Summer of Jubilee

I arrived in Evanston on Saturday, and it has been a whirlwind the last couple days! The associate pastor Jim and his wife

I'm in the basement of this building; it's two flats, so don't get too excited about how huge it is lol.

Linda picked me up from the Chicago airport, and gave me a lovely first impression of the hospitality that Reba Place has to offer. They took me to where I would be living, a spacious basement room which will be perfect in the hot Summer months. Then I went to my mentor’s house for dinner, and got to meet her and her husband, Charlotte and Karl. I must confess that I was getting over a cold, and on this particular day it decided to move into my head and give me a headache that made me feel like I was in a cloud. But, being the stubborn person that I am, I did my best not to let it affect me, and hopefully our conversation was beneficial for them as well. For me, I was just trying to make the best impression I could, while being grateful for such a nice welcome.

After dinner, I attended a youth concert where I got to see some of the musical talent of the church, including Jim’s stepson Sam, who just graduated high school and is heading away for college in the fall. The following day at church, the high school seniors were honored by some of the youth mentors, including Celina and Peter, a couple who has been most welcoming, partly since Celina has been arranging the details of my internship, and partly because Peter graduated from Calvin after living in Koinonia Project Neighborhood house (which is where I will be next year!).

I was grateful to notice that they celebrate the liturgical year to some extent, and the sermon was on Pentecost Sunday. Having grown up in a Pentecostal tradition, I appreciated the timeliness of my arrival, that I could feel right at home with people who love the Holy Spirit. The church service was also longer than I expected; although the average service time ranges from an hour and a half to 2 hours, this one was about 2 hours and 10 minutes– and, the service didn’t really get going until 10 minutes after the scheduled start time. Not because people arrived late; but they were just taking the time to fellowship with one another, from what I could gather.

The Reba Place Church Building was once a bus garage.

My internship is definitely going to be very unique in that there are two overlapping communities I’ll be observing and participating in: Reba Place Church and Reba Place Fellowship. Most of the people in the Reba Place Fellowship, a group of people who live in geographic proximity and share funds and those sorts of “new monastic” things, attend either Reba Place Church, or Living Water Community, 2 miles south closer to Chicago. Technically my internship is primarily with the church, which has mostly fellowship people, but not everyone; the pastors are not fellowship members. The history between the two is very long and complicated and hard for me to get my head around; I’ll probably have to read some of the books about Reba soon so I can understand it a little better.

While some of my work will be the monetary type office work you’d expect, at Reba Place they also place a high value on non-monetary work: volunteering, and most of all, relationship building. Along with doing some typical office work– stuffing envelopes, creating an excel sheet analyzing how long each element in the service takes, I will also be participating in aspects of the service. I will be leading the offering session on Sunday, and am on the list of potential Scripture readers for July. I am also potentially going to be involved in a youth group series for a few students who are considering being baptized. They will participate in a 6 week class, and be paired with mentors. I might lead one of the class discussions, and help with the detail management of that. Not to mention I’ll be attending as many leadership meetings as possible; although I don’t want to get too spread out, so I may not participate in the work of all the different leadership teams.

You can tell how sympathetic the church is with the house church movement; here are some flowers lining the windows of the church.

But in addition to church work I will also be participating in the life of the fellowship/ community. They have weekly worship meetings I’ll be attending, a weekly seminar and potluck, not to mention the community life I’ll experience living with the family that is hosting me. The parents, Katie and Eric, have two adorable kids, Soren (2) and Delayne (4). I’m doing everything I can to listen and learn as much as I can from everyone about what it means to live in community; what are the triumphs, what are the sorrows, and whether I might one day choose to live in such a community, or at least bring elements back to whatever community I end up in.

Not everything is easy. the family I live with eats only local, organic food (and often gluten free, since Soren is allergic to gluten). In keeping with monasticism, the community lives as simply as they can; which is very freeing, if you’ve made that commitment. But to a newcomer, it can take some getting used to. Many in the community are committed to racial justice, and some have made drastic changes to their lives, living in economically impoverished buildings and being present and witnessing in an environment of violence and racial injustice. Summer is a hard time for the kids of their neighbors, they know, because school might be the only safe place in their lives. All of these things: economic simplicity, eating locally, and commitment to racial justice, are all things I’ve been mentally on board with. But it’s a very different thing to live that way. But, as I acclimate to this new culture with its customs, language, and geography, I can anticipate feeling very peaceful and nourished during my time here.

