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…