Summer of Jubilee

Last weekend the Jubilee Fellows gathered together for a time of sharing and reflection over the experiences we had this summer. It was amazing how much we looked forward to seeing one another, and I was really struck by how everyone was so much more confident! Even though our experiences were very different in some ways– whether we worked in church planting, megachurches, small churches, community development organizations, youth/children’s ministry, worship ministry, etc., we all came together and were unified by worshipping with one another, and by the unique experience of only being rooted in a place for 10 weeks.

Sometimes it felt really long. There were those of us who felt like we didn’t have much to do. Yet we still had personal growth and life-changing experiences. There were those who felt like we were so busy we couldn’t imagine leaving at the end of 10 weeks because there was still so much to do!

Some of us felt confirmed in our inclinations that we might want to go into pastoral ministry. Some did not; but at the least, we all felt a deep respect for the work of churches, and know that no matter what we get paid to do, for the rest of our life we cannot live apart from the contextualized, local church.

Now before I keep talking like this, I should mention, I am preaching at Calvin College on September 14 (and some of what I’ve written is in the current draft of my sharing time). So I will stop here, but I am excited to share with the Calvin community what happened this summer in churches across America (and Canada!). All the Jubilee Fellows are also doing some sort of service project this semester, so we can give back to the Calvin community based on our giftings and experiences that we gained this summer. I had a project lined up, but unfortunately it fell through, so I am currently praying for discernment on that.

Jubilee reminds me of the year in which all the debts were released, and there was just a time of feasting and fellowshiping, like in the Kingdom of God. It was clear that we all saw glimpses of the Kingdom of God in our churches this summer. My prayer is that we continue to see it at Calvin College this year, and that we can be part of that Kingdom-in-breaking.

Isaiah 1:17: “Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” 

I still have a few more days to go in my internship, but yesterday was a day of a few goodbyes.

First, the family I’ve been living with went on vacation to California, and will not return before I leave. We sat down for dinner together one last time, and they gifted me with kind words by all going around the table and saying one thing they appreciated about me, or a good memory. The mom mentioned how she appreciated that she could count on me to watch her kids at random times when she ran to the store or something. Their dad mentioned how he appreciated that I was flexible when the kids came running into my room, jumping on my bed, throwing my toys, etc. Yay for living with a 2 and a 4 year old! I really appreciated that environment though, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The 4 year old remembered how a few minutes earlier I had kicked a ball really well (don’t question the things a 4 year old appreciates!) and the parents spoke for the two year old– about how much he appreciated seeing me, and running up and hugging my legs. I didn’t grow up with siblings, so it was really fun to be around little kids and see the kingdom of God in their curiosity, optimism, and sense of justice.

Next, I’ve been attending leadership meetings for the Fellowship, and they meet once a week on Thursdays, so this was my last one since I leave next Wednesday. They had been asked to each think of a symbolic gift they could give me that had some sort of teaching about community. They know I am planning to live in a household next year with 9 students and a family of 5, and wanted to give me some tools to help with that living situation.

First, an aloe vera plant. The leaves can heal cuts and burns, which is both a practical need in community, but also a spiritual one. We all come to community with our internal burns and cuts, and unknowingly lash out at one another from that place of hurt or burden one another with it. That is one thing I’ve really noticed about this place, is they do a really good job giving authentic healing to hurt people. And we are all hurt and broken in some way, so that is a really important aspect of life together.

Next, one woman gifted me with two things: earplugs, and a matching mug set with tea. These symbolized how in community, you need both silence and time for yourself, and time to fellowship with one another. Although it’s hard to know when to make time for both, both are needed, so she encouraged me to remember that.

Next, one of the team gave me an IOU for an inspirational card. This team member has been a source of inspiration for me the whole time I’ve been here, as one of the elders in the community who has been here for decades. I appreciate the need for mentors and inspiration from those who have done this longer than we have.

Finally, the last present was a rubberband, symbolizing the flexibility we need, especially when our expectations for what should happen do not line up with what God actually does. I really like this gift, and have already began wearing it around my neck to remind myself of that; that I should bend to the will of God, not the other way around.

Leaving is harder for me than I expected. There have been times while I’ve been here that I didn’t feel quite at home, and lately I’ve been really homesick for Calvin and Grand Rapids. But at the same time, these people are just getting to know me, and I them, and I lament that I could not be here longer.

This Sunday I will be given a few minutes to give an overview of my internship, so I will try and blog that day once I summarize my thoughts sufficiently.

