Something Different

One of the things we really loved about the RCIA class was our group. During lectio divina, which was the meditation on scripture, we all took time to read the scripture--some people read it days earlier and meditated on it all week--and then we discussed how the Spirit was engaging each of us. We enjoyed listening and talking, hearing folks' lives, being part of a group. We all agreed we were going to seriously miss that, and we joked about finding a church that actually did church like that.

Yesterday morning, my friend Heather Brizzi and I spent 5 hours on the phone talking God, sharing hearts, being real. THAT was good church, and I told her that we were once again kind of lost with the whole church thing, and by the way, where did she go to church? She attends Evangelical Presbyterian. I had never heard of it, but I have heard her talk about her church a lot, and she likes it. It feeds her, so I did a google search and found one about 45 minutes from our house.

Not thrilled with the 45 minutes, and I was trying to talk myself out of it this morning, despite having taken a shower and already put on my makeup, when I found myself standing in WonderBoy's room asking, "Do you want to go to church with me?"

He really didn't. He was tired from being up late not feeling well, and he really wanted to sleep in, but he said, "Sure." So we went.

At 10:30 this morning we pulled up to the place our GPS said was our destination and stared...at the house. I got back online and googled again. There were multiple addresses and times and a lot of not-really-clear, so I tried to call the number but got a recording. WonderBoy and I were sitting there talking about whether to stay or go because who walks up to a house door and asks if that is the church?, when a car drove up and someone started unloading folding chairs. We decided we were at the right address. So, we stayed.

I've been to house churches before. They are groovy. No problem.

Except this isn't a house church. It is a full-blown church that is meeting at multiple houses right now due to the lease on their building running out and no new door opening yet. The church has split up into groups of 20-25 that meet at different times during the week. This group happens to meet on Sunday morning.

This group also happens to have church sitting around a table, sharing a meal, worshiping with different kinds of music (today was hymns we knew! Yay!), and studying the Bible together. Before the Bible study, they light a candle in recognition of the presence of God. During the Bible study, we all had the freedom to share our thoughts and how it applied to us, and once that Bible study was over, we celebrated Eucharist. In unity, we prayed a prayer for the Lord to turn the elements into the manifestation of Christ and for us to partake of Him in His fullness. Then one person held the bread to the person beside him and said, "This is the body of Christ given for you." The person took the bread and dipped it into the cup of wine while the first person said, "This is the blood of Christ shed for you." We all end in a grace prayer in which we bless each other for the coming week.

Not sure how it will look when there is a building again, but for today, it was really neat, and it looked a lot more like the Acts New Testament church than anything I've experienced, and I definitely got some ideas on how a "community" gathering would look. It was good stuff.

I hope your day at church was good, too. I hope your spirit was fed and the Spirit was free to speak what you need to hear. And I pray as you go into the week, the food you received sustains you to do the will of God and serve Him in the fullness of Christ.

Shalom!

Community

I've been thinking a lot about stuff going on in the world, specifically in the church. I read on Rod Dreher's blog about a church that has begun to socially punish members for voting for Trump. Church denominations continue to fight for denominational lines. This is not new. I grew up in a Nazarene church that was sure the liberal Baptists were wrong, and the liberal Baptists were just sure the weirdo Church of Christ that refused to use musical instruments had something wrong with them, so surely they were, but that was okay because the Church of Christ was sure everyone else was wrong, and the Methodist? We won't even talk about them. It was petty, really. Actually, what it was was a bunch of people who all wanted control and couldn't figure out how to get along, so they divided into different groups so everyone who wanted to be in control could, but once a month they all came together for a community singing, and it was a good singing, too. They had a few planned songs, but mostly they sang what people asked for, and usually what people asked for is what everyone else had in mind anyway, and you could hear the murmurings. "Yep. That's a good one." "Oh, I like that one." Crazy divided people all liking the same songs and singing them together. But once a month they put the denominational names down and called themselves "Community", and as community, these divided groups found their way to be one choir singing praise to their one King.

Comm-unity. Comm meaning "together" or "alike". Unity meaning "in oneness".

Today I've been thinking a lot about community and how to bring people together in oneness.

I keep thinking of what my wise-beyond-his-years 16-year old son said about our group in the RCIA class.

He said he thought that group was the most like real church was supposed to be that he ever experienced. He said the point of gathering or assembling, what most of us call "church" is to:
-learn the Bible, which we did.
-encourage each other, which we did.
-develop relationship, which we did.
-care about each other, which we did.
-learn how to apply what we learned, which we did.
He looked at me and said, "Mom, when we were in that group, no one was Catholic or Protestant. We were just people learning together and caring about each other."

We were a community.

And I keep thinking of the tower of Babel when God said, "If these people are working together as one, nothing can stop them."

I'm asking two questions:
1. If, working as one, nothing is impossible for us, what could we do and change?
2. How does one build that kind of community?