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“Walk with me and work with me– watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace…” matthew 11:29
“Perhaps instead of church planting, we should practice resurrection with dying churches… to bring new life to dying congregations. To go to the forgotten places of our city, those neighborhoods long ago abandoned by our peers out of fear and indifference, ignored, overloked, and left to die. To breathe new life and practice the resurrection of our Lord at home, down the street, next door, and to remember those left for dead.”
I wrote this today, admittedly during the last part of the pastors sermon (sorry, dad!). My mind had been wandering the entire service, unable to attach itself to anything, to be still. I sat there, thinking of conversation after conversation I’d had during the preceding week, and the one just that morning with two wonderful friends and fellow dreamers regarding church planting. All these conversations alluded to the traditional trappings of newness, of starting over, the same tried and true ideas of a church plant, though nothing was said directly, perhaps I was the only one thinking along those same old lines. I’ve long wrestled with the idea of church planting, seeing and hearing of so many churches dying off, closing their doors, and churches laden with conflict, unable to move forward. The idea of church planting seemed, to me at least, as a knee jerk response, to break out of the old, conflicted ways, and try again.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
But something obviously has gone horribly awry in our church plants, in our churches. Instead of doing the long, arduous task of rebuilding what is already there, of doing the long, hard work of resurrecting our current congregations, we’ve abandoned them, and left them for dead, or at least silently prayed that they would die. What if, perhaps, instead of beginning anew, we seek out those struggling congregations, and infuse new life into them. And not by affiliation… but simply by the willingness of a few to leave, and cleave. To marry into those new “old” congregations, to commit to nursing them back to health, without requiring anything of them, beyond a willingness to open their arms and welcome these new ones into their church. Requiring affiliation or placing demands would only be seen as a takeover, and would only deepen the problem. But what if… what if we just… joined in?
Tonight I managed to get out of the hospital early enough to go to supper at the church. I had a lovely time chatting and eating with friends. After supper all the kids run around the room together, laugh and play and typically get into some mild mischief (running, finding a way to the drum set, yelling or such). As I was getting ready to leave tonight a group of roaming, little girls came up to me in a flock, one of them screamed my name “AMY!!!!!!!!!.” They ran up and hugged my legs, held my hands and offered me beautiful smiles. It was such a welcoming, loving, simple gesture.
Its the sort of gesture that we forget how to make as polite respecters of personal space adults. But children with their joy and their unconditional affection are not bound by such norms. It reminded me of how the disciples were afraid that little kids would annoy Jesus or get in the way but he scolded them and said let them come to me.
How often do we REALLY live this in our churches? I mean yes we have a whole slew of childrens ministries and activities but most of the time these occur somewhere far away from the communal worship gathering. Of course children have different needs than adults, some would say and I agree they need teaching that they can understand and apply for their age level. But I think we send them away too much, are children not part of the body? of our communities? Now children might be disruptive to prayer, to worship, to the way we do things some will argue…yes I am sure they will be somewhat disruptive at times but I think even these disruptions can be act of worship and their presence is something that we can learn so much from. Their wisdom is so precious.
Children have so much to teach us about love, trust and spirituality and about living unabashed and unashamed of what and who we believe in.
