“If my own experience can be trusted, then God does not
call us once but many times. There are calls to faith and calls to ordination,
but in between there are calls to particular communities and calls to
particular tasks within them – calls into and out of relationships as well as
calls to seek God wherever God may be found.”
Barbara Brown Taylor from The Preaching Life
I took a “sabbatical” from church a while ago. I felt I
needed to step back and think on things – how I felt about traditional church,
community, “calling,” the role of church and faith in the 21st
century, and all the trappings that accompany those ideas. As a friend of mine
on a similar journey replied when asked when she might return to church, I
determined I would return “when I miss it.”
Well. I have missed it. The community, that is. I never
stopped reflecting on my faith, God/Higher Power/Eternal One/Creator, and my
place in this world. I, perhaps, did not miss community so much as I briefly
lost the desire to search for the right community for me at this point in my
life. I think I might have found that recently.
But let me digress for just a moment. I used to feel
sorry for those who said they didn’t “need community,” that they could worship
God as easily on the lake on Sunday morning as they could in church. Then I
became one of those “lake people.” And I probably had some folks feeling sorry
for me that I didn’t “get it.” That’s ok, too. I’m ready to “get it” –
community – again, both in the sense of understanding its importance and
enjoying the company of others on a faith journey.
My good friend, Marcus, has been pastoring a church in
Kansas City on a temporary basis. I visited not long ago because I missed
hearing him preach, it was Advent, and I missed community during that season of
the church year. I have continued to visit, and may put down roots. As I shared
with my mother recently, it is a smallish congregation that is diverse in every
sense – black and white, male and female, old and young, straight and gay,
reserved and charismatic (in the SAME service!). To which she exclaimed, “just
like real Christians!” Yes, Mom, just like real Christians, and real Christian
community. That is what I have missed. It is the kind of community I’ve been
hoping to be a part of for a long time – which is not to diminish any previous
church family I have previously been a part of. But I am at a different place
in my faith journey, my spiritual calling, and my quest for a “home” to delve
more deeply into both. I find myself at a mid-life crossroads of sorts, and it
seems highly appropriate that this is the name of the church community I find
myself becoming a part.
As Marcus shared this morning (and he was far more
erudite than my summary will do justice), this journey isn’t just a GPS trip
from point A to point B, but more like a scavenger hunt in which each discovery
along the way, prepares you for your next destination. The quickest way to get
lost is to try to speed to the finish line and skip those important
intermediate stops along the way, or to merely stay in one place hoping to
eventually see the destination in sight.
My latest stop has me at (a) Crossroads, and I can’t wait
to find out what I’m going to learn in this new community, and how it will
prepare me for my next destination in the journey.
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