This is not officially one of my internship tasks, but I thought I’d share about it here, since it did feel like something a church intern could do. Two of my best friends from high school, Seth and Karissa Johnson, celebrated their wedding this weekend. I felt like Jennifer Lopez, flying in especially for the occasion, and figuring out all the behind the scenes details. I mostly helped coordinate the set up, although much of that was already taken care of by family members (thank goodness I didn’t have to do the decorations myself!). Then I coordinated with the guy doing music, the talented James Trott, since the music timed all the processions of the family and bridal party. I mostly just stayed calm and made people feel like I was covering things so they didn’t have to worry about them; told people when to walk and with whom, and made trips to the apartment to get things that were forgotten, such as the communion bread. =) Since my position was created late, I didn’t get to help plan any of the aspects of the ceremony, although Karissa and Seth did a great job with that. It was short and sweet, with Keith Sjodin presiding. My position also helped him focus just on what he would say and not the coordinating part that might have fallen on his shoulders. Overall, I just stood around with a clipboard answering questions if I could and allowing the bride and groom to focus on other things on their special day. Everyone was present and accounted for, the chairs and tables and decorations all went up, and people got a chance to chuck rice at the bride and groom before they left. All in all, my first wedding coordination went spectacular! Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson!

Last Thursday through Sunday I got to go on a camping trip with the high school youth group. There were 10 students and 3 adults, and considering that their high school youth group includes maybe 2 more students than were there, it was a pretty big accomplishment. I grew up in a church with a youth group mailing list of hundreds of kids, 50 to 100 that attended regularly. Our big “retreats” were either summer camp, with hundreds of kids from other churches, or we would rent an inside facility for ourselves in the winter. Having an entire youth group then being a tight-knit group of around a dozen kids, then, was a new experience, and a little hard for an outsider to just naturally acclamate to the group, especially since I’m not a big frisbee or soccer player (although I would have played volleyball with them, but they never got tired of the frisbee lol). I appreciate that age group, though, and how there is a lot of capacity for learning there, and the ground work for thinking through a lot of things that some people don’t get to in college is there– talking about issues of gender, race, the environment, and deep spiritual things in general. The current youth group leader is really good about engaging them and asking them questions and listening to their ideas, and some of the students seemed like they really didn’t have another outlet for that sort of adult presence listening to them (someone other than their parents). Being on the trip didn’t make me immediately know I might be called to youth ministry, but it did make me think that maybe I would like to teach that age group, and interact with them in a classroom setting. The youth baptism class I’ve taught a few times has made me think that too, and been reinspired about how great my own teachers were in high school, inviting us over to their homes for gatherings and movie nights (related to the classroom activities) and just getting to be friends with them, appreciating their enthusiasm and optimism.

I have to admit I’m not naturally a very good camper, I went as a little kid, but during my teen years kind of stopped going with my family, and so I was really grateful for having been on trips with Calvin folks through Residence Life trips the last few years. I knew what sort of things we could cook over a fire or stove, and how to cook them, and was more okay with smelling like I was camping instead of the normal, make-up and hair up-do routine.

On Saturday, however, when we went white water rafting, that’s when I really felt out of my element. I was with one of the other leaders, and he goes canoeing and outdoorsy stuff all the time, so I was just trying not to hold him back from having a good time. On the second rapids, however, I ended up getting thrown backward and almost into him, and he jumped out of the boat to avoid a collision! That made me feel a little guilty. But then we did relatively well after that. But as my title suggests, there was a thunderstorm. It was a 5 hour long trip down the river, and we were about 4 hours into it, when all of a sudden we hear some thunder in the distance, and see this dark line of clouds moving toward us. We’re on the river and we can’t get out, not that we would want to, because on each side are big trees, so not a good place to be if lightning strikes… and it was owned by the Indian Reservation, so we weren’t allowed off the river anyway. But being in water isn’t the best place to be either, although we were in rubber rafts, which was supposedly safer. But I was pretty scared, and being one of the “leaders,” I felt like I had to act okay and hide my fear as best I could. The two girls had gotten behind the rest of the group, and so my raft decided to stay behind and wait for them and hope they made it through the storm okay. We waited maybe 30 to 45 minutes, and when they saw us they were so happy! One of the girls had fallen out of the raft in the middle of a rocky rapids, and the two girls had been really freaked out by that, especially I think because there was no one they knew near them. So they apparently had started singing hymns at the top of their lungs, and praying, and thought that we were in a sense, an answer to their prayers. So each of us leaders paired up with one of the girls so that they felt safer, and we stuck together as we paddled the last portion of the river. There was one more big waterfall, and unfortunately both me and the girl in my raft got bumped out at the bottom, and I got a couple nasty bruises, but no broken bones or lost students, so all in all, a pretty successful trip! (Don’t even get me started on all the mosquito bites I got though… even with the preemptive bug spray, I got probably around 50 bites, but I lost count every time I tried).

