Find a group of people to meet in a home that are wanting more from their spiritual community. Talk about your tensions with what you experience now without letting it turn into a bashing session (hard I know, when you are in pain, but a dangerous foundation to lay as a new beginning). Share a meal together, talk about hopes and dreams. If your group has kids talk about what you want for your kids to learn from this time. About themselves, and about God.
With the group above, begin a look into Acts, the beginning of the first church and take note of what they did with “one another”. Talk about in your current experience of church what is cultural and what is biblical. Have some silence and listen for what God might be inviting you as a group of how to spend time together. Pay attention to “shoulds” and only follow the “invitations”.
Take a spiritual gifts assessment and talk together about what you have to give to the body you are with. Everyone should feel freedom to excercise their gifts, male or female if you want this to be a balanced group.
Meet and discuss what you want to begin doing with “one another”
Visit a church of an entirely different ethnicity and notice how they do things differently than your church of origin, good or bad. How does the spirit seem to be leading them?
Read some books (or form a book club to process what your reading) that prods new thinking for you. Below are some ideas: (remember, you may not agree with everything in a book, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some gems in there for you. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater) Searching for Sunday, Letters to the Church, The Irresistable Revolution, Life Together, Soul Repair, Wild in the Hollow and for the truly open minded – Dance of the Dissident Daughter.(* I didn’t resonate with everything in her book, but to read her journey was fascinating and it opened up courage and space in my heart to examine where I had been silenced and what God was inviting me into.)
Instead of going to church, go to a park or somewhere that inspires you and you can focus and not be distracted. Bring the Spiritual Disciplines Handbook with you and take the quiz on pg. ? and discover connecting with God in new ways.
Start a discovery bible study. See what new things open up, and where God leads you together.
Meet with a spiritual director and begin to unpack your experience of God and his activity in your life.
Above all, honor the longing you have to find the true kingdom at hand, and give yourself grace and time to try unconventional methods to get there. As you go looking, pay attention to the fruit you hear from different voices that are out there. Do you hear judgement? Do you hear anger over and over in there content? Probably not wise to allow them to lead you somewhere, cause it may not be fresh water.