up of various congregations that worshiped with care and without pretension in several different languages. Other weeks we visited congregations closer to our house, frequently attending All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, but also various United Methodist and Nazarene churches. Continue reading