I did kind of have a revelation while I was on the trip. The bipolarization of my emotions was put into perspective for me; half the time, the people I’m with this summer feel like they are from a whole different planet. The other half, I get reminded that they are just like me. For instance, one minute someone’s talking about being a Luddite, hating technology and loving gardening and biking and homeschooling and interacting with the poor, eating locally, etc., and the next moment the kids I was with would talk about lines from Monty Python, eating smores and star tipping. I was reading the Conspire magazine that the youth leader brought along– a kind of Shane Claiborne-y publication that a lot of intentional communities like this one read. The last themed issue I really appreciated the articles I read, about how new communities shouldn’t try to do everything at once. But this issue was all about child-rearing. A lot of things were good, and helpful. But they tend to define “radical” not as going to the root of the tradition, like Radical Orthodoxy would, but as counter-mainstream-culture as possible (which they think is the same as “rootedness”– being rooted to a certain place and people group I think). But how it came out in this issue, at least to me, was that they were arguing for either homeschooling, or if you did have to send them to public school, you should send them to a school that all your neighbors go to, so it connects you to that place, and if that’s not possible, than homeschool them. Whatever you do, don’t send them to a “bourgeois” private or charter school– let them get their education in an individualized, non-standardized way that thinks outside the box in terms of schooling. Have them go to Washington D.C. and learn about politics there. Or have them build a chair in the backyard, etc. But it really made me question whether I would feel at home in a community like this, because the only reason I’m here is because of my private education, and a high quality education is really important to me. If it wasn’t for my teachers in high school who taught me about community in the classroom, and then my private school education at Calvin, then I wouldn’t be here in this community. But I wonder if a lot of the people in these communities (who grow up here and stick around, that is), value staying close to home and relationships more than education. So maybe that’s why there’s not many creation care floor applicants sometimes, not because there aren’t high schoolers already thinking about those issues, but because those students are not going to come to Calvin. They are going to get their education at somewhere close to home, and might sacrifice the “best” education by other values, like keeping a connection with their home community.

Anyway, all that to say, maybe I’m more destined to be in the classroom talking about community than actually living in one, although I will try to incorporate aspects of the communal lifestyle into wherever  and whoever I end up being a part.

Part of me really can’t believe I’ve already been here five weeks.

People have been asking me what I’ve learned so far. Much of what I’ve learned has just been personal growth stuff, and just figuring out who and what Reba Place Church/ Fellowship is.

I’ll start with what I can articulate about RPC and RPF. The leader of the fellowship, Sally, talks about how for them the relationship between the two is like a funnel. The wide part of the funnel is the whole church, and within that, in the narrow part of the funnel, is the fellowship, who has a more specific calling and vocation to life together and all that that entails. So far, it seems to me that is sort of a tension, however, because in practice some of the fellowshippers might think of the fellowship as their primary loyalty. Life together takes a lot of time and effort: there is a weekly fellowship meeting an hour a week (2 hours once a month), a small group meeting which is at least an hour a week, and people who live in a household meet once a week for a house meeting. Doing anything more than meeting for church for 2 hours on Sunday, then, is often too much. So if the church has small groups or Bible studies (like the one I tried to start last week… more on that in a bit), the fellowship folks are pretty much maxed out already.

So this last week I did a lot of things. I had my mentorship meeting with the pastor on Tuesday, which was a good two hours. Then on Wednesday, we were supposed to meet with one of the leadership groups, but only the two of us could make it, so we ended up talking more and discussing over lunch a book I really enjoyed reading called Are you Waiting for ‘The One’?: Cultivating Realistic, Positive Expectations for Christian Marriage. (I’ll be giving my review to Englewood Review, so I will link that once it’s up).  That reminds me to talk about another thing I’ve learned about this mennonite church, and perhaps a lot of other ones. One aspect that comes from a communal emphasis is that the leadership is spread out over many people. When the pastor talks about her job throughout the week, much of it is leadership training for other leaders. The church pays two pastors, but both are part time (one at 20 hours a week, one 30). I met someone this week who is interning at a mennonite church in Milwaulkie, Wisconsin, and he said that their church doesn’t have any paid pastoral staff. One of the benefits of that is to have a lot of congregational involvement.

But, it also makes it hard for an intern like myself who is supposed to be working 40 hours a week. Not only that, but if I try to start something new, like a bible study, people are already plugged in organically, meeting with their friends and whatnot, that while many people told me that they thought it was a good idea, only two people came to my first one. 

