Brook

“It’s beautiful to me now, both the ideal and the reality. I choose the reality and I choose the ideal: I hold them both. I believe in ministering within imperfect structures. I believe in teaching Sunday school and chaperoning youth lock-ins, in carpooling seniors and vacuuming the vestry. I believe in church libraries and “just checking on you” phone calls, in the mundane daily work that creates a community on purpose. I believe in taking college girls out for coffee, in showing up at weddings, in bringing enchiladas to new mothers, in hospital committees, in homemade dainties at the funeral reception. I believe we don’t give enough credit to the ones who stay put in slow-to-change structures and movements because they change within relationship, because they take a long and a high view of time. I believe in the ones who do the whole elder board and deacon election thing, in the ones who argue for church constitutional changes and consensus building. This is not work for the faint of heart. I believe the work of the ministry is often misunderstood, the Church is a convenient scapegoat. Heaven knows, church has been my favorite nebulous nonentity to blame, a diversionary tactic from the mirror perhaps. A lot of people in my generation might be giving up on Church, but there are a lot of us returning, redefining, reclaiming Church too. We aren’t foolish or blind or unconcerned or uneducated or unthinking. We have weighed our choices, more than anyone will know. We are choosing this and we will keep choosing each other. And sometimes our way of understanding or “doing” church looks very different, but we’re still here. I know some of us are meant to go, some are meant to stay, and most of us do a bit of both in a lifetime. Jesus doesn’t belong to church people. But church people belong to Him, in Him, and through Him. I hope we all wrestle. I hope we look deep into our hearts and sift through our theology, our methodology, our praxis, our ecclesiology, all of it. I hope we get angry and that we say true things. I hope we push back against celebrity and consumerism; I hope we live into our birthright as a prophetic outpost for the Kingdom. I hope we get our toes stepped on and then forgive. I hope we become open-hearted and open-armed. I hope we are known as the ones who love. I hope we change. I hope we grow. I hope we push against the darkness and let the light in and breathe into the Kingdom come. I hope we become a refuge for the weary and the pilgrim, for the child and the aged, for the ones who have been strong too long. And I hope we all live like we are loved. I hope we all become a bit more inclined to listen, to pray, to wait.”
― Sarah Bessey, Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith