And a heart that knows the way home...

This morning, my dear friend Bethany Bear posted a link on Facebook to her first foray into the blogosphere, a discussion of the “S’Mores and Sex” party held by our Sunday School class last Friday. Everyone, relax. The conversation wasn’t THAT titillating. Most of our discussion centered on the frustration that single twenty-somethings feel because many churches simply don’t seem like they have a place for people like us. When the church worships at the altar of marriage and family as the American church does, it can be difficult for young, single, professional, scholarly people to find a place where we can grow and learn and better understand our place in the body of Christ. I will leave you, gentle reader, to take in Ms. Bear’s thoughts, as they are insightful, intelligent, and typically thoughtful of Bethany.

What I wish to address here are the two questions she asks at the end of her blog. Those two questions are as follows:

1) What does the word “home” mean to you? 2) Does your current church provide a sense of home for you? If so, how? If not, what could your church do differently?

Having informed Bethany that my response would likely be longer than is considered polite in the blogosphere, I nevertheless promised to address them in a blog entry of my own, so here are my answers.

As to the first question, what is “home,” the answer is lengthy and to some extent plays into the answer to part two. But the other parts first…

To me, home has three potential meanings, and if you take a little from column A, a little from column B, and a little from column C, you probably get as close as you can to what “home” actually looks like.

For parts A and B, I shall introduce you all to my love of music. When I remember things, I remember them to music—a soundtrack for my life, if you will. Some songs remind me of people or incidents, and others actually take me back to a moment in time.

One way to understand home is as an abstract group of ideas, stories, values, etc. that are connected to a family unit or community. In many ways, this is what the musical In the Heights explores. Written by Lin-Manuel Miranda as a love letter to his neighborhood, In the Heights takes place in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan when the neighborhood is in a state of flux. The Heights is a mostly Latino, mostly immigrant neighborhood, and the characters Miranda introduces his audience to are all struggling in some way with the question of home.

Is “home” Washington Heights or is it Puerto Rico or Cuba or the Dominican Republic? The answer, ultimately, is that home for these characters is Washington Heights, but home also exists in the legacy of previous generations, the stories they brought with them, and the sense of community being immigrants—“strangers in a strange land”—engendered among them. In the Finale of the musical, Usnavi, the main character, articulates this beautifully:

Yeah, I'm a streetlight, chillin' in the heat
I illuminate the stories of the people in the street
Some have happy endings, some are bittersweet
But I know them all and that's what makes my life complete

The second idea of what home is comes from Miranda Lambert’s awesome song, The House That Built Me. The song is about going back to one’s childhood home and remembering the growth experienced within its walls. For me, there are four houses that built me: my grandparents’ house, our house in Guymon, my best friend’s house in Guymon, and my condo in Waco. This is a much more concrete example of home—those physical places where we experienced life and learned how to deal with all that was thrown at us.

Two of the houses that built me were my actual domiciles. While I don’t live in either anymore, the time I spent in those places was incredibly formative. My grandparents’ house, which has since been sold, was the one constant in my life when I was a kid. No matter where we lived or what was going on, I could always go to Grandma and Grandpa’s house and feel like I was home. I lovingly refer to my best friend’s parents as my “other parents” and their house, even today, is a place where I know I can go and just chill and get away from all of the stress of life.

Finally, there is “family,” another term that demands quotation marks because it doesn’t necessarily refer simply to mothers, fathers, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Those people are family. We’re stuck with them. “Family” is something we get to choose. Sometimes there is overlap; sometimes there isn’t. But where “family” is, there is “home.”

When people ask me where I’m from, where “home” is, my answer is not Stillwater, OK, where my parents reside (though I have a great deal of affection for that city and many of its citizens). “Home” to me is Guymon, OK and Waco, TX. That is where much of my “family” resides. This is where we get into the territory of Bethany’s second question—how churches provide a sense of home. Part of the reason that Guymon and Waco are both “home” to me is because of my great affection for my church “families” in each place.

For a very long time, Victory Memorial United Methodist Church in Guymon was my gold standard for what a church ought to do and how a church should treat people. This past winter, I was burnt out on life and tired of drama and so I escaped to Guymon. While there, I helped with Christmas Baskets for the less fortunate in town—a project of the Guymon Ministerial Alliance, but mostly made possible by the people of Victory Memorial—and spent quality time on a Friday night and Saturday morning in fellowship with my church family while we put together and delivered Christmas Baskets.

Then, on Sunday, I went to church where I was inundated with questions—very sincere questions—about what I had been up to, how my parents were, and other inquiries into my life. I was told several times that I was missed. Then, just as I had predicted would happen, when Charlotte, the choir director saw me before the service, she told me how glad she was to see me and that if she had known I was there, I could have come rehearsed for and performed in the Christmas Cantata. Those people are my family; that church is my home. People care; people listen; people get me. That’s pretty cool. It’s something all churches should aspire to.

Calvary Baptist Church in Waco does aspire to that. When a new member joins Calvary, the congregation pledges itself to be the family of God for that person in this place. After the first two hundred or so times you say that pledge, you memorize it and it kind of becomes rote, except that the people of Calvary actually try to be the family of God for people in Waco.