The bible study was something that really tested me, I think. It was scheduled for Thursday night, and Thursday all day I had been gone at a conference in Chicago called Ekklesia Project (they have a beautiful new website, you should check it out!– more about the conference will be up on my blog later this week). So I came back early to prepare for my Bible study. I had this great plan all put together: we would study Colossians over 6 weeks, and since it is a 4 chapter book, the first week we would just read the whole book, imagining we were like the first audience hearing the text, and imagining what kind of church it must have been, based on what Paul was saying to them. The second week we would go deeper into chapter one, with more personal reflections, and each week do a chapter, until the final week we would once again read the whole book, hearing what it said to us as people serving the contemporary church. What I didn’t plan for was that only two people would arrive, one of whom had pretty significant mental and physical disabilities. In the moment, I think I did well to adapt based on the people there. I knew God’s word speaks to everyone, and that these individuals probably knew more about the gospel than I could ever hope to know: that Jesus embraces the broken and the downtrodden. However, Colossians is a really hard book, and I had been told that this individual could and enjoyed participating by reading out loud, and so I gave him some texts to read. He did well, reading the first few introductory verses. When I asked the other man to read, I thought at first he was just reading a different version than me… but after he had read through an entire chapter, I realized he had been reading Galatians 1!!! I was ready to just switch what book we read, because in my introductory comments I had said Colossians a number of times, and I didn’t want to embarrass him. But, the other individual in the class was very adamant that we read Colossians. I read a good portion of Colossians 1, then gave it back to the first reader. He did well until getting to to these verses:

²⁴Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, ²⁵ of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, ²⁶ the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. ²⁷ To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Now let me just say, hearing those words coming from a disabled man’s lips makes you hear them a lot differently, that is for sure. The translation he was reading from, however, used the term “manifested” and I don’t think he quite knew what it meant. So he kept reading over and over again verses 25 and the first part of 26, because I think he wanted to understand it as he read it. For me in my western mindset that we needed to get stuff done, we needed to read the whole book and understand it– God obviously had other plans, showing me that he is in control and I am only a steward, doing everything for the glory of Christ.

As I mentioned, the rest of my week was at the Ekklesia Project. I taught the youth baptism group again this week, and by that time I was running just on adrenaline. My hard work over the past five weeks really hit me, and Sunday afternoon around 4pm I slept… and slept all night long until 9am this morning. Apparently I needed some recuperation.

This next week I’m helping lead a fellowship weekly meeting, focusing on the issue of disagreeing well together. Then this weekend I’ll be going with the high school youth up to Wisconsin for a camping trip. I’m really excited, I’m a pretty late convert to the appreciation of camping and white water rafting and hiking… but I look forward to getting to know these kids who grew up in the fellowship. Peace!

On Sunday I had a full day. I was wearing many different hats that morning, but managed to keep it all organized in my head. First, I led the congregation in a call and response I adapted from a Shane Claiborne litany that focuses on our allegiance to the Kingdom of God. The congregation will be doing this every week, but the change that happens is the Scripture reading that is attached. There are four scripture readings according to the Revised Common Lectionary that I can choose from, and I try and find one that most resonates with Kingdom of God language. For this past week, I changed the Scripture passage three times, mostly because of lack of communication between me and the pastoral team. The woman who preached is not the pastor, so I don’t get a lot of interaction with her, and she wanted all four scriptures read, which is unusual. I had placed the psalm reading in the litany powerpoint and sent it off to the woman who runs it. Then on Wednesday I was told that that scripture was going somewhere else in the service, and I should include Romans 8:1-11. But, then the preacher decided she wanted to preach off of Romans 8:28-29 instead, so I sent that copy to the powerpoint person late Saturday night. It didn’t really fit the theme of the litany, though, which I just had to let go of control over. What I didn’t realize until I was up there leading the congregation in the call and response, which takes a good 5 minutes by itself, is that the scripture reading was really long. I hadn’t practiced it either, but I hoped my timing was good and I think it was helpful people could read it on the screen, since they normally just listen.

