veryloved

[veryloved]

“Where do you work?”

It’s been over three months since I’ve written a post for this blog!  It sounds like a lot of people read the posts about our church expedition- thanks to everyone who read it, and to those of you who reached out to discuss these things more.  I tried to keep up with the feedback, though I made the final post the same week as starting a new job, so...life got away from me a little bit!

I had multiple opportunities to sit down and write a blog post, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  The past few months were emotional chaos for me.  I had so much going on in my head and in my heart that I really needed to get out...but none of it felt easy to write down.  But God has brought me some peace over the last few weeks, and I finally have some words.  Please pardon what is sure to be a messy presentation!

“You cannot find a better job than a job at Facebook” said my colleagues, my friends, my parents, strangers on the street....this statement is pretty undeniable and also blatantly obvious if you live in the San Francisco area.  So when it was clear that it was time for me to move on, I knew that I was leaving something valuable.  I knew I would miss a lot about that job.  

But what I didn’t realize is how much it would sting to hear this question: “Where do you work?”

It’s a harmless question, that Cory and I have been asked dozens of times over the past few months because, as you know, we’ve started going to a new church and meeting lots of people for the first time.  I caught myself answering the question with, “Until recently, I worked at Facebook.  Now I work at a startup that you’ve probably never heard of.”

That’s pretty of ridiculous, isn’t it?  Why did I say that?  It’s not because I dislike the new job, nor is it that I want to go back to Facebook.  I miss my friends at Facebook a lot, but I don’t regret entering this new chapter.  Eventually, I realized how silly it was to tell someone where I did work when they ask me where I do work, and I changed my answer accordingly.  But, the answer I give in my heart hasn’t changed.

Identity is one of those things I don’t think about very often.  Christians say things like, “Your identity is in Christ,” and I would usually think, “Sure, of course it is.  That’s easy enough.”  I wasn’t struggling with self-esteem, or body image, or other negative thoughts about myself.  Therefore, I figured that I must be rooted in Christ.  Life was going fine.

But then someone asks “Where do you work?”, and suddenly everything falls to pieces.  My heart still identifies as a Facebook engineer, and I love that identity!  Facebook engineers are given so much freedom, and career growth opportunities, and interesting problems.  When I was a Facebook engineer, I felt loved, and accepted, and smart.  I came into that company feeling very wounded from college, and I left with specific skills and interests that I never imagined I could have.  My colleagues encouraged me daily to do what I love, and love what I do.  And it was great.  I left Facebook clinging tightly to who I was there, to the point that I didn’t know how to describe myself as anyone else.

But there is something even better than being a Facebook engineer- being Christ’s beloved.  I let a good and positive identity replace the most important identity I could ever have. 

So, it turns out that it’s not easy to be truly rooted in Christ.  My sinful self prefers relying on my own accomplishments or positive experiences.  I am very glad that God showed me how much I lost myself!  And now it’s time to rebuild who I am on the Rock, with thankfulness for the experiences God gave me at Facebook.

Practice:

Me: “Where do you work?”

Me: “I work at Planet!  And I love where God has me right now.”

[veryloved]

What’s Left is What’s Missing

It’s been four months since beginning the SF Church Expedition, and two months since I began writing about it.  We visited twelve churches, and heard of so many more along the way.  But it is past time for us to draw this adventure to a close, so this will be my last post in this series.  I hope you’ve found it interesting or helpful, and I’m always open to more conversation.

We had some really great church experiences.  God is working miracles and changing lives through the worship, the sermons, the communions, the buildings, the liturgies...the people who walk with Him by faith.  Every week we went into a church, then left it two hours later very much changed and renewed, even though we knew none of the people- that alone proves the power of God!  And there were multiple times when the preacher spoke directly to my heart, as if God had sent Him a hint beforehand saying, “Hey, Natalie is struggling with thankfulness right now, speak to her!”  And even though we did not spend much time in any one church, it was easy to see that God bound the people in each church together into a family.  The way the churches prayed for people, and loved people, and served people, was beautiful, it was magnificent...it was Jesus in the flesh.

On a more personal level, God used our many different church experiences to open our hands and our hearts.  It became for me a time to marvel, and a time to find God at work even in churches that felt different or strange to me.  That was why I decided to write this blog series in the way I did, by focusing on church practices that are universal yet practiced in unique ways.

So, I look back over what God taught me through this experience, and all the beautiful church communities we met, all the ways He is working here in San Francisco.  And I thank God for all of it.  But every time I think over this experience, I also can’t help but think about that thing that was missing.  It’s something that I wrote about a lot in these posts, assuming I’d see and experience it by the end of the expedition, but I didn’t really.  I’ve defined it, I believe it exists, but if I’m honest with myself, it eluded me.

It’s the big “C.”  It’s the Church. 

I’m not sure where to go from here.  I prefer painting rosy pictures and focusing on the good things when I write, because I don’t want anyone to read this and think, “She is so judgmental,” or “She is drawing conclusions.”  I am a *very* conflict-averse person, which keeps me from saying hard things.  My worst nightmare when I write a blog post is receiving a barrage of disagreeing comments, or worse, hearing that people I love are angered by what I said.

But I did not see the Church I was hoping to see.  And now that I’ve said it, I might as well tell you why.

Every church we visited, with no exceptions, had problems.  Some churches were struggling financially, others were struggling to reach out to the community effectively, or having a place to meet, or standing up against criticism and attacks, from without or within.  It ran the gamut.  But, this was no surprise.  God calls His Church not to pursue comfort and stay away from hard things, but to instead go out into the world and get battle scars in the fight against darkness.

Each church we visited coped with or actively fought against this or that problem, some more affectively than others.    And it was great, it was inspiring, to see relatively tiny groups of people relying on God and striving toward the goal, in spite of uncertainty about the future, or unexpected conflicts, or other opposition.  But in most cases, it seemed like each church managed their problems, their programs, and their pursuits all by themselves.  Many churches prayed for the Church- the worldwide, single, and united body of Christ.  But after the prayer was over, I felt like it was back to just us, sitting in this building with the rest of this one clan, this lonely sect.  

Is that all there is to it?  Each church acknowledges that there is a greater Church, and maybe pray for the churches nearby in San Francisco, then we move on?  This didn’t sit well with me, obviously, though it took time for me to realize it because it seemed to be the status quo.  And please don’t get me wrong- we had better be praying for other churches, and it is true that we are all part of the greater Body of Christ, so this is all a great start.  But this is a starting point, not the end goal.  In the end, we’re all going to be one Church, one group of people created by God and saved by Christ’s work- we’re going to be in perfect unity.

Let’s talk about unity for a second here.  When Jesus first talks about unity amongst Christians, it is in reference to his disciples (close followers).  He prays that they would be one in the same way that Jesus and God the Father are one.  So, we can take this to mean that the Church should be united, while also having unique forms and expressions of the same purpose, given that Jesus and God the Father are different persons.  (I shared primarily about how churches are unique in form during this series, because this is one aspect of the Church being one in the same way that Jesus and the Father are one.)  But it didn’t take long for churches to fall away from this ideal of unity.  

That doesn’t mean that churches *want* to be in disunity, even today, after two thousand years of fractures in the Church.  These churches that pray for the global Church, they pray this because they desire unity!  But then I see churches struggling with very real problems, or on the flip side, having great success, mostly in isolation...as if the Body of Christ, the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, is nothing more than an ideal.  

In addition to unity, I have neglected to discuss in depth one of the most important aspects of the Church in this series: the mission and purpose of the Church here on earth.  It’s something very specific- after Jesus rose from the dead, and right before he ascended into heaven, he actually told people what they should be up to!  We call it “The Great Commission”: Make disciples of all nations/peoples, baptizing them in the name of the Father (God), the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit.  This is the purpose of the Church on earth, and it’s impossible to do with one church alone.  So one day, when the Church feels united, and we agree on stuff, like how we ought to baptize people, or what exactly communion is, or the best worship style, we can much more easily unite around The Great Commission and bring light to this dark world.  

Sure, that might feel easier.  But this is what I’ve learned, after seeing so many churches and very little of the Church: unity is not just a feeling, or a state of being, it is an action.  Just like love.  When Cory and I took our wedding vows, we agreed to be one, to have one purpose shared by us both.  We have since been in disagreements over many things, but never have we given up on being married.  Unity is an active choice to pursue a goal, not the warm fuzzy feeling of agreeing on everything and seeing eye-to-eye.

For me, this was a huge change in perspective.  If churches agree on the mission, and choose to accomplish this mission together in spite of (and while working through) disagreements...that is unity!  And we can hope for the day where we’ll feel just as united as we act, just as I hope for the day where I feel love for Cory as often as I power through and show love to him.  But in the meantime, I’d rather work for unity by partnering with other churches to achieve The Great Commission than sit on my butt and wait for the other churches to agree with mine before we get started.  