This past semester at Calvin College I was part of a class full of 12 brilliant group of students interested in pursuing calls to the ministry. We read amazing books like Pastor by William Willimon, Working the Angles by Eugene Peterson, and Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Those of you who read my other blog might recall my 2010 summer reading list had that last one on it. If you didn’t see that list and need something good to read, check it out now!).

Now, the next stage of the journey is to begin internships all over the country. Mine lands me in Evanston, IL at a church called Reba Place Church. Reba Place is in the Anabaptist tradition, which I am very excited for. I love Calvin and the CRC tradition, but my own ethical sensibilities are much more aligned with pacifism than many in the CRC. For example, Calvin has a list of virtues, one of which is courage, and in the gem of a document is this line: ”The virtue of courage, for instance, is inculcated not by teaching our students about the nature of courage but by inviting them to partake in those activities where courage is required. In the absence of a war, sports will usually do. It takes a lot of fortitude to dive into the fray of a soccer game, to slide into third base head first, to push through exhaustion while running cross country, to go in for a layup amid a thicket of elbows and knees.”

Reba Place says about itself: “By confessing that we are an Anabaptist church we are declaring our continuity with a Christian tradition focused on the church as a deliberate community of disciples practicing love, peace, and justice in the world.” Most in the CRC tradition would agree with that at face value, but when it comes down to how that is accomplished nationally, I think therein would arise the disagreements.

Anyway, that was a bit of an aside, but for those of you who are new to me and my story, I should share that I first got interested in church ministry in middle school. But it wasn’t until high school, through reading books like Resident Aliens by Hauerwas and Willimon and A Peculiar People by Rodney Clapp that I began to love the church itself. That’s what led me to Calvin; I love the work that they do there and the dedication that scholars such as Jamie Smith have to doing academic work, or whatever work for that matter, in service to the church.

Now, Calvin and the new Congregational and Ministry Studies program have partnered with churches all across the country to send me and 11 fellow students to figure out if church ministry is where we belong.

For me, if you didn’t already notice, I love books, and I love academic work and that side of the conversation, trying to help everyone realize that to be a Christian is to be a part of the church, a community.  I am trying to decide whether academic or pastoral work would be the best fit for the gifts that God has given me.

In terms of community, another reason I’m very excited about Reba Place Church is that it is associated with an intentional community called Reba Place Fellowship. I could talk about intentional communities and new monasticism for ever, but I will just say that the work of people like Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove has inspired me a lot, particularly his work on racial reconciliation, prayer, and stability. I also felt the hospitality of intentional communities from my home state of Oregon. In 2008, an intentional community in Portland called Church of the Servant King sponsored a conference called “Inhabiting the Church” based on a book from JWH and two others. The conference was also sponsored by Ekklesia Project, which defines itself on its website as, “a network of Christians from across the Christian tradition who rejoice in a peculiar kind of friendship rooted in our common love of God and the Church.” Every year, the EP hosts a summer gathering in Chicago. I have been wanting to go for three years, and now finally I have the chance! I am registered for the conference, which is entitled “Neighbors Near and Far.” If you are interested in the church and/or the topic of immigration and hospitality, I encourage you to check out the information in the link. Hopefully I might see you there!

Finally, on top of all my academic interests coming to fruition in the ways I’ve described, regarding the pastoral side, I am very excited to be working at a church with a woman as the lead pastor. In middle school when I wanted to be one, I was told that the Bible said it was wrong. I set the dream aside then, not only because I was unfamiliar with counterarguments, but more importantly because I had never really been a part of a congregation with a woman pastor. My church denomination, Foursquare, was even founded by a woman, and when I met with my pastor and his wife about wanting to be a pastor myself, they told me I needed to be married and work alongside my husband as co-pastors. I have been fortunate to be under the chaplaincy of Pastor Mary Hulst at Calvin College this past year,  but I look forward to also participating in a church where the pastor is a female; the conversations have already been had, the fight has already been won, so to speak. I realize different denominations are at different places with this conversation, so since I am a woman who is interested in being a pastor in some capacity, that necessarily means I need to take that into consideration when considering which denomination I will one day ascribe to.

Sorry about the length, but I do not start my internship until June 12, and as you can see I am anxious to begin. I do appreciate a few days at home to rest first, however, and prepare my mind and heart for the amazing things I know God will do in my life this summer, and hopefully in the life of the community I am a part of as well. I look forward to your presence with me as I walk down this exciting new adventure! Make sure to also check out my blogroll and follow the journeys of the other Jubilee Fellows 2011!