So that was one thing I did on Sunday. Then secondly, during the sermon time, there are a number of teens interested in becoming baptized, and are going through a book called “God’s Story, Our Story.” Not only have I been trying to do the logistical work for that, but this Sunday I got to teach them. It didn’t go horribly, but it wasn’t perfect either. I tried to explain to them Freytag’s triangle, which I blogged about last week, but just because I blogged about it doesn’t mean I really understood it well; I wanted them to understand the aspects of story so they could learn to tell their own story. But instead it just confused them; I think people would do the beginning middle and end stuff all on their own without me trying to tell them what they are doing and confusing them. But, a lot of good things happened too. I went to the biblical text and showed them how in Genesis one the term for God is elohim, and in chapter two it becomes more relational, being elohim YHWH, God’s name from Exodus 3. I explained how their English translations will do LORD in all caps to indicate it is God’s name being used. I talked to them about the two trees in the garden, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and how they were sent away from the garden after the fall so that they wouldn’t eat from the tree of life as sinful creatures, although they could have beforehand. I showed them how the serpent’s exaggerations (“Really? You can’t eat from any tree in the garden? [What kind of God would do that? He must not really love you or care about your wellbeing..."]) planted a seed of doubt in Eve’s mind, that she got some exaggeration in her retelling of the command too; where God told them not to eat from the tree of knowledge and good and evil, Eve retells it thinking you can’t even touch it. I showed them how in the curse of the serpent we get this messianic promise of a serpent head-crusher that from that moment on we’re looking for (and although I didn’t get to show them how that was a chaism, I had it prepped if we had had more time). We talked about how sin isn’t just from outside forces, but it gets inside of you, so even Noah and his family, after being isolated from the wicked world in an ark, still didn’t live up to the messianic hope and could not bring salvation (telling them the funny story of Noah getting drunk and his son laughing at his nakedness). We talked about the tower of babel, and how the punishments of God are really for their own good; that when people sin, they are trying to be like God in the sense of replacing him, not being the imago dei, but really the best way for people to be happy and free is for them to stay in their place in the hierarchy of being (this might have been over their head lol).

Anyway, it was pretty good I think, but I’m a little biased. I get to teach again next week, so we’ll see how it goes.

But then, here’s the interesting story. I was cleaning up after the service when a woman came in and said this was her first time here, but there was a man outside asking for one of the pastors. It was late, so the pastor had already left, but I went out to talk to him myself. It was this gentleman who told me how he had had surgery earlier in the year in which his legs were cut off. (No way he was lying about that part). He had been living in his friend’s car for an undesignated amount of time after having been kicked out of a nursing home, since he didn’t have insurance. He knew of a mission that was disability accessible, but he didn’t have money for gas to get there, and he wanted the church’s help. Now in the litany of Shane Claiborne that I quoted earlier, it says, “To the kingdom of the poor and the broken; To a King who loves His enemies so much he died for them; To the least of these with whom Christ dwells–ALL: We pledge allegiance!” Now the whole point of this litany was to create a different pattern of life alternative to the allegiance to the nation-state where the poor and oppressed fall between the cracks into the margins of the empire. So when this man, obviously poor in so many senses of the words comes, and I had just pledged my allegiance to him, and to the “homeless rabbi with no place to lay his head”– how could I not give him money if he were a image-bearer of Christ?

There was some logicistical issues… I literally had given all my cash to the basket for tithe that day, and didn’t have any to give him. Since everyone was gone, and the pastor didn’t answer the first time I called, I was really worried I wouldn’t be able to help him, but I couldn’t imagine being a representative of the church and sending him away. Finally, though, I got ahold of the pastor, and he came and gave the man some money.

This morning, though, I was talking with my mentor and she talked about how the approach of the church usually is to not just give emergency cash, but to give food cards or transportation cards, as in line with the deacons’ decisions. If he needed food for that night, I could have gone to the store with him and bought him some food. And when I told my mentor this story it sounded familiar, like he had been around before, and so she had hope that with people like this, there are more relationships built than anything. Does it do them a whole ton of help if they just get money and go? That seems to be trying to slap a bandaid on a gushing open wound.

This is a very economically diverse neighborhood; there are houses that a single family could own that was more middle class, or lower middle class people sub-lease the houses into two different flats, like the building I live in. Then there are large apartment complexes, of various economic status, side by side those houses. Some of the apartment complexes are nicer, middle to upper middle class again, but some are the minimum wage, even government assisted living. The community is racially diverse, which is unusual, and connected to the economic diversity. Since there are these structural issues of poverty and racism at work in this neighborhood, the church has ministries trying to build relationships in the apartment buildings, and serve in soup kitchens, and provide affordable food or go dumpster diving for food for neighbors and households, etc. But it was really hard for me in the moment to not get swept up in this person’s story, especially since I’m in the middle of reading a book called “Practicing the Way of Jesus: Life Together in the Kingdom of Love” that wants to take seriously the words of Jesus, like giving your cloak to the poor on the street. It’s hard for me to both care for the individuals, but also realize that giving them what they ask for might not do them any actual help, but knowing what would be helpful to them instead.

Sorry this was so long, but it was a long Sunday!! Then all day Monday we didn’t have any power, and although that’s my usual day off, it still feels like a day just disappeared from the calendar. Hopefully I will have enough time to get everything done this week.

I’m going to the Ekklesia  Project Conference Thursday!! I can’t wait!