What would this sort of active unity look like?  It could start with churches enabling and empowering the churches around them to join in the mission, regardless of denomination, history, or preferences.  There is biblical precedent for churches sending missionaries and money to surrounding churches for this very purpose, and it makes good sense!  But I mean more than missionaries and money when it comes to the Church here in San Francisco, where we’re all contained in 49 square miles.  We don’t have to all merge and become one big church (we all have unique things to offer, and unique callings within the Great Commission, as I’ve explored).  But what if churches networked together, did outreach together, and even advertised for each other?  What if we regularly exchanged Christians from one church to another, to find ways to help smaller, older, or struggling churches grow stronger?  What if members of a mostly older church offered to teach and disciple members of a mostly younger church?  What if members of a mostly younger church helped an older church understand millennials?  

I think there is hope for seeing the Church in every church.  But I don’t think we’re there yet.

And here I end this series, and our Church Expedition, with this encouragement: Dear Church, let us get down to business by making the big “C” more than an ideal.  Let’s work together because we are unique, and in spite of being different.  And then we’ll get closer to unity, which God will one day complete.  And when He completes it, the Church will be the people of God, from all cultures over all the earth, from the past and the present, worshiping together in Spirit and in truth.  

[veryloved]

Floating Jesus

When I first considered writing about our Church Expedition, I started by writing a short journal entry every time we got home from visiting a new church.  I had no goal other than to make sure I remembered the basics about each church we went to, so I could look back on the experience and recall my impressions.  After deciding to blogify some of my thoughts, I considered posting these journal entries, with each post describing my impressions of a church we went to.  That’s easier for me to write, and it probably is easier to read, too!  But I decided to make a more generic/boring series of posts that contained examples, but no overall critiques (or even names of) specific churches.  Why?  The goal I stated at the beginning of this series was to marvel at the beauty and diversity of the Church, not to focus in on a single church experience.  Not narrating any complete experiences from a single church was the best way I could think of to avoid accidentally comparing church A to church B.  My goal is to appreciate the whole, not analyze or criticize the parts!  I will write more about Church unity in an upcoming post.  But for now, I’d like to apologize for anything I may have written so far that made one church sound better or worse than another.  That is not the point of this series- so much so that I’m not going to tell you which church we’ve chosen to attend!  We didn’t pick a church according to a checklist, but according to the guidance and calling of God.

So, now that I’ve made my goal clear, let me tell you what I’m about to do...in this post, I will be describing one of the many church experiences we had, from beginning to end.  I really want to share it with you, because it is true that every church we went to helped me appreciate the beauty of the Church more and more.  I feel like I’m missing something important if I don’t share an example experience with you.  Please, take this as it is, I hope you enjoy it.  If reading the story of our experience at an African American Catholic church gathering is going to make you draw detrimental comparisons, or to criticize any church, please stop reading now.  I’ll catch you at the next post!  

We had this church on our “list” for a long time for a few reasons: it is in an impoverished part of San Francisco, it is rooted in a culture other than our own, and it is seemed to be lively and exciting.  I should note that we are not very lively people, so I was actually more nervous about looking too quiet or awkward than I was about being white.  Cory was particularly nervous, and we put off going to this church until just a few weeks ago.  The start of Black History Month (and a special service honoring this occasion) helped us finally get there.  

I was really excited to see the building.  That feels really silly to say, but I love stained glass, and so few churches here have it because most churches rent space.  This building was one of the largest ones we’ve visited, and one of only four churches we visited that own their building.  The interior sanctuary did not disappoint, with beautiful stained glass scenes and a grandly vaulted ceiling.  But when we walked in, I found myself looking most not at the stained glass, but at the crucifix (Jesus on a cross), arranged front and center.  Every Catholic church has a crucifix in it, but this one was different.  The one I’m used to seeing is carved from marble, and it depicts Jesus hanging on the cross, nails through his hands, and his head hanging down in death.  The crucifix in this church was made of repurposed wood, glued together and polished to make a stunning patchwork.  The Jesus figure was floating, eyes open, head held high, in front of the cross.  His hands were outstretched, showing holes instead of nails, and long streams of colorful kente cloth flowed from his hands to the ground.  The Jesus had dark brown skin and black, African hair.  

We found a pew somewhere toward the middle of the sanctuary to wait through the usually awkward moments preceding the beginning of a Sunday gathering.  People around us were mostly black, though there were some white people, perhaps 20 percent of the congregation.  There was no projector, and no order of service written anywhere.  They handed us a program as we walked in that had a group prayer printed on it, but not much else.  A large gospel choir was gathered on stage left, along with a keyboard, drum set, and African drum.  On the opposite side from the choir, a tree grew out of the stage.  

One of the pastors came up to introduce himself while we waited, an Italian American man with enthusiastic expressions and excitement in his voice.  He described the church and gave us an idea of what to expect.  His only warning: This will be longer than the gatherings we’re used to!  He also invited us to join the church in communion, which was unique to our experience of Catholic churches.

The gathering began in a grand fashion with a procession, coming in to the sounds of an African drum.  Down the aisle came the pastor we had just met, along with an Asian American man, an African American man, and a caucasian woman, all of them also leaders of this church.  Another crucifix (also made of wood) and a book containing the written Gospels were carried down the aisle as well, and the congregation stood to honor these symbols of the presence of God entering the sanctuary.  The pastors sat beneath the tree growing out of the stage.

We continued with song after song of soulful gospel music.  I poked around the area, looking for some sheet with the song lyrics, but couldn’t find a hymnal (big book o’ songs).  Then the lightbulb moment came: no projector, only a written prayer on the program, no hymnal...this is an oral culture, a world of speaking and singing.  Every song was easy to learn, with lots of repetition and simple melodies (”This is My Story,” for example).  The choir swayed back and forth to the music, and we entered into the soul-healing space of simplicity.  There was definitely a lot of singing, though I never got tired of it.  The church would occasionally pause to pray, to take offering, etc. and then continue in song.

The African American pastor “brought the word” that morning, from one of the Gospels in the Bible.  The pastor spoke with rhythm, and with a unique authenticity.  He sounded like a brother, an equal, as he shared about the many troubles in life that try to tear us down, and encouraged everyone to claim the victory and love Christ brings.  When he called out to us, or said something that resonated, the people responded- “Amen!  Amen!”

The choir then ushered in the time of communion, and this is when we realized just how many people were in the church!  Rows emptied and everyone formed a long, long line down the center aisle to go forward for the bread and wine.  We joined the crowd.  It was a lot of people, but I got the sense that we were the only strangers.

The final songs ended, and a member of the choir came to the pulpit under the tree to give announcements.  She also called us out as visitors, and encouraged everyone to say hello.  This at first felt *really* awkward- being singled out in a big group of people!  But it was clearly an act of love and goodwill, with the intention to welcome us to the family.

After the gathering, the same pastor we met before came to walk us up to the stage, to see the unique crucifix up close.  He explained the meaning of the victorious Jesus floating in front of the cross, looking very much alive: “Jesus was killed on Good Friday, but that was just one day.  Today, ” he said, “Jesus is alive!  And he is alive and victorious forever.”  We serve a living person, God’s Son who is mighty to save, and that is a reason to rejoice!  

This gathering felt the most different from the type we’re used to, but in the best possible way!  Just as at every church we’ve visited, God was worshipped and the Gospel preached, but the colors, the sounds, the rhythms, the words, were unique and marvelous...just as God’s creation is marvelously diverse, so is His Church!  Though the church I described in this post is not the church we’re going to attend, it gives me joy to know that they are in the neighborhood right next to ours, gathering and singing praises to Jesus!

[veryloved]

A Sunday Structure

Welcome to the next post in my blog series about our Church expedition in San Francisco.  You can see all the posts so far on this topic if you click the #churchexpedition hashtag at the bottom of this post.  In recent posts, I shared what I learned about common elements of Sunday church gatherings, like musical worship, sermons, and Communion.  This post is written by my husband and special guest blogger, Cory.  He is going to focus in and share his thoughts on a particular style of Sunday church gathering.  He wants me to remind you that he is not an expert on the topic, and that there are other styles of Sunday church gatherings.  He focuses on the liturgical style in this post because God taught us both a lot about liturgy during the expedition.  With that said, I hope you find it a nice respite from my writing style, and that you enjoy hearing his experience!

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In one sense, Christianity is simple. Most Christians would (rightfully) sum it up as the oft-quoted John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Simple, right?

Maybe not. When you probe a little deeper and actually try to understand the God of the Christian faith through the Bible, you’re soon met with paradox and an incredible depth and breadth. God is holy and perfect, meaning He is completely other to us--yet He became a finite human, just like us. God is perfectly just, so He has every right to punish for misdeeds--and yet He is merciful. God is love--yet He hates sin and injustice so much that you have to describe Him as wrathful as well. God is one--yet He exists in three persons. He is infinite and unknowable--yet He makes Himself known.

On top of all these paradoxes, there are all the other, less paradoxical attributes and facts about God, which still boggle the mind--His goodness, holiness, knowledge, wisdom, omnipotence, beauty, glory, eternity, etc. etc. etc. These ideas are so lofty and beautiful that I can only hold a few of those in my mind at once; when I try to add another, it seems like one falls out, skewing my perception of God. For example, when I focus on God’s righteousness and justice, I see Him as Cosmic Judge. This is true. But, I’m missing something when I don’t take His love and mercy into account at the same time. Likewise, if I only think about God’s love and mercy towards me, I see Him as Personal Father. This is also true. But what sort of father doesn’t discipline his children or get really angry at the people who mess with his kids? So, the image of Cosmic Judge and Personal Father must somehow coexist in my mind, lest I lose out on who God is.

