who the hell let us in?

The more I think about it, the more church horror stories I hear from Christians everywhere, the more puzzled I am at how fortunate God's allowed me to call myself. I go to a tiny church that meets in the basement of an appliance repair shop in a little seaside tourist-trap town in southeastern Connecticut. We are some of the oddest, loudest, most unchurchified people this side of Jackass. On any given Sunday you can hear the ways and doings of God explored and the nuances of Scripture unpacked - by a bewildering array of movie quotes, comic-book references, paramilitary metaphors, snatches of lyrics by everyone from Keith Green to the Dropkick Murphys, toddler-parent war stories, and accounts of high school politics. All delivered at breakneck speed coursing down an ever-widening web of rabbit trails by predominately Scots-Irish and Sicilian New England Gen-Xers who talk over, around and through each other. Naughty words have been known to slip out. No topic is off limits if a case can be made that someone there absolutely needs to discuss it. We have heard each other's stories time and again, and it still hasn't gotten old, because every one's story is being written by God.
We would scandalise many churchgoers. Maybe that's as it should be, but if God is displeased with what happens when we come together, why does He show up every week? Why do the goings-on carry over throughout the following days, lifting spirits, fomenting heartfelt worship even at one's job, reminding us of Who's running our lives and renewing our trust in Him?
Even I find the loose structure a bit unsettling at times, but I'll take it if the voice and touch of God comes with it. And it does. I'm ruined for what so many western Christians call church as usual. Show up for your weekly dose, sit down and shut up. One-way traffic. No outlet for what God's gifted you with if it can't fit in a predigested slot. And for God's sake, don't get real. God doesn't want humans in His image reflecting His glory from new and pure hearts, He wants Scripture parrots who put more stock in their own depravity than His ability to transform it. Bullshit.
Part of me wants to carve a wide swath through churches like that. If God turned me loose on them, I would probably look like Henry Rollins method-acting John the Baptist. But I don't think He will. I wasn't bullied out of my flirtations with Churchianity. I was loved out of them by Christ working in and through real, honest, flawed people who let Him love me through them. When someone in bondage sees someone living free, the contrast kills the illusion on which the bondage depends.
Get used to us, because God's nowhere near finished with us, and we're only getting louder, weirder, and bolder. If you can't square with that, your first thousand years in heaven are going to suck like a porn star in a Hoover factory. If you get there at all. Remember, the only reason any of us get there is because He's a good leader, not because we're such good followers. He - not we - will perfect that which concerns us. That doesn't negate the pursuit of holiness, but it sure-to-God keeps it from being futile.