How much freedom do you get about making decisions? Well, I’m not sure exactly how this works, especially in terms of finances, for full covenantal members. I know one individual in particular (the guy who wrote this massive 600page book) who is a part of the church and not the fellowship because he feels called to spend a lot of time writing, which is a very solitary activity, and because of that he cannot spend as much time on the communal life as they might ask of him. He also feels strongly about peacemaking, and he just got back from a conference in Jamaica. If he had been a covenant member of the community, it would not have been as easy, if not impossible, for his trip to be paid for out of the common funds, considering the community at large has some other financial commitments. But, that doesn’t mean his spirituality or wealth that he brings to the community is any less. Not being part of the common purse might be a blessing, in fact, for the community, more than if he were a part of it.

In terms of other decisions, however, let me give one example that is of particular interest to me, considering how many people I know who are getting married or are in dating relationships where marriage is a very real possibility. This past January during my time at L’Abri I studied the issue of vocational considerations for marriage (I read this book among others). How do you discern a calling to marriage, either to a specific person, or to the lifestyle in general? What if you are “called” to be single? What does dating look like if you don’t buy into the romantic “everyone should live happily ever after in marriage bliss,” and if you consider the reality that some people are single for life, whether they feel called to it or not, but can be just as happy and fulfilled as married people?

Anyway, all that to say, issues of dating, marriage and singleness are a particular interest to me. So I wanted to know, in a communal living situation, what if I wanted to marry someone and the community thought it was a horrible idea? Would they tell me no? Tonight, over dinner, I was assured that no, that wouldn’t happen. This community works off of the notion of small groups, so one function of your small group is a place of discernment. But for instance if a woman were to come and say she wanted to get engaged, and her boyfriend had no interest in the communal life, the woman would not be asking for permission from her small group. But she would be giving permission for them to ask her the hard questions. “Do you really feel like you are called to marry this person, even if you are drawn away from your work here in this community?” Most of the time it just allows for an arena of reflection and usually affirmation, when the person explains why they are choosing to marry and move away rather than staying in a community, others who know them well get to give the gift of saying, “Okay. Knowing you as well as I do, you’re right. That makes sense.” So others get to be witnesses to each others’ lives and affirm God’s vocational plans for them. That is super exciting to me, and I hope everyone can consider having a system in place where they do that, whether they live in a common purse intentional community or not.

Being the new intern in a church means you get asked the same sort of questions: “Where are you from? What are you studying? Do you have any siblings? Why are you interested in church ministry?” etc. It requires you to have a cohesive narrative to relate. We are story-telling creatures, but I think it’s helpful to have studied what makes a story a story. Perhaps it seems self-evident, but I’ll include this helpful picture anyway:

This is a pretty simplistic picture, since often times it isn’t as cut and dried; there are usually mini-crises and plateaus that contribute to the climax, but to tell the story of your life to a stranger, you only try and hit the most important elements anyway.

Knowing your overarching life story well enough to package it in a succinct way is a skill one learns. Another skill is knowing the story of your life on a daily basis. One thing I’ve noticed about people here is that in the various small groups people are a part of (whether they live in a household, are on a leadership staff, or in their small group), is that they get asked the question, “What are your highs and lows for today?” (Those of you who lived in KHvR last year, might know this practice better as “happy/crappy”). Sometimes this is asked in terms of what one needs for prayer. Since I did happy crappys last year on a weekly basis, I thought it would be easy to be able to share things in my contexts. But since it happens almost on a daily basis, or every few days at least, I realized I had a harder time relating the story of my individual day. Sometimes, we just do the tasks that we know we have to do, and have fun when we can, bad things might happen, but if it’s just a “normal” day it is harder to figure out what a significant “high” or “low” point of our story is for that day. If you have a week of incidents to choose from, it’s a little easier, but even so often times people would not know what to say immediately during floor meetings last year. Hearing other people answer the highs and lows for the day, even when their day was just as “ordinary” as mine, made me realize, this discipline, which takes practice to know how to do, teaches people to see God’s grace in their lives (high) and the brokenness of the world (low) even in the midst of the ordinaryness of life.

When I first started reading about community I had this utopian Wizard-of-Oz-like entity in my head. The truth of the matter is, community living is about seeing God’s work in the ordinaryness of everyday life– things like eating, working, praying, walking, smelling, etc. That gets to my other topic. I just read a book review for Norman Wirzba’s new book, Food and Faith, and it talked about how the Acts 2 church (which many intentional communities try to aspire themselves toward, selling their possessions and living with common funds, etc.), more important than sharing a common purse, was sharing a common table. It’s true, the most memorable thing about my experience so far is the fact that I have been a stranger at the table in so many households, and through their hospitality, it becomes clear to me that the table is an extension of the Eucharistic altar, a place to worship and invite Jesus to be in this place.

Tonight, over one of these eucharistic tables, I had a really great conversation with a couple who had been in the community just over 20 years (their daughter is a little older than me, going into her senior year at North Park). I asked them a few questions, particularly with how the community understands work (as in, what you do for economic income, not necessarily “vocation”), and how the community interacts in the individual decision-making process.