God is infinite, we are not, so of course we can’t see all of Him all at once. So how can we make sure we’re getting a big enough picture of who God is? Some churches try to address this through “liturgy”. Liturgy, as one of the churches we visited puts it, is “the use of prepared words, songs, rituals, gestures, and prayers that compose the pieces of a structured form of worship.” Another church describes it as “the structure we use to guide us through Christian worship.” These structures are typically borrowed from the early Church, and so have nearly two thousand years of history and tradition attached to them! This structure can be expressed through oral tradition like in an African American Catholic church we visited, or through a fifty page bound book written in two languages like the Orthodox church we visited today (we went through the entire book in 2 hours), or anywhere in-between. Regardless of the actual “words, songs, rituals, gestures, and prayers” that each church used or how they communicated them, they all walked the congregation through the essentials of the Christian faith through story and symbolism.

One church we visited speaks of the structure in terms of “movements”: Reverence, Return, Revelation, and Renaissance. While the order and exact content of these movements varied from church to church, the ritual within all of the liturgies we experienced were trying to express these concepts.

Reverence is where we remember who God is and praise Him for what He has done. Return (or Confession) is where we remember who we are and the separation that exists between God and us. This is where we also receive assurance that God has bridged that separation Himself! Revelation is the sermon where we hear the Scriptures, God’s revelation to mankind, explained. Finally, we have Renaissance where we respond to the revelation we’ve just heard by taking Eucharist/Communion and are sent out into the world. (Natalie has already talked about most of these aspects of the Church in previous blog posts.)

In going through these “movements”, the church “acts out” the story of salvation. The prayers (which are usually said in unison) and songs in each section are carefully chosen to point the congregation towards the attributes of God being focused on at that time. In short, the liturgy tells you what you should think about God, and gives the congregation the words to express it together.

We visited a total of seven liturgical churches: three Catholic, three Protestant, and one Orthodox (a church tradition more prevalent in non-Western countries) in the course of our Church Expedition. Before entering into this journey, my nonliturgical protestant heritage caused me to reject anything “ritualistic”, including liturgy. After all, a central tenet of Christianity is that it’s not the things you do that make you right with God, but the things that God does for you (namely, Jesus’ death on the cross). So, just like I don’t believe that just doing things outside of church earns salvation, I don’t think that just doing things inside a church earns salvation. I have typically taken that to mean that doing things like liturgy inside a church aren’t meaningful, either. Liturgy is also incredibly un-American: “I can worship however I want! Who are you to tell me how to worship God and what to say to Him and when?”

So it is much to my surprise that I am finding liturgy very helpful, not for achieving salvation, but for knowing God. The “movements” walk through the Gospel and who God is week after week, helping me to not forget anything important about God and helping me to hold all these attributes and paradoxes in my head. In thoughtfully architecting a structure for worship, liturgy gives me a more complete picture of who God says He is--a picture that is rooted in the historic Church and is shielded from modern popular influences, which will come and go.

My faith tends to be pretty intellectual and occasionally abstract. Sometimes I feel like it’s just a list of propositions I use to interpret my world. So while knowing more things about God is great, sometimes it can still leave me pretty empty. Liturgy has helped me in this, too. In liturgy, I am not just saying or assenting intellectually to these things, but I am putting them into practice at a small scale. I hear about the peace and reconciliation we have through Jesus--then respond to that by “passing the peace” and greeting those around me. I hear about God’s forgiveness--then hear it expressed through the absolution of the leader. I learn about how to be more like Jesus through the sermon--then, in taking communion, I physically take Christ into my own body. I recite a creed--then receive a blessing so that I can put what I have just professed into practice throughout the rest of the week. Liturgy, far from being the stuffy ritual I thought it was, has actually made my faith more real. It affirms my thirst for knowledge and truth while forcing me to put it into practice, week in, week out. These rhythms I practice on Sundays then bleed into how I interact with God and with others the rest of the week. It’s not the ritual itself that makes me right with God, but it creates an environment where my mind and actions can be transformed so that I can properly respond to what He has already done.

This morning, we visited an Orthodox church, with beautiful decorations and a bishop in golden vestments going through a form of worship from the 4th century. During a time of thanksgiving, this liturgy does something unexpected: it thanks God for itself.

“We thank You also for this Liturgy, which You have deigned to receive from our hands, even though thousands of archangels and tens of thousands of angels stand around You”

I love this line, because it reminds me that even though I’m finding liturgy helpful, it is still nothing compared to the worship that God is receiving in heaven right now. It also reminds me that through my imperfect “prepared words, songs, rituals, gestures, and prayers,” expressed in the liturgy, I am somehow joining in on this heavenly worship--and God is pleased to have it!

[veryloved]

Sunday Practices: Communion

This is the last of the major practices of a Sunday church gathering I’m going to explore in this series (click on the hashtag at the bottom to see the other posts).  I wrote about musical worship and sermons in previous posts, so if you’re tracking with me, you will notice that two major practices remain, not one.  The practice of prayer is the one I’m leaving out, which I’m happy to discuss with you at any time.  I’m just not going to write a whole post about it.  The last of the practices I will explore is communion, a.k.a. “eucharist.”  Please note that we did not experience communion at every church we visited, because some churches practice communion monthly, or at some other cadence.

The mysterious and powerful practice of communion was instituted by Jesus Christ on the night before his death.  He and his followers (disciples) gathered to celebrate the Jewish Passover meal.  Jesus gave them bread and said, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”  He also gave them wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Find this in the book of Luke, chapter 22.) You can imagine everyone was a bit confused, as Jesus had not died yet.  But Jesus died and rose from the dead, and then his followers formed churches.  And still today, the Church eats the bread and drinks the wine, as the act of remembrance that Jesus commanded.

Here is what the practice of communion looks like, in general and vague terms.  

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

This is called the sanctus, some churches recite or sing these verses before communion.  A pastor then reads a passage from the Bible about communion, like the passage from Luke or some other similar passage, reminding everyone that we do this to “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes [again].”   After this, people are invited to receive a small piece of bread/cracker and a sip of wine/grape juice. In all of the churches we visited, it was requested that only Christians partake in communion.  This does vary across the Church at large, however: some churches have stricter communion requirements, others have no requirements at all.  There is no surveying of the room to see who didn’t partake, or anything awkward like that.  In Catholic churches (and perhaps others), those who do not take the bread and wine can come forward and receive a blessing as others take the bread and wine, if they so choose.

As simple as the process sounds, why is it that I called communion both mysterious and powerful?  Let’s start with mysterious.  I grew up in a big box megachurch in Colorado, which practiced communion monthly (I think), and if I learned anything about what makes communion important, I don’t remember learning it.  Communion was just a thing Christians did, it had no function or purpose that I understood.  After turning into an “adult,” my view of communion didn’t change, but I tried to make something of it.  Communion became a personal meditation time, where I’d sit quietly and pray, or think over the sermon, or doze off.  Praying and meditating are great, but the practice of communion- the bread and the wine, all of us together- still meant very little to me.

And that’s where I started when we began the expedition.  I knew that I knew so little about the point of communion, that I made it an explicit goal to “figure out” communion over the coming months.  Surely experiencing it so many times at so many churches would bring me a breakthrough.  I wanted to experience something great, especially after hearing from friends about their communion experiences, which had real power.  I guess had some serious spiritual FOMO.  

Week after week, I took communion and analyzed the experience until it felt like nothing at all.  I remained stuck.  Maybe this is just a ritual?  Or I’m just crazy?  Then we came to a church, a week before we left for Christmas.  The details of how they did communion are unimportant- it is enough to say that it was nothing out of the ordinary.  I went up, took a piece of bread, dipped it into the wine, went back to my seat, and ate it.  Then, feeling nothing, as usual, I waited patiently as everyone else took their bread and wine, each coming through a long line to receive the bread from the priest.  Whole families came up, as the kids were sent back from their children’s class beforehand to participate in communion with their parents.  I saw the young kids holding out their hands for bread, and their parents alongside them.  And out of nowhere, God pressed this statement hard into my head: “You are watching something powerful.”  This thought hit me so hard, I almost cried right then, as I stood watching (crying isn’t really my thing, in case you don’t know that about me). 

And this, my friends, is the only substantial thing I’ve learned about communion so far.  It is powerful.  What makes it so powerful?  I don’t know.  Have I experienced that power for myself?  Nope, not really.  But this one short moment made me completely certain that I’m missing something.

I wish I could say more, but there is not more to say.  I came in wanting to “figure out” communion, only to discover that it is God who reveals knowledge, or hides it, according to His plan.  Presuming that I could figure out communion left me face to face with the fact that I cannot believe in the power of something just by trying harder.  It’s just like believing in God: faith is given by God himself, not mustered up.  But waiting on God to bring me understanding, in His time, is not a bad thing.  I need to practice patience, anyway!

