#congreation

So, those of you who have been following me for very long and have been reading my text posts know that community has never really been my forte. It took years and a lot of fear and pain for me to really become part of my home church.  It was a very slow process of letting people in and then running like I was escaping a building that was about to explode. 

But over this last approx. a year, Jesus has been teaching me about what it means to be part of The Church on earth (i.e. the collection of every Christian) instead of just my individual congregation.  It was hard enough for me to learn to put any kind of faith in the people in my home congregation, but I'm learning that Christians from place-to-place aren't really that different. 

I worshiped with Christians in Uganda who spoke a different language than I did.  I prayed with them.  They prayed for me.  I got the opportunity to serve them, and it was the most tremendous experience of my life so far. Never have I felt as at home as I did with these people who live continents away.  Though their experiences were very different than mine, their desires and needs were very much the same.  Like me, they wanted to feel safe, to be respected, to belong, to be fulfilled.

I went on a women's retreat, which included women from (to my surprise) three different churches - two of which I had never met anyone from before. And it was hard at first.  I felt like I was from a different planet than the people from one of the other churches.  But something happened and on the second night, I connected with the one person who was about my age, and we had similar backgrounds.  And she shared things with me that she had hardly told anyone, and cried, though she almost never cries. And she understood my stories, and could encourage me in some of my deepest fears and wounds.  We spoke early into the morning, and I'd never experienced anything like it.  And this person, I had thought she was from a different planet than I was.  I got to pray for her, also women who were older than I am, who respected my prayers for them, though I am younger and inexperienced.

Last night, my young adults pastor (a person who is my age and has been my friend much longer than he's been a pastor), his fiance, another person our age, and I went to a large church about ninety miles North from where I live to see how they do things, learn about their outreach focus, and just get to worship without being responsible for keeping anything running.  (All four of us are fairly involved in our congregation.)  And though it was a total hipster church in the heart of the biggest city in Oregon (Portland btw) which had a guest speaker who originally hails from South Africa, and we were all from comparatively "backwoods" backgrounds, it was really cool to worship with people who are still my brothers and sisters.  God met me last night in a way that he hasn't in a very long time.  He spoke to me so much, and I felt the Holy Spirit move through me in tears, and chills and shaking.  Something I haven't experienced in a few years.  I even got to meet the head pastor.  (Because we were a visiting pastor and his entourage, we actually had reserved seats, but we didn't know that, and got to fade into the group.) 

And I learned that people from other congregations (even other countries) are truly my brothers and sisters. Our congregations may have different customs, in fact, very different customs.  The church I attended in Uganda had an all female dance team worship, and relied almost exclusively on drums and vocals for much.  The church in Portland refers to their meetings as "gathering" instead of "church."  But the differences, as long as they don't violate the Bible, can actually be something to enjoy and learn from.  It is love for and gratefulness toward Christ that binds us together.  It makes us love each other and want the same things, even while we wear different clothing or speak different languages or have different hobbies.  We all want to get to know God better.  We all want to see people put their faith in Christ.  We all want to see God repair broken people (including ourselves).  And that breaks through the initial awkwardness at seeing our differences.