First, I should say that the community suggests trying to find work in which you only spend 32 hours a week at your job, in order that you have time and energy for the community life– meetings, small groups, dinners together, etc. There is some common work the community tries to provide: most notably, a construction company (I think) in which many of the men in the community work (in my post about the funeral, I mentioned that members of the community made it– that’s because it was through this company). Because the owner of the company is a member of the community, he understands if someone requests time off because of a community matter. So, some people don’t feel “called” to construction work… so they spend their time on other things– raising their family in a very present way, volunteering at a bicycle recyclery, or a food pantry, etc.

It seems to me there are sort of two aspects of communal living vocation. There’s the internal work, of orchestrating a flourishing life together with conflicts properly mediated. But then there’s also the outward work, with people doing work in racial justice, and urban renewal, and food distribution, etc.– being Jesus to people. When I first got here I was really nervous about needing to fit the stereotype of the person I thought lived in these communities– a vegetarian who gardens and never watches TV and goes dumpster diving and wants to live in an apartment building with drug-dealing and primarily oppressed people of color and sell all my clothes.

But the good news is, because I’m part of  these professing believers, I am part of the body of Christ, and when others do the things they are called to do, like live in an oppressed neighborhood, then I get to be a part of that. I don’t need to do everything, because then undoubtedly I’ll burn out. This was the theme of the most recent “Conspire” issue (you can see the electronic version on their homepage). In the article about “Learning to Fly” he gives advice to new communities to start small. Don’t expect that you can do everything at once, otherwise you’ll burn out. The problems that we’re trying to solve (environmental and racial injustices especially) didn’t come about in a day; we don’t need to solve them that quickly either. God is at work in the slow growing of seeds, that require patience and tending, not the magic of instantaneous results.

I’m sure many of you know people who are getting married this summer. My boyfriend and his brother were hired to be wedding photographers at a wedding last Saturday; the same day I was “working” a funeral; which is to say, I made all the bulletins and got to see the behind-the-scenes planning that goes into an unexpected funeral.

Her name was Gloria, and she was 81 years old. She had been battling ill-health for a number of years, however she had always rallied back. This time, unexpectedly, she did not recover from a pretty routine surgery and passed away in the hospital on Wednesday afternoon.

Here at Reba Place Church, they are both very honest, very simple, and as community-oriented as you can get. The casket was built by members in the community, many of whom did not even know the woman they were making the casket for. There is a sister community called Plow Creek about 3 hours southwest of here, and in addition to having a sustainable farm that provides CSA boxes to many in this community and others, there is a cemetery at Plow Creek where many Reba folks are buried. A caravan left after the service, and the burial was all done by hand– people with ropes lowering her casket into the ground, and the family shoveling the dirt that would enclose her into the earth. When the ceremony began about 10 minutes after it was scheduled to (as is Reba’s style, to not be enslaved to the clock), the man sharing about Gloria’s life named out specific people he saw in the crowd that he knew were important to Gloria. He then invited any additions or corrections to what he was about to say; as I mentioned, it was unexpected that she would pass at this particular moment.

People took him up on the offer, adding corrections or details about her relatives and family life. It became clear as he told her story that at 61 years old, Gloria had taken her granddaughter into her home and raised her for 18 years of her life, with the help of people in the Reba community. As her health deteriorated, it was probably her granddaughter who did most of the caregiving; and the bond between the women was obviously strong, and much of the service was directed toward her. However, the granddaughter’s mother was there, and it became clear even to someone like me who knew nothing of the situation (thankfully most of the attenders probably already knew) that the mother was an alcoholic, and in fact had come to her mother’s funeral quite intoxicated. After the service leader had invited people to add anything, she began to inappropriately interrupt him at times, much to her daughter’s embarrassment.

I was particularly moved by this situation, considering both my parents are alcoholics, and my grandmother took me in at a young age and has raised me as well. The granddaughter has completed two years of college, and I hope she is able to complete the other two without the social support of her grandmother, who loved her and wanted nothing else than to see her graduate. It also put it into perspective how lucky I am that my grandmother is in good health. The granddaughter said how grateful she is that she is older and more mature, because if her grandmother had died much earlier, she would not have been able to handle it. The scripture verse on the bulletin for Gloria says it well: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39.

Do you ever sit in a service listening to a service and think about how you would be preaching, if it was you up there? Not because the current preacher is bad, or not theologically correct. But we all have different experiences and different Scriptures stand out to us at different times and in different ways.

This week, according to the lectionary this church uses, the Scripture passages were Psalm 8, Jeremiah 20:7-13, and Matthew 10: 24-39. I read these passages earlier in the week, and I was asked to do the offering. I will share with you my offering prayer based on those passages (because I actually didn’t pray it in the service today; I thought the time of offering was bookended with prayer, but usually they just have a short ending one, and this one would have been the transition after the praise time).