[veryloved]

Sunday Practices: The Address

This is a post in the series I’m writing about our Church expedition here in San Francisco.  You can see all the posts I’ve written so far on this topic if you click the #churchexpedition hashtag at the bottom of this post.

In my last post, I talked about musical worship, one of the practices commonly found in a Sunday gathering of a church.  Another one of these common practices is what I would call a sermon, or someone, usually called a preacher,  addressing the congregation.  The sermon usually involves one or more passages from the Bible.  For example, a preacher could talk about the Gospel of John, verse by verse, over multiple weeks.  Another common approach is to explore a theme, like forgiveness, using scripture.  Some churches have set liturgies, so the passages are predetermined.  But any sermon, regardless of style or structure, should be rooted in the Gospel and point to Jesus as our only hope for now and forever.  That’s the difference between a sermon and any other type of public speaking.  Please note that a sermon is not the same as a motivational or self-help pep talk, because Jesus Christ and His power and grace are the point of a sermon, not our abilities as people to improve our own lives.   If you hear something on TV or the radio, or even in a church, that is telling you that you can improve this or that if you just try hard enough, that is categorically not a sermon.

So the sermon time is when the people (congregation) hears from a wiser and more spiritual person, right?  No, or that’s not the point, at least.  A couple of churches (especially the ones that practiced liturgy, which we will discuss later) specified that the sermon time is when we “hear from God.”  It is a little confusing to read “Hear from God” as a heading in the program, and then see the preacher’s name printed underneath, but the idea is that the preacher is given the gift of speaking and teaching by God himself.  The words that come out of the preacher’s mouth at this time are empowered by the Holy Spirit.  

But this doesn’t mean every sermon sounds the same!  We heard a lot of different sermons, to the point that they still would have felt different even if each of the sermons was on the exact same passage of scripture.  But they were also the same in a very interesting way.  I’ll start with telling you more about a few of the sermon types we heard, to give you a taste of the variety.  This is NOT all sermon styles, in case that wasn’t already clear!

At a couple of churches we went to, the sermon engaged the intellect.  This is the type of sermon I’ve encountered most often.  During Advent (the time before Christmas), we heard a sermon packed with information about joy.  The passage itself was not a definition of joy, but instead a song that Mary sang back when she was pregnant with Jesus.  The preacher read this passage, which was very familiar to me because it is a common Christmas passage, and I was expecting him to take each line and elaborate on it.  Instead, he took the joyful tone of the song and flipped it around- he used what Mary sang to create a working definition of joy.  He then took joy and contrasted it with happiness, and compared it with humility.  There were additional scriptures mentioned throughout that augmented this definition of joy, and different aspects of joy that we explored.  By the end, I realized that a simple word, “joy,” was actually very complex, and something that is created and given by God.  One concept, lots of depth.  It was like choosing a single person from a crowd of friends and taking them out for coffee.  We spent quality time with the concept of joy, and I learned a lot of things I could apply in my life.  The preacher used information and engaged the intellect, which is great when describing an infinite God, because there is always more to learn!  

Another sermon we heard started out similarly to the intellectual sermon, with historical background information and an overview of what the passage is saying on the surface.  Then, the preacher began to share thoughts from his own time reading and praying over the passage.  As he recollected, he started crying!  It took me off guard- my heart was pulled quickly into the sermon as I tried to understand the preacher’s tears.  As he continued to share, specifically about how the Church has failed to love as Jesus did, I found myself feeling this deep sadness with him.  The authentic emotions he shared engaged my heart.  It was as if God communicated His deep desires for the Church and the world through this preacher.  I left the sermon knowing I had encountered God in a very personal way, a way just as real as in a more intellectual sermon.  This sermon that engaged my heart & emotions did so by inviting the listener into a very personal space: the preacher’s own prayers and one-on-one time with God.  It taught me to listen for God’s heart when I read scripture and pray, simply because the preacher invited everyone into a space where I felt safe to listen. 

Other emotions and ways of presenting the heart of a matter showed up a lot from one church to another.  For example, one sermon we heard had a clear and direct statement, which the preacher yelled boldly at us who were listening: “God should hate you!”  This preacher took the passage and made it personal quickly, to the point that I felt affronted.  God should hate me?  I’m not that bad.  He threw the truth right at us, and at himself, too...he did not exempt himself from the barrage.  And he was right, a perfectly holy God should have no reason to love or befriend human beings who, even at their very best, are broken and prone to idiocy (this is a doctrine called “total depravity,” which you don’t have to believe to get my point).  This is a hard truth to swallow, so the preacher was direct.  He didn’t beat around the bush!  Thankfully, the sermon did not end in this very sticky spot.  The main point he landed on was this: God should hate us, but instead of hating us, He sent Jesus to bring us back to Him and rescue us from our own idiocy.  That’s love!  By the end of the sermon, I felt really thankful for God’s love for me, having realized just how much I don’t deserve it.  This felt like connecting with God, but in a different way- it involved turning to God with thankfulness and humility, and with understanding of how needy I am.

These are three of many different ways to preach from the Bible, each of which I found powerful.  From these experiences alone, I learned that sermons can involve engaging the mind or engaging the heart, and there are many ways to do this, and some sermons did both.  It’s simply impossible to categorize all the sermons we heard into these two buckets, though, as God used the uniqueness of every preacher to deliver something new.  

So, if I can’t describe what a sermon is using categories, what is the point of me writing this at all?  It’s because of something I found in common, as that’s what is important to know about the Church.  Every sermon we heard, regardless of if it was a list of facts or an emotional plea (or something else entirely), was an attempt to grow everyone in the knowledge and love of God.    Because God is an infinite and unknowable God, it makes sense to me that there are likewise infinite ways to preach through and discuss His Word, written in the Bible.  After the sermon about joy, I found myself wanting to know more of God’s joy.  After the sermon about the Church, I wanted to turn to God for help and know His plan.  After the sermon about how God should hate me but doesn’t, I felt secured and safe in a greater knowledge of His love.

Perhaps as you read these experiences, you picked your favorite type of sermon.  I do that, too, though I won’t share here which type I prefer.  Because my point is that I found power in every type of sermon, because every sermon was a way of stretching the mind and the heart to know God more.  A sermon, to me, is God coming down and us reaching out and trying to grab hold of Him- using our minds, our hearts, and other faculties that God gave us humans.  I came in with strong preferences, and I’m leaving this expedition with ears more open to hear God speak, regardless of the details.

[veryloved]

Sunday Practices: Music

This is a post in the series I’m writing about our Church expedition here in San Francisco.  You can see all the posts I’ve written so far on this topic if you click the #churchexpedition hashtag at the bottom of this post.

In my last post, I shared some ways to think about a church from a bird’s eye view- churches have locations & buildings, and many also have “locales”, or a sort of focus area.  I obviously left out a lot of other ways to describe a church...some churches have cultural or ethnic roots, for example, or other things that shape and mold the community into a unique creation of God.  But, I shared what was most striking to me as we visited churches around the city.

Now, I will zoom in further and talk about the most “obvious” western Church practice: the Sunday gathering.  You’ve likely heard this called “Sunday service,” but I’m going to call it “Sunday gathering,” because the word “service” is more easily misinterpreted.  Just as a church is more than a building, a church is also much more than a Sunday gathering.  And remember that a church, at its very core, is a part of the Body of Christ, a community that believes in Jesus Christ as the Savior and aims to live lives fully dependent on His grace and power.  This belief in the Gospel message is at the core of a Sunday gathering, just as it is at the core of the Church.  

Interestingly, Sunday gatherings look similar in structure from church to church, when we look at the big picture.  There are at least four major practices in a Sunday gathering: people praying, everyone making music & singing, someone speaking, and some people eating a piece of bread and drinking some wine/grape juice (this is called communion, or eucharist).  There are other things that can happen during a Sunday gathering, like announcements, sharing of prayer requests, performances, etc.   But in general, every church we visited had praying, singing, speaking, and communion in the Sunday gathering. The common order around here is singing first, speaking second, and communion third, with prayer throughout, but that varies, too.  And, some churches practice communion less often, like once a month.

These major components of a Sunday gathering are all ways of a community turning to God, focusing on Him.  So, there are as many ways to go about these major practices as there are stars in the sky.  No one Sunday gathering was exactly the same as another.  I’m going to now talk about some of the different forms we encountered of three of these four practices: music, speaking, and communion.  My goal in doing this (just to remind you from previous posts) is to marvel at the beauty of the Body of Christ, the Church.  Every church is different not to create animosity, but to create a body that, when working as a whole, is greater than the sum of its unique and gifted parts.  For me personally, this post is also a confession of my narrow-mindedness.  When we started this expedition, I doubted churches that had practices different from my own.  God really opened my mind and my heart, and I’m thankful!  More on that as we go.  But for now, let’s start with the singing!

