These are My People...

I haven’t blogged in awhile. Maybe I have writer’s block, which is weird since I’m not really a writer… I’ve actually been mulling some things over for the past couple of weeks. It all started when we went to the district meeting for our denomination a couple of weeks ago. I used to really enjoy these kind of meetings – for some weird reason – its kind of like a mini-family reunion where you get to see everyone… from the boy you dated in college, to the friend you went to both Summer youth camp and later college with, to the uncle you never get to see (in my case, its my real uncle – not a fake uncle if we were sticking with the “family reunion” metaphor). And I did see people that fit all three of those descriptions… A couple of years ago, I found myself liking these meeting less and less…I still really like the people I get to see, at least most of them…but as I’ve gotten older and deeper into this thing we call “ministry” I find myself getting more cynical and less Christ-like in these types of situations. I have to watch myself and what I say and how I act because I get frustrated – I mourn the fact that it SEEMS like even in our churches we are still holding up the empire to the detriment of the Kingdom. There is so much focus on numbers – mainly numbers of converts – that someone, like me, from a smallish church can come away feeling discouraged instead of encouraged. There are a few people that I really resonate with – like my friends from Church of the Undignified in Capitol Hill – but most, I have to be honest…I kept thinking to myself, “These are not my people”…I don’t feel like I “fit” there anymore. To be completely open, I came away feeling pretty tired and frustrated… We came home and after a break to recover, we went back to our routine on Monday. On Tuesday morning, I was back in Mosaic making Lattes and chatting with moms, business people, Tammy, the “usuals”…by Wednesday night, I was back in the swing of things. A lot of our regulars came in, S, C, D, K & S and their kids….I was sitting at a table talking with K, a young mother and UW student (she is super-smart, studying some sort of medical research that I will never understand) – but she’s also just a normal person, a mom, a wife – I don’t think she would identify herself as a Follower of Christ…but it hit me as we were talking about the bags I make and looking at etsy online…”THESE are my people”…my people are here, in this little corner of Seattle that I call home…They are a diverse group of funny, caring, crazy, imperfect, broken, annoying, wonderful people that I have been called to love and maybe even have the privilege of sharing with them the Jesus that I know. The One who loves them more than I could ever begin to – that wants them to have a full, wonderful life in His Kingdom both here on earth and after… I love my heritage…both my Wesleyan roots and more specifically the denomination that I was raised in. It was started on the streets, for the down-and-outers. I have a rich history of pastors and theologians and evangelists in my family that I am proud of…but I am also happy to know that my grandparents who are already gone would have “gotten” what we’re doing here in Wallinford…and the parents who raised me “get it”. They introduced me to what it looks like to be “A New Kind of Christian”…long before there was a book of that title… But back to that family reunion metaphor…I think we all have those people in our families that we only see at reunion times…that we talk to sort of awkwardly – we may not understand what they are talking about and they very definitely don’t understand what we’re saying…but, they are family and we love them…we’re just really glad that reunions only come once a year…or so… PS - Speaking of His Kingdom, the earth, A New Kind of Christian, etc…I was privileged to attend Brian McLaren’s “Everything Must Change” conference this weekend with RLG and her kid sister…it was incredible and challenging and scary and exciting…more on that later….