A Forum Grieved

In May 1994 we brought home the first Windows computer to join our household. It came with several pieces of software, two of which have endured in some form -- Quicken for managing personal finances and America Online for email. I often cringe when giving out that AOL email address in 2017, but someone recently noted that it signifies a certain longevity - starting early and staying steady. Maybe. Or maybe I'm just old. Whatever the case, it still works.

In 1994, AOL was one of few options for finding one's way around the wild, frontier town of the internet. As the AOL community grew, discussion groups formed, including one for members and friends of the Church of the Nazarene. It opened a new door for me. After a while, I moved beyond AOL and stumbled across NazNet.com. I don't remember the day that happened, but by June 1997, I was thrilled by the opportunity to meet some of the participants in real life at the General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene in San Antonio.

That was twenty years ago. In August 2017, the discussions at NazNet.com came to an end and the slate was wiped clean. Over twenty years of discovering I wasn't nearly so alone as I had thought in my experiences as a Baby Boomer raised in the CotN. Despite how numerous we Boomers are in the larger culture, I always felt alone and isolated in my church life, like no one else was dealing with the issues I saw around me. I read about how churches worked so hard to attract the Boomers (as they do now to attract Millennials), and, yet, felt like an invisible demographic wherever I participated in church life. It's all fine. I accept that church is not about me. But it's still hard when no one else shares your struggles or even seems to comprehend the questions that drive you crazy.

NazNet came along and introduced me to a whole new set of Nazarenes, the likes of whom I had never encountered in my life. It turns out I wasn't the only one left disturbed by viewing "The Thief in the Night" as a teen at church camp! I wasn't the only one to later question the entire idea of the "secret rapture." I wasn't the only one to see a disturbing gap between holiness as it was preached and the actual observed lives of holiness people. Who knew?

And now it's gone. We're being urged to join equivalent groups on Facebook, but it turns out there are no equivalent groups on Facebook.  And an attempt to recreate NazNet.com as NazNet.net is failing to thrive. It seems the NazNet glory days are over.

Still, it happened. It did what it was created to do -- opened up new levels of discussion among Nazarenes and their friends around the world. My joy in what NazNet gave me over these past 20 years far outstrips my grief at its passing. The words may be gone from naznet.com and even from the enormous collective memory of the internet, but they remain as essential elements of who I am as a person and follower of Jesus Christ today.

Thank you, Bryan Merrill, Dave McClung, G.R. "Scott" Cundiff, and all the rest who made NazNet happen. You have been a blessing.