Why in the world do people sing in church?  It’s probably the weirdest part to you, if you are not a Christian.  The short answer is God commands us to worship Him with music and singing, it’s a unique way of interacting with God.  Luckily, I’ve never been in a church that requires you to be a great singer, and it’s always a good time when I give up on trying to sound like my day job is the opera.  As for what the music sounds like, that’s where you find cool differences!  We visited churches with a pipe organ and choir, but most of them used guitars and a piano, or a drum set, or that box thing that you sit on and hit with your hands (what’s that called?),, or a selection of other instruments.  Then, on top of “the band,” everyone sings songs.  

There are actually many kinds of of “church songs,” it’s not all things that sound like Amazing Grace.  Some songs were lyrically complex and detailed.  This song, one we usually sing at Christmastime, takes you through the entire Gospel message as you sing each verse (click here to listen):

Joy to the world The Lord has come Let earth receive her King Let every heart prepare Him room And heaven and nature sing And heaven and nature sing And heaven and heaven and nature sing

Other songs are less detailed and complex, and perhaps repetitive.  These simpler songs, in my opinion, encourage meditation and deep understanding of something specific about God.  Here’s part of a song I encountered for the first time a couple of weeks ago, for example (click here to listen):

Jesus at the center of it all Jesus at the center of it all From beginning to the end It will always be, it's always been You Jesus, Jesus

This is where I write my first confession.  My gut reaction to simpler songs is, “This song is boring.”  I know many who have this reaction to old hymns, though I do not.  But this expedition did a lot to shatter my preferences.  For example, the “Jesus at the center” line of the above song got stuck in my head for upwards of a week...there it is, a simple thing for me to pray and ponder as I go about my day!  Sometimes, simple is better for me.  Other times, a complex song really makes me think and engage.  So, I find both complex and simple songs to be worshipful, just in different ways. 

Other than the instruments and the songs, there is one more thing about music that varied greatly from church to church: the presentation.  Multiple churches we went to had the musicians stand in the front, one had them on the side, another in the back.  Some churches used microphones, some did not.  One church had the musicians stand on a darkened stage.  I loved the simpler presentations (and even the intentional hiding of the musicians), as it helped me to take my mind off of the musicians and place my focus on God instead.  This is my usual preference.  The most “showy” church had 5 vocalists, 4 instrumentalists, colorful lighting that moved around the raised stage and the whole congregation, and fog machines!  

My second confession is that I came into this expedition feeling too picky about the musical presentation.  I was certain that a church with fancy lighting and fog machines was overdone.    But, as I stood in this “showy” church singing, and occasionally closing my eyes due to the blinding lights turning my direction, it came to mind that God is described in the Bible to be so glorious, so full of light, that people can’t even look at Him without dying!  Moses visibly glowed after meeting with God in the Hebrew tabernacle.  In that moment, it suddenly felt not only understandable, but downright appropriate, for the lights to be so darn bright and blinding.  And some may find this to be a stretch, but I even saw the fog as a visual representation of the Holy Spirit, the spirit who is sent from God to guide and empower Christians.  So is this my favorite way to worship God in song?  No, not really.  But, I gained some understanding of why a lot of people enjoy this kind of musical worship.  (If you like satire, you may enjoy this article about fog machines.)

Looking back over our expedition, the practice of singing was the thing I expected to learn the least about...and now I just wrote a very long post about it, so I guess that turned out differently than expected!  From singing hymns with an organ out of a hymn book, to standing in a crowd full of light and sound, I was pleasantly surprised that there was something worshipful about every single musical experience we’ve had.  If you are a Christian who is picky about music and/or presentation, as I often am, don’t feel like I’m telling you that you have to like fog machines (or dislike them).  Everyone has a way of worshipping that is their favorite, that’s just how we are.  I prefer no fog machines, for example.  But I encourage you to seek to understand other musical worship styles, and through that, understand Christians who worship differently than you.  We’re all going to be worshipping God in heaven, after all, so I think heaven is going to sound like a lot of different musical worship styles!  And regardless of if you are Christian or not, consider this to be my main point: The fact that there are so many ways of simply singing to God reflects just how much of God there is to worship!  This reminds me of another song, actually (click here to listen):

Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made, Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky.

Well, there are two other Sunday gathering practices I learned a lot about: speaking and communion.  I’m still considering if I will write about one or both of these practices in future posts.  Also, I will be featuring a post from a guest writer in this series, a beloved and handsome gentleman.  I hope you keep reading!

[veryloved]

Uniquely Church

This is the first major post in a series I’m writing about our Church expedition here in San Francisco.  Click here to read the intro post.

Before we dive in, remember that the baseline here is what I mentioned briefly in my last post: For every single one of these churches, the belief that Jesus Christ is God, that He came to earth as a man, that He died and rose again, and that He through that act gives anyone who comes to Him new life and access to the love and mercy of God, is central.  What I just said is usually referred to as “the Gospel,” or the Good News, and for me to consider a church to be part of the Church (the worldwide group of Jesus followers, or “the body of Christ”, as I mentioned in my last post), they need to at least believe and preach the Gospel.  

Though all adhering to the same Gospel, additional beliefs and practices vary widely from one church to another.  And it is these differences that I’m writing about, not to encourage you to attend one church over another, but simply to invite you to learn along with me, and to marvel at how many different ways Christians can come together to preach the Gospel and worship God.  

Now we dive in, and I take the 10+ churches we’ve attended so far (including both Catholic and Protestant churches) and distill the experiences into something interesting and useful.  And I finish doing this before starting work again, because otherwise this mini-series sits and slowly rots away into nothing.  I’ll talk in this post about a couple of things that makes a church unique.  Each one we’ve visited has a flavor, a personality.  When I reflected on why, a couple of things came to mind, though this is definitely not all the things that make a given church unique!

Let’s begin with a Christian adage, one I have heard many times: “Church is not a building.”  The idea behind that is we should think of churches as groups of people who follow Jesus and believe the Gospel.  And many churches around the world meet outside, in homes, online, etc.  But the first thing I noticed about every church we’ve visited is the building!  Oops.  Oh, well.  It’s worth listing the buildings we’ve visited, because this is what makes the Church in San Francisco so uniquely San Francisco.  Go to Texas and you’ll find a lot of big buildings, because there is so much space, while in China, churches meet underground due to persecution .  We visited churches in a YMCA, 2 school auditoriums, a gym with soap that smelled like gasoline, one small cathedral, one grander stone cathedral, a warehouse, a plain box that I can’t describe precisely, and a narrow unit across from the sporting goods store.  The variety of locations reflects that San Francisco is a cramped city, with few buildings historically used as churches, and high rents.  Very few churches here own the building they use.  I love that the churches are squeezing in wherever they fit, and the building where a church meets can influence the personality of the church.  For example, the church that meets in the gymnasium has to deal with the heating system breaking, random noises from the church that meets upstairs, and setting up & tearing down chairs and sound equipment.  This brought out an authentic, fun-loving attitude among the people there.  The small cathedral, on the other hand, had a  sense of honor and reverence for God, which was reflected in the grandeur of the interior decor.

Often closely tied to the building and/or location of the church is what I’m going to call the “locale” of the church.  This is a concept I learned about for the first time recently, so I’m certain there is a better word for it.  But the idea behind “locale” is that every church welcomes everyone, but some churches focus on drawing people who live nearby, while others take a wider view.  For example, when we visited churches with larger spaces near public transit lines, the big idea expressed by the people there was often to “draw the masses.”  Come one, come all!  On the flip side, we visited some smaller churches that we could walk to from our house (we don’t live near the subway).   Many of these churches take the opposite approach: if you live or work nearby, you will more easily be involved.  The latter is called a “parish” model, taken (I assume) from the idea of a Catholic parish.  The former probably has a fancy name, but I’m going to call it the “masses” model.  Note that the locale of a church implies nothing about how big or small it is!  We attended churches of both locales that were both big and small.  Locale just refers to the *focus* of the church.

I had never noticed before that, even if two churches are on the same block in San Francisco, one may be trying to draw the masses, while the other trying to focus on just the neighborhood- two different locales.  This seems unique to places like this city, where you can choose between drawing the masses and focusing on the neighborhood.  In a small rural church, there are no masses of people to draw, while in a suburban church, the parish model may be too narrowly-focused, since everyone having cars gives the potential for drawing people from further away.  

Some churches don’t seem to consider their locale, or their “target audience,” however you want to put it.  But of the churches we visited that either want to draw the masses or grow a parish, we saw great potential in both options.  For example, a church we visited that uses the parish model hosted small group Bible studies in the neighborhood of the church, and they do a monthly prayer walk around the neighborhood (late at night, I might add).  At a different parish church, we ran into our nextdoor neighbor!  These churches excited us because we *love* our neighborhood, so seeing investment in our closest community resonated with us deeply.  But we visited mostly churches that are using the masses model, and these are also very effective.  One church we visited has small group Bible studies all over the city, and they have started or funded many citywide projects.    

A final thing I noticed is that locale is more of a spectrum than a black and white decision.  A church we visited is drawing anyone who wants to come, but they spend a lot of time loving on the neighborhood they are in.  