Heavenly Father, we come before your throne today thankful that you have made us and care for us, that you have numbered the hairs on our head and that we are like the sparrows, always safe in your hands which control the universe. Examine our hearts and minds, O Lord, and may you find you Word in our hearts burning like a fire, ready to break out of the box and build up your kingdom. May our praises to you be good and pleasing in your sight. And now, as we prepare our offerings to you, may you remind us that you are in control of our lives, and it is you we depend on for our well-being. You are our true Father, and you promise not to give your children rocks if they ask for bread. We respond now with our gifts of faith that you will provide all that we need. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

It is interesting because at this church they sing the doxology during the offering time. In the Jubilee Fellowship class last spring, I think I remember Professor Cioffi saying that a church that mentions all three persons of the trinity is definitely a must; otherwise, it might be “functionally unitarian” in that they only really worship one God– usually the Father, but they’ll often just refer to him as God, and then Jesus is our buddy, our friend, not part of the divine entity that we should worship. Or Pentecostal churches are so focused on the Holy Spirit they miss out on the other persons.

So if I had been giving this sermon today, I would have preached off of the Gospel text, Matthew 10. I would have made a joke about how in my church growing up the three biggest holidays were Christmas, Easter, and Mother’s Day. It was almost like a wedding; all the mother’s getting flowers, or a gift, or something. Father’s day, on the other hand, usually meant all the men left the church and went fishing or camping or something manly, getting a vacation from the rest of us. I would mention that if you were going to choose between mother’s and father’s day as the third most important holiday for the church, I would think you should choose Father’s day, because at least then there was some connection to God the Father, and you could preach a great sermon about how we should model our fathership after how God is a father to us. (This is not to say that I don’t think God has motherly attributes; I think a sermon on mother’s day about the analogies of God being like a mother would be really fascinating as well). But, if I were to keep preaching, I would say, the fact that Father’s day falls on Trinity Sunday is super exciting this year. Because I love thinking about the trinity, and this would be my excuse to preach about it.

The broader season of the church calendar, from my understanding (I’m not from a liturgical background) is that ordinary time is often a period of discipleship and growth for the church. It would make sense, then, that to help a congregation grow in faith, one would equip them with knowledge about the Trinity on Trinity Sunday. (I should mention, one of Duke Divinity School’s mottos is “Eruditio et Religio — Knowledge and Faith”: and since I’m getting ready to write my application essays, this seemed to be a perfect practice example of why I would aim to do my scholarship in line with that motto).

If I were to really preach this, I would probably read up on the Trinity more, but from my understanding, the Trinity is not about some trying to figure out the mystery of how three persons can be one at the same time; all those imperfect metaphors, like how it is like an egg, or the three forms water can take, etc., seem to miss the point completely. Instead, the importance of the Trinity is that it shows God is constantly in relationship. The Father is constantly begetting the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the overflowing of love from that relationship, while also empowering all those connections to be held together. In our worship, then, we participate in the Spirit, by the Son, and to the Father– which is to say, that Christ is constantly at the right hand of God, mediating for us. So what I love about understanding the persons of the Trinity is that a) it tells us about the relationship between the persons of the Trinity, showing you that by nature, God is a relational being, and b) this means that we, as the imago dei, are meant to be in relationship, and c) our worship to God is constantly being mediated, which as someone who might go into pastoral ministry, that really takes the pressure off of me to present the best, most perfect sacrifice and worship service to God– because all our imperfect tries are transformed through the once-and-for-all sacrifice of Jesus, and he is currently doing the mediation work for all of our worship even now.

The Trinity, then, seems like the perfect thing to talk about on Father’s day, since even though we were meant to be in relationship, as image bearers of God, it does not have to be with our biological parents. We have been adopted into a new community, by our baptism: water is thicker than blood.  This is particularly good news for those of us who don’t have good relationships with our biological fathers; we can have adoptive fathers in the faith. And for those of us who feel like we are not good sons or daughters, we can take comfort in the constantly mediating Son. And the Holy Spirit enables and empowers all of these new baptism-inspired relationships, almost like the force field that keeps us connected to one another, in the Spirit of God. This seems like the perfect thing to talk about in light of Matthew 10: “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” How could someone preach a father’s day sermon with that as one of the Scripture readings and not address it? I think it is difficult to do, but a pastor’s life isn’t supposed to be easy.

Hopefully none of this is heretical. But they were just a few of my thoughts as I considered the Trinity and Father’s day… and keep in mind I’ve never heard a sermon like this before. I’m sure they exist, so please, if you heard a sermon that