My Church

I was driving through Bloomington one day, about 3.5 years ago, when I realized I went too far. I needed to turn around, so I made a U-turn in the parking lot of a church. Dustin and I were church-hunting, and we had heard of this one, but never stopped by because we didn't know where it was. Now here it was. A warehouse.

This morning, I think I was the only member of my church not bubbling with excitement when we loaded the trucks and moved to a different church building in the middle of the city. I LOVED the church-in-a-warehouse feeling.

Oh, sure, so now we have a gazillion classrooms, beautifully painted. Okay, so a big sanctuary...a billion bathrooms...and yet we are paying LESS for it every month. I know, I know, God has supplied.

Oh, but I loved the coffee stains that our wasted money on carpet-steaming could not take care of. I loved it that our "sanctuary" was really you know, the big room. Our church meals would be hungrily eaten in the Big Room after we all individually stacked our chairs off to the side. The sink in the back of the Big Room. Noisy children in the kids' rooms on the other side of the wall. I will miss it.

No, I won't miss it. If I were to go back there today, I would find nothing but emptiness...and a lot of trash. Ugly white walls with cockroaches crawling along the ground. The building was not my church, nor really are the people. Not the woman who threw the baby shower for me, or the woman whose horses we took care of one weekend. Not the men who helped us move into our tiny house in Atlanta, or the all the people who cooked us meals when Lara was born. They are my family, but not my church.

Something about Crosswinds opened a window for me. I looked out and saw the Church. Christians painfully taking care of everyone around them. Christians in Brazil, in France, in the ghetto of Bloomington, reaching out and doing what's supposed to be done. In that moment, I decided to leave traditional American church, and I decided to be a part of the bigger picture. Church had been my comfortable Christian bubble full of safe people to confide in and full of opportunities where I was doing feel-good-about-myself ministry.

I guess the emptiness I do feel is a good thing, then. God is calling on me to fill it up.