I am glad to discover that the Church in San Francisco is such a patchwork of buildings, locations, and locales.  I can’t help but think it’s best this way, with the caveat that the Church unites together, each contributing its uniqueness to the Body of Christ!  If you attend a church, I encourage you to think about what makes your church uniquely beautiful, and who you are most called to love with Christ’s love, whether that is here in San Francisco or anywhere else in the world.

[veryloved]

The Expedition

A couple of months ago, we decided to embark on what I’m going to call a “Church expedition.”  The decision to leave our church community, which we loved, was not made lightly.  Around when we moved into our new home, we entered into a crisis, a time of questioning: how do we make sure our home is not wasted?  And while on that question, how do we make sure our lives are not wasted?  Was there anything that needed to change?  Is there anything God is saying that we are ignoring?

God was faithful to guide us to some answers, as hard as it was to hear them.  So, in our usual style of doing a bunch of huge life changes at the same time, we moved, then we left our church the next month, then I left my job the month after that.

This is what got us to the Church expedition.  The Church is described in the Bible as the body of Christ.  There are so many implications to this metaphor, like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and no one church can function separate from the Church (note little ‘c’ vs. big ‘C’).  But we knew basically nothing about the Church in our home, San Francisco, other than our one experience.  What else was there?  How are we to work together as a Church to bring light to this dark city if we don’t understand the Christians who live here in communities?  

I refer to this as an “expedition” because it has a specific goal.  We want to understand more wholly the Church in San Francisco, specifcally by attending a lot of different churches here.  Also, expeditions do not go on forever.  We will be done with ours by springtime, because the Bible also makes clear how important it is to have deep fellowship with other Christians, and going to a different church every week makes that difficult to achieve.  The only reason we feel we can last for months of this expedition is specifically because we have so many close friends here who are praying for us and holding us accountable.  We’re not going on this journey alone.

So far, the expedition remains exciting and a blessing to us both.  After attending a church, Cory processes primarily through researching, so he has been chewing on a lot of good books about ecclesiology (churchy stuff) and talking to people from other church backgrounds.  I seem to process more through writing.  It’s as if every time we go to a different church, we’re given a few more pieces to an impossibly large puzzle.  I come home and write it all down, trying to piece things together.  We do not aim to fully know something that is so high above our understanding, but we do marvel at the complexity of the Church.  We discover something new every time we look at it.

I have been writing down thoughts, and I will share some of them here.  Even with the few experiences we’ve had so far, I know I will run out of time and energy to write down every thought, everything I’ve learned.  Some of the thoughts are about communion/eucharist, liturgy, preaching & speaking, cultures, events, community...the list goes on.  Let’s see how many posts I can write on this topic- perhaps it will create a mini-series that I can group with a hashtag, making me feel like a super serious blogger.  

In whatever I do share about our expedition, please note that I will share raw experiences and thoughts.  I’m not a church expert, nor any kind of expert at anything.  The only thing I claim is true is that Jesus Christ is the only way to real life.  Beyond that, I hope my observations are interesting or helpful.

[veryloved]

Goodbye, Facebook

This is my final blog entry about Facebook office posters for a while, because I am leaving my job at Facebook this week.  This blog post is dedicated to my many friends at Facebook, I hope you will read this if you have worked with me.

I wish I had written more blog posts about these office posters, as so many of these mantras make Facebook what it is, and they reflect aspects of my heart.  So, I find it appropriate to use the most common Facebook office poster to sum up why I am leaving one of the best jobs in the entire world:

“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”

What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?  Lots of things.  I would trust myself to get to the bottom of a problem instead of giving up.  I would try skydiving.  I would attend a PE LAN party.  I would try a brisket burrito with fries that I hear you can get at Facebook for lunch.  I would tell people more often that I actually do believe in a loving God, and that I believe the Bible (this has often created deeper friendships anyway, after people get over the initial shock).  

What else would I do?  I would leave Facebook.

As I have been told a lot recently, I am giving up a lot by leaving Facebook.  I have a really promising career so far, and even now, it feels like I can only keep going up and growing in leadership.  Many people told me, “You don’t understand how much you are giving up,” or, “You will regret this decision.”  Please know that, to the extent I can, I do understand how much I am giving up.  Leaving Facebook means leaving a job where I  am valued, trusted, and befriended.  The past few weeks have been not only my last at Facebook, but also the most emotionally difficult weeks of my career.

But I know I won’t regret this, which is why I am doing it.  This may not make sense to everyone reading, but because I believe in a loving God, I believe that God can and does tell people to do things for their good, and for the good of the world around them.  And God’s calling is rarely convenient.  For me, it is clear that God is calling me to pour my heart out for San Francisco.  And it is hard to do this properly when I work 30 miles away from the city.  Will San Francisco be home forever?  I don’t know.  But it is home right now, even if it’s a messy, crazy, unpredictable place.  And there is something about living out God’s calling on my life that gives me energy, strength, and joy.  I believe this is because He is a good God who wants us to live life to the fullest.

This decision is way harder than I thought it was going to be.  I guess this is a good thing; I guess Facebook is exactly where I was supposed to be for the past four years.  Looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing.  I have so many people I could thank for the time they spent mentoring me and making my day-to-day work something that I love, that I could spend another entire blog post just thanking people.

Thank you to each one of my coworkers for being so unforgettable.  Please come over whenever you want, and reach out often.  I am just one Messenger ping away!

[veryloved]

Thank you, DPC

Dolores Park Church has been my home here in San Francisco for over six years.  This small church in the middle of one of the city’s most vibrant neighborhoods is full of people that Cory and I both consider to be family.  So, it is extremely hard to say that God is calling us out of DPC for now.  

For those at DPC who are hearing this for the first time (which is not everyone, we tried to tell people as often as possible), let me tell you that you are still family.  Though DPC is no stranger to the difficulties inherent to gathering a whole bunch of broken people together, we are not leaving because of a conflict or because we decided we don’t like you all!  It is so important to us that you know this is true, and we intend to prove it by remaining family.  Our lives are open to you, as they always have been, and we desire to be involved in your lives.  Reach out to either of us and you will find that we are happy to join you in fellowship!

So why, then, are we leaving DPC?  There are a few reasons.  What I will share here has everything to do with God and His calling on our lives.  As Cory and I prayed over what felt like a nudge from the Lord, God revealed to us just how much we don’t know about His global church, His soon-to-be spotless Bride.  He also made clear just how young we are and how stuck up we have become.  DPC gave us many opportunities to lead, and God worked mightily through many things, but it left us rather un-discipled and un-humbled.  This has mostly to do with our sin and very little to do with DPC.  The experience of church should leave all of us bowed down low before the King of the Universe...we need to be humbled!

What God revealed to us through prayer led us to a couple of conclusions: we need to learn more about what the church looks like, starting with here where we live, and we need to humble ourselves before the Lord and seek His guidance instead of having everything “figured out.”  This means, practically, that we need to experience churches other than DPC, and that we need to turn to the Lord and ask Him which church He is calling us to.

Starting this week, we are trying to walk in obedience to what we have heard.  This means we are going to try a lot of different churches around San Francisco, the goal being to get to know this small piece of the global patchwork that is the Church.  We’re building a list of churches that is diverse...some of them feel like churches we would never like, but we’re going to go visit them.  The list is open to suggestions, if you have any!  After some time spent intentionally “church hopping,” we’re going to ask God where He is calling us to put down roots.  We have no idea what church this will be, which to me is important, because this forces us to humble ourselves before the Lord and wait on His provision and guidance.  We do not have this “figured out” ahead of time like we usually do!

We know that God will provide guidance in His time and a lot of lessons for us while we wait, so this is actually a really exciting season!  Please be in prayer over us as we set out on this adventure.  Also, we need and we desire to spend more time in fellowship with people during this time when we are disconnected from a single church community, so if you know us, please press in and reach out often!  We will be joining a small group during this time to stay connected to a base of Christians who can walk with us, but the more, the merrier!  I also may post about the churches we try out, let’s see how it goes.

God is so good to give us the amazing family of DPC.  We are so glad that DPC remains our family, and that we have only bigger and better family to look forward to in the end!  

[veryloved]

Aiming for the End

I wrote the following while flying home from Dublin, Ireland.

Eight hours and fifteen minutes left.  I'm getting into project management at work, and I really picked a doozy for my first go: 2 week time window, hard deadline, and in another country.  On top of that, the two week window began directly after a week spent on vacation with my family, so I'm coming up on 3 weeks away from home now.  That is a really long time for a software engineer...we're usually just as useful abroad as we are at home.  Ironically, I have lived away from our new home longer than I have lived in it since our move-in day.

When packing up for Ireland and enjoying some final moments on the lake in Montana, I was also adding things here and there to Cory's growing to-do list for while I was away: finish the painting, fix the vacuum, get Donut's nails trimmed, install light switch covers...poor Cory!  Meanwhile, my "to-do" list for Ireland remained untouched.  The work-related tasks were clear, and the list of those was long.  But why was I going to Ireland, other than to get work done?  Don't get me wrong, doing good work is a good thing, and Christians should do their best at their work.  But the Holy Spirit, who constantly works to make us new and give us purpose, told me I was missing something.  Then off I went, and the only prayer I knew how to pray was, "God, please show me why I'm here."

