The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the

John Shelby Spong, bishop and prophet of restless hearts, once declared: “The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world.” In this saying, he names a generation of seekers who have walked through the doors of churches, bowed in the pews, sung the hymns—and yet found the God presented there too small, too confined, too bound by human dogma to speak to the vastness of their lives. These are the alumni, those who have graduated from old forms but still hunger for the Eternal.

The ancients knew this struggle well. In every age, people have outgrown the narrow images of the divine offered to them. The Israelites, fresh from Egypt, yearned for a golden calf because their vision of God was too small; yet prophets rose to say, No—your God is bigger than idols. The Greeks built temples to Zeus and Athena, yet philosophers like Plato and Socrates began to sense a reality beyond those statues. Spong speaks in their tradition: that the God of institutions may be too small, and the true God of the world must be sought beyond walls, beyond creeds, beyond fear.

History bears witness to those who embodied this search. Consider Martin Luther, who saw the corruption of the medieval church and declared that the God of grace could not be confined to indulgences and papal decrees. He became, in a sense, an alumnus of the old order, reaching for a God big enough to forgive, to embrace, to liberate. Or think of Galileo, who looked through his telescope and realized that the universe was vaster than the church had taught. His discoveries demanded a God greater than geocentric dogma, a God who could reign over galaxies, not just a single sphere.

Spong’s words also carry compassion. He does not scorn the church alumni association, nor condemn them as heretics or deserters. Instead, he calls them his audience, his people, those whom he longs to guide toward a God wide enough for their doubts, their science, their modern lives. His vision is pastoral and prophetic: the recognition that faith must grow as the human spirit grows, or else it withers into irrelevance. The God big enough is not one of fear or tribalism, but one of mystery, expansiveness, and love.

The meaning of his statement is both painful and hopeful. Painful, because it admits that institutional religion often fails, often shrinks God into rigid forms that cannot hold the immensity of existence. Hopeful, because it insists that God is not lost, only greater than the walls that tried to contain Him. The alumni may leave the church building, but they need not leave the quest for the divine. Indeed, their leaving may be the very path that leads them to a deeper, truer vision.

The lesson for us is clear: do not settle for a God too small for your world. If the faith handed to you cannot embrace your questions, your wonder, your grief, and your science, then seek more deeply. Let no institution, no creed, no authority tell you that God ends at their borders. For the Eternal is not bound. The God big enough is the God who stretches wider than galaxies, deeper than love, fiercer than justice, and closer than breath.

Practical actions follow. Read widely—scriptures, poetry, science—and let each expand your sense of the divine. Ask questions fearlessly, knowing that truth need not fear inquiry. If your tradition fails to hold the immensity of your soul, step beyond it without shame, for you are still walking the sacred path. And when you meet others who have left, do not dismiss them as faithless, but honor them as seekers of a God big enough for this vast and wondrous world.

O seeker, remember Spong’s wisdom: many are members of the church alumni association, yet still they hunger for God. Do not fear to be one of them. For the temple may be too small, but the sky is wide, and the divine waits there—greater, deeper, and more wondrous than any institution has ever dared to proclaim. Seek that God, the God big enough, and your faith will not wither but flourish like a tree rooted in eternal soil.