The past year has been full of ups and downs for me, and the people of Calvary have been there, walking beside me every step of the way. Some of them have even walked behind me to administer a well-timed kick in the butt as needed. But they have been a better support system than I ever expected and probably better than I deserve. I was in Stillwater most of the summer, and late in the summer, I was in Waco and at church and Tom and Jan Purdy both gave me big hugs and said they had been thinking about me and wondering how I was doing while I was gone. It warmed my heart to know that even in my absence, I was missed—though I’m sure it was mostly because Tom missed picking on me, but I digress…

Neither Calvary nor Victory Memorial is perfect. They aren’t supposed to be. Churches—even great churches—are merely an imperfect, earth-bound representation of the Kingdom of God. But whatever their faults, these two congregations are my family and wherever they are, I always feel at home.

So we’re not back to the first question: what is “home?” Home is a set of values, memories, and ideals of a community which may or may not include specific places, but always includes people who have walked beside you, in dark times and in times of celebration. In the midst of those people, you are free to be the most authentic self you know how to be because you can do that—be angry and frustrated and insecure and happy and joyful and everything in between—with no fear of ridicule or rejection.

As for how churches—the good ones and the not-so-good ones—can be “home” for people, the answer lies in the one word summation of part three of answer one: relationship, knowing people and being known to people. “Do not walk in front of me; I may not follow. Do not walk behind me; I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend.” This is the mission of churches—to walk through life beside people (occasionally taking a detour to give someone a kick in the pants) through life—regardless of the phase of life people are in. College students, graduate students, young professionals, newly married couples, new parents…the list goes on. All of these groups are walking through different things, but they all want people who will walk with them and help them work out their salvation with fear and trembling, whatever that looks like for them in that time and space. This is a church “family.”

See Bethany? I told you it would take a while…

Oh ye of little...obedience?

And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. --Hebrews 11:6

This was the verse on which the pastor spoke at my church on Sunday. His point: God demands faith from those who profess to follow Him and those who follow Him are rewarded for their faith. Just so we’re all clear, this is a two premise statement:
1. God wants faith.
2. God rewards faith.

To this point, my issues are small. However, there is one thing that was said during the sermon that I have serious issues with. Now, admittedly, my mind was wandering to all sorts of places that were NOT the sanctuary of my church, but it came quickly back to the sanctuary when I heard the pastor say that doubters and skeptics could not receive the rewards of God because they did not have faith. See Stephanie. See Stephanie nearly come out of her chair.

Let’s be very clear here. It is my contention that doubt and faith are not mutually exclusive. Questioning is not a vice, and intellectual curiosity (about faith or anything else) is not a reason for God to withhold His rewards from us. In fact, one could argue that God…and Paul expected questions and doubts and skepticism. In Phillipians 2:12, Paul commands the church at Phillipi to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” If working out one’s salvation means gaining a deeper appreciation of the demands of the Almighty, I am loathe to believe that anyone can do that without asking questions and going through periods of doubt.

The very idea of working out one’s salvation intimates that it’s a process—one that probably won’t be completed until our death. We are to grow continuously, ask questions continuously, wrestle (sometimes with God) continuously. At times our salvation will seem constricting. We go through growing pains when we feel uncomfortable in our faith, but that doesn’t mean that our doubts are a hindrance to our salvation. Doubts are not a hindrance because faith is not the beginning of this journey.

Obedience is the beginning. Abraham obeyed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. Abraham didn’t have much faith that his son Isaac would be spared, but because of his obedience, he was. Faith can be fleeting. But if we obey, faith will come. This past year has been a huge test of my faith. I have often felt like Job, but in the middle of the story when things were looking bleak. I didn’t often have a lot of faith. But I continued to obey. And my faith came back.

The problem with certain sects in Christianity today is that simple faith—absolute, unquestioning, anti-intellectual faith—is seen as the hallmark of Christian orthodoxy. This is not the case. Real faith involves thinking. It involves asking questions. Yes, it even involves doubts and skepticism. This is not to say heresy should be nurtured. It shouldn’t. However, it shouldn’t be shied away from either. One of my most favorite things about Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, TX is that no question is to heretical, stupid, or difficult to ask. We ask the questions, and we deal with them—in small groups, in Sunday School, as a congregation. But only by addressing one’s doubts and working through those issues with men and women of faith and intellect who can provide counsel and wisdom. And through that act of obedience, one actually finds faith.

So perhaps it isn’t so much that God rewards faith but that faith is the reward. Obedience is the demand. After all, grammatically, faith has not verb equivalent. We have “believe,” but that doesn’t quite compute. One can’t “faith” anything. One can, however, obey. That is what is credited to us as righteousness. In Genesis 12, the Lord commanded Abraham to leave his home and journey south and Abraham went. It was only after Abraham did as the Lord commanded, that it is said that Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness. The first step, the most important step, was Abraham’s obedience.

Is faith important to one’s Christian walk? Of course it is! It should not, however, become the be-all and end-all. We should not understand faith to be so important and strict that doubt and skepticism is looked down upon. Those who doubt often strengthen their faith in dealing with their doubts. Those who doubt are rewarded. They are rewarded with faith—as long as they remain obedient while waiting for their faith to return.