The first week was nuts.  Two of my dearest friends just moved to Ireland, and spending as much time as possible with them was my plan for getting through the craziness of this project.  I saw them only once during my entire first week there.  But by God's grace, this prayer stayed with me.  Sometimes I went into the bathroom (a great place to escape when you're the only woman) and prayed this when I felt like I was at the end of my rope.  

By Friday, I was spent, and my friends could tell.  The week prior left me feeling homesick when how I *wanted* to feel was joyful that I could finally be with my friends!  I'm thankful we went to church together, as I had some wrestling to do with the Lord, and church seems to always force this to happen.  

As I continued praying through why I was here, God revealed things slowly.  There ended up being a lot of reasons, too many to list here, so that's an answered prayer right there!  Some involved coworkers, and my dear friends, which were the sort of things I imagined.  What took me more by surprise, though, was how God used this trip to Ireland to change my heart in a different way than when I am comfortable at home.

One event in particular came to mind a lot this week: a lunch Cory and I had with some friends from the U.K. a few months ago.  They are an older couple, they are actually spending their retirement years on mission with YWAM SF.  After nearly 4 hours of enjoying their company and conversation, what I was most struck by is what I would call immense patience.  One could also call it faith.  So many of the stories they shared took place over decades and decades of time.  I even remember them saying something like, "You rush a lot.  Don't rush, you idiot.  God is faithful."  It certainly sounded more British and more polite, but that was the general idea.  

One of the primary things God taught me as this lunch conversation kept coming to mind: don't rush (you idiot).  I have a long-term relationship with the problem of rushing, Cory can certainly tell you.  It got especially bad when we moved into the new house.  I was so excited to have this amazing home that God provided that I became overly goal-oriented: Find the best furniture!  Fix everything!  Host a dinner ASAP!  Everything needed to happen yesterday, according to me.  This mindset carried right on over into my Ireland trip- the goal was to get through this project as quickly as possible, and I considered cutting the trip short on many occasions.  Finishing early is great, and I of course miss my husband and my home and my doggie, but this became an obsession.  

My race to the finish line had me moving too quickly to properly see what God was doing in myself and in the people around me.  Going to church gave me the lightbulb moment: the fix was to say "thank you."  Thank you to God that I am leading a *huge* project that could have been given to someone else, thank you for providing me with a lot of co-workers to build friendships with, thank you especially that I barely had time to miss my friends before coming to Ireland to see them again.  Saying "thank you" to God always involves slowing down, otherwise life is a blur and I can't see what I should be thankful for.  After going to church on Sunday, I was thankful, and I was ready to slow down and re-prioritize.  Instead of waiting for God to hand me something to do on a silver platter, I started taking what He had given me and working with it.  

The last four days were so much more joyful than the first week, all because I slowed down and said "thanks” to God.  And this was only one of the many things God taught me!  So I'm ready to go home, but I am also glad I went.  However, I still hate Guinness, so they probably would have kicked me out by now anyway!

[veryloved]

The Final Line

The realtor handed us stapled stacks of six or seven home listings- Outer Sunset, Excelsior, Ingleside...all of the neighborhoods within our budget.  A super small unit far from the center of the city, a larger house that was completely gutted and needed tons of renovation, an ultra-modern condo with 6 units sharing the same washing machine.  Then we saw the final page: a large, open condo with a backyard, not far from where we rent right now.  Something resonated then, but we agreed that this wasn’t the time to make an offer on a house.  We were just looking, learning what we wanted.

24 hours later, we sat in the realtor’s office, preparing an offer.  The condo opened for offers the next day, so it’s now or never, given that it’s the San Francisco real estate market.  The stack of paper is literally a foot thick, and it took about 3 hours to sign everything.  Only one line remained on the final sheet: how much money we’re offering.  We decided to go home and pray about it before the morning.  

At this point, we felt pretty nutty.  We both agreed that we weren’t offering on houses yet.  But this fit the bill of our dream home, so why pass up the opportunity?  Was this God testing us or providing for us?  We couldn’t tell.  We went home and prayed until I was basically falling asleep, and we still felt this tension: we love this place, but why were we hesitating?  

We went to bed, woke up the next morning, and did not fill in that final line on the offer.  It didn’t feel like an act of faith in God’s will as much as it felt like straight up uncertainty about what to do.  God did not provide us with certainty, so we acted on faith that He made us uncertain for a reason.  Immediately one reason for uncertainty came to the forefront: no one knew we were thinking of buying this house!  We sent an email to our small group requesting prayer and their thoughts and advice.  At the least, God convicted us of just how important community must be in our life.  If we claim to value our small group as family and spiritual support, then we obviously must invite them to walk with us in decisions such as this, even if it means passing up this condo to do so.

The next day came, we lost our chance to make an offer on our dream home.  It was a very quiet, tired, and unclear end.  I tried to have faith that God could provide a better home for us, though I couldn’t think of what could be better or what this future home would look like.  Images of the place we just passed up kept rolling through my mind.  

Our realtor called in the afternoon that day, to inform us that after a week of showings and lots of interest, no one else filled in the final offer line, either!  This meant not only could we reconsider, but also we could offer a lower price, something lower than our budget.  

The next night at small group, we celebrated together God’s provision, and our new home.  I am so glad that God made us wait, even if it was only for a day.  God showed us great mercy by not allowing us to buy a home without inviting our spiritual family into the decision.  He held us back with uncertainty until we sought His will, waited, and reached out to others.  

This process also taught me about waiting on the Lord, to the point that the discipline of waiting on the Lord is growing in my daily life.  It is so amazing to know that waiting on the Lord always proves worth the wait, whether it is for 24 hours or for a lifetime!

P.S. We know and love multiple people here in SF who are trying to buy a home, with no success so far.  Please know that we want so desperately for God to provide a home for you, and we pray for God to give you His comfort in abundance as you wait.

[veryloved]

I’m there on the left...

Francis Chan came to speak at Facebook headquarters last week.  This was a multi-month effort that involved a lot of people in the Christians@Facebook group, and it was a blessing to see so many people attend the talk!

But let me tell you, that day sucked for me.  It was a hard lesson that I forced myself to learn the hard way.  It was a lesson about the difference between knowing something in my head and knowing it in my heart.

Francis chose to talk to Facebook employees about humility, and being humbled like a child.  I found it very ironic, therefore, that we took a group selfie right after he finished his talk.  But, putting that aside....humility is a familiar topic to me, and something that I really try to practice in my life.  Humble actions really distinguish Christians from non-Christians in a success-driven company like Facebook, so I have tried to keep this at the forefront of my mind when going about my work.  

So why did the day that Francis came and shared about humility suck so much for me?  Because there is a difference between acting humbly and being humbled.  

What I mean is this: For months, I helped to plan the Francis Chan visit, as I am one of the coordinators of the Christians group.  I am “in charge” of the group on paper.  But it’s fine, I know how to act humbly in these situations.  I started by giving someone else the opportunity to be the emcee of the event.  I let people other than me advertise the event, and give ideas.  I did not push too hard on any opinion I had while planning.  I turned down the opportunity to personally escort Francis Chan into headquarters.  After meeting him, I did not ask for a photo or autograph.  I announced the selfie and then I didn’t even get into the camera frame, so I’m not in it (I hope you weren’t looking for me for too long in that picture!).  Even afterward, when the coordinators got to have lunch with Francis, I let other people talk before I did.  These are the basic things one does to act humbly.  I know the drill, I practice this every day.

But, I did not feel humbled in my heart.  And it is from the heart that the mouth speaks, so when Cory asked me how the talk went, my answer was basically, “Great, but I’m grumpy and exhausted.”  I had put *so* much energy into acting humbly that, by the time Francis talked about humility, I was tired and my heart was hardened.  Cory and I watched the talk again days afterward, and it was as if I was hearing it for the first time- the talk was not about “walking the walk” and acting in a humble way (though that’s great and all), it was about being completely *humbled* and undone in the presence of a great and powerful God who gives every heartbeat to you as a gift, not a privilege.  

I am thankful that God taught me a lot through this whole experience of bringing Francis to speak, most of which I learned outside of those 60 minutes he was actually speaking.  The lesson I pray God buries deep in my heart is this: Acting humbly and being humbled before God are not the same thing.

I hope all of you reading already know this, because it is a very humbling lesson to learn!  I’m glad God taught me this now, because seeing the ways in which I get exhausted by acting humbly at work (and in life) gives me a good place to start with working on being *truly* humbled by who God is, what He’s doing, and how I don’t deserve a single second of His time or a even a little bit of His grace!

[veryloved]

I promised in my last post that I would tell you more about the newest addition to the family: Donut the dog!  It is appropriate that he is sleeping on me as I write this, being all cute!

For three years now, I have been pestering Cory about getting a dog.  It was mostly not in earnest, as until recently, we both were commuting about 40 miles to work, which made it feel impossible to take good care of a dog.  But then, Cory started working much closer to home- he bikes to work now, and his office allows dogs!  So in our classic style, we went from “not being ready for a dog” to having Donut in our living room within 48 hours.  

The most important thing to know about Donut is that he’s broken.  He’s a rescue dog that came from a really bad situation, so his shell is thick to the point that some people call him a cat.  (He’s not *that* bad, to be clear!)  The day Cory and I first met him, he hid in the corner of the meet & greet room, and then he ran into a doorway and started shaking when he took him out on a walk near the rescue.  Naturally, we adopted him that day.  He was cowering in the corner of our living room by that night, afraid of us approaching him.  We have since discovered that it’s not just people; he is afraid of the wind, big trucks, children, bouncing balls, the park near our house, and who knows what else.  

We definitely took a gamble on Donut.  The rescue told us that he may never be a “normal dog.”  And I think they’re right.  He improves every day, but Donut will probably always be afraid of lots of things.  But we were both very drawn to this shaking ball of fur, and through that we learned something about us.  We are drawn to broken things.  Donut is not the first example, and he won’t be the last.  Donut is just a dog, but through loving him and helping him be happy in our home, we have learned that we both take a whole lot of joy in watching broken things be transformed.  Because we took Donut “as is,” every step in the right direction feels like a huge victory.  He loves to play and cuddle now, for example!  This experience so far has helped me better understand what God does with each of us broken people: He loves us, waits for us to be ready for the next step, never abandons us, and gives us blessings and undeserved treats along the way (Donut’s favorite is Pupperoni, and leftover sausage)!

This is just one of the many things Donut has taught us.  We’ve also met more neighbors in the past month than we did in the past four years!  All the other dog owners know Donut as “the scared dog.”  But hey, it gives us a chance to build a relationship, until Donut is too scared and wants to go home!

We love you, Donut!

[veryloved]

Ruined for the ordinary

Let’s talk for a moment about gimmicks- you know, things that are marketed as novel and life-changing but are in reality mediocre or just plain ridiculous.  Like Pajama Jeans.  Or “As Seen on TV” products.  You know what I mean.  Now, imagine you wake up tomorrow and *everyone* is raving about Pajama Jeans.  You notice people at work are wearing Pajama Jeans, random strangers are wearing Pajama Jeans- even people at the Levi’s outlet are wearing Pajama Jeans!  Close friends and people you trust start urging you to get yourself some Pajama Jeans, before the world runs out of them.  They care about you and they don’t want you to miss out.    

Crazy, right?  Now you know an exaggerated version of how I felt when we walked into our first Perspectives on the World Christian Movement class last month.  We heard about the Perspectives class from three different Christians who don’t know each other.  We learned it was some sort of missions class, and that it isn’t offered very often in the Bay Area (so, limited edition!).  On top of that, the class so happens to be meeting in our church (beyond convenient!).  We watched videos about it online, poked around on the website, and went to an open house about the class, only to find...no meaningful information.  The only thing we could figure out is that everyone who took this class loved it.  Happy people in the videos told stories of amazing life change, or being called to one ministry or another.  We ran into a lot of old friends from school at the open house/intro for Perspectives, who go to many different churches around the city.  Where did everyone hear about this thing from?!  There was even a panel at the open house of past Perspectives students, all of whom said the same thing: “Perspectives ruined me for the ordinary.”  Not only that, but the class has hours of reading assignments each week, and a final project, yet these alumni were still trying to convince us it was worth it!  

So, a lot of hype.  But what *was* it, exactly?  We still didn’t know.  At this point all I knew was a lot of buzzwords: God, missions, life-changing, revolutionary...  We registered, started the readings, and came to class, not certain of whether or not we had just signed up for a pair of spiritual Pajama Jeans.

We’re five weeks into the class now, and what I can certainly say is this: Pajama Jeans are amazing!  Just kidding.  But, this class is not a gimmick.  It’s an intensive look into the reason for, the purpose of, and the practice of missions.  It started off with reframing missions as God’s mission, God’s plan, and God’s power through Christ and the Holy Spirit, then started diving into the specifics.  Each week has a number of readings that make me really think about how I’m applying what the Bible says to my walk with the Lord, then a speaker who is a missionary of some sort (not necessarily an international field missionary) who further challenges the class to take God and His mission seriously.  

There is so much I could say about Perspectives, even though we are less than halfway through the 15-week course.  But a full overview would take too long, so I want to share some highlights.  Here are some things that I’ve underlined in the readings or heard from a speaker so far:

Your decisions are faulty until you see the world as God sees it.

Many people are afraid of missions because it is “dangerous.”  Of course missions is dangerous!  It’s because Christ is dangerous.  Christ is dangerous to our sin and our pride. 

God does not hide from us- He hides for us!  God takes joy in us learning who He is.  (The analogy here was a parent taking joy in their kids looking for Easter eggs.  The eggs are never really hidden, they’re hidden just enough for kids to enjoy finding them!)

Worship is, above all else, focus.  You worship when you focus on God over all else.

The American dream: “Buy things you don’t need with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t like.”

Anyone would jump into a rushing river to save a child, but who would jump in to retrieve a quarter?  Risk is judged by the worthiness of the goal, not by how dangerous the circumstances are.    

Prayer is an act of resistance, an instrument of battle that God gives to us to fight the powers of darkness in this world.

God calls us to reject comfort to have more of Jesus.  Don’t pray for tasks equal to your powers, pray for powers equal to your tasks.

Don’t do what others can or want to do when there is so much that others can’t or won’t do!

If we really believe that God honors our faith in Him when we go out and share the Gospel, we can’t afford *not* to be in missions!

So, after hearing some of these really challenging things, I’m going to say that Perspectives seemed like Pajama Jeans when we were going into it, but this course is actually heavy-duty jeans.  For starters, taking this class alongside Cory has helped us to re-center our relationship on Christ and His work in a way that we didn’t know was possible before.  From this has come an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on many other areas of our lives, including new ministry opportunities and renewed energy and desire to see God’s glory explode here in San Francisco.  I may write more about the specifics later, but in short: God is so full of abundant blessing and love for His children!  I do think it’s just the beginning.  Perhaps we will end up just like the people we heard before taking the class: ruined for the ordinary.  

I will be sure to give you another update closer to the end of the class, which will include a final project!  

[veryloved]

Pullman Style

When blessing is fulfilled in creatures, people, households or nations, they are enabled to move toward their intended destiny.

(Blessing as Transformation by S. Gallagher & S. Hawthorne)

Reading this quote last week completed the definition of “blessing” for me.  If something is a blessing from God, it is something that moves you toward your “intended destiny.”  Put another way, blessings are meant to draw us closer to God, and deeper into His purposes for us!  

As I think of the many things God has blessed me with, one that has greatly drawn me deeper into the heart of the Father and His purpose for us is our apartment.  Like most people who move to San Francisco straight out of college, we were wide-eyed and unprepared for facing the rental market.  We heard then, and still hear now, of people who need to massively overbid on ridiculously small rental units to have a fighting chance, and others who apartment hunt for months and months before settling for a place outside of the city limits.  These war stories didn’t scare me, mostly because I was very oblivious and naive.  But it was to everyone else’s great surprise that Cory and I found our dream apartment the very same week I came to the city to start looking with him.  I was grateful for the apartment, of course.  It’s a wonderful flat in a Victorian-style building.  Each room connects to a long hallway, in what I learned recently is “Pullman car” style.  We have a kindhearted landlord, an amazing neighborhood, and there are a variety of coffee shops and parks around.  But this blessing was more than a beautiful home; it was also what God used for drawing us into real-life ministry.

I felt drawn to the ministry of hospitality before moving to San Francisco, but only after God’s provision of an apartment did I realize that I didn’t know the first thing about real hospitality, and how desperately we all need *real* hospitality!  Our guest bedroom and our living room were immediately needed by so many, as it is rare to have an apartment with a living room in the city, let alone a second bedroom.  So we have had many people come over, and many people stay for a while- ranging from old friends to friends we haven’t made yet.  Whenever there is a need for housing, we try to help.  And through the many opportunities to host we have found a deeper meaning of hospitality.  

Hospitality is something entirely other than physical space- it’s being sensitive to people’s needs and providing those needs, whether that need is for socializing and being with others, or for quiet space and time alone.  And the ultimate need everyone has is to see God and be near Him, and this is what we pray for whenever we host.  Hospitality is sacrificing that physical space to enable God’s work, only to find that God has returned to you more and more blessing.  And this has indeed been a blessing that has led to sacrifice, but then to more blessing; there is *nothing* quite like seeing God change someone’s heart or direct someone’s life while sitting in our living room!  We have witnessed so, so many miracles in this space.

I’m sure we still have a lot to learn about the true meaning of hospitality.  This post isn’t to say we have it all figured out, but instead to say thank you to anyone and everyone that has come into our home.  Whether you shared a meal with us, stayed for a while, or even quickly stopped by, you have helped us and you continue to help us move deeper into our ministry of hospitality.  We learn so much about the heart of God and we see Him at work when you share in this astounding blessing He has poured out onto us.  

Come by whenever you’d like, there is space for you :)