When we moved overseas we didn’t have a church “building” to go to. So a handful of us met in our homes for fellowship together. We sometimes worshiped through song but if there wasn’t someone present with musical talent we played YouTube videos. It definitely didn’t feel the same as what I grew up with and at times I struggled to “enter in”. But as a whole, I was really thankful to be among a group of people living among millions of lost, who truly were listening to the words we sang and crying out in prayer and praise through this time. It didn’t always give “all the feels”, which I missed. But I soon discovered God was wanting to strip me of my dependence on my emotions, and being ruled by them.
We learned a way of studying scripture that emphasized the collective learning from the spirit of God together. And we took seriously the warning in James to not “forget what our face looked like” by just hearing the word but not obeying it. We held each other accountable to the ways that we wanted to obey. We didn’t always have grace in this area, we still had so much to deconstruct from our past for this to be loving and life giving. But it was a far cry from showing up and passively listening, shall I say attempting to stay engaged, for a whole hour to someone deliver a rehearsed and packaged talk about the bible or a concept from it. The spirit was teaching us newness from the word and we were desperate to cling to these truths more than ever in this challenging foreign land we were living in.
We didn’t have Sunday school for our kids so spouses traded times watching the kids, which meant that you couldn’t go sit through a much needed time of connection and “adult” time each week, and at times this felt like a big sacrifice for me. Eventually we found ways to incorporate the kids in what we were doing together, seeing the need to diciple them as well. But it meant that we had to be ok with distractions, and wiggling, and moments to teach them. It meant that when some parents didn’t teach their kids and left them to their own shenanigans others would get frustrated at having to parent other kids and constantly being distracted. It created a lot of opportunities to peace make together.
Sadly, in those earlier days we didn’t have the right tools to do that in a way that God would be glorified in and actually bring more unity. Certaintly none of us learned how to peace make from our time in church back in our passport countries. What we had learned was taking offense, judging, and avoiding.
In fact I can count too many times in the past when friends, even myself at times, just moved to a different social group because we lacked the courage and most of all love in handling our conflicts in a way we felt hopeful about. A handful of those times we brought the pastors into it for help, but didn’t find any answers there. I saw this happen time and time again and even though I didn’t know the way forward I knew we were missing some big things.
Unfortunately we all brought these things with us to our “new” experience of church. We had thought we had completed our deconstruction but in reality we had just begun. And in this scenario God had us right where he wanted, we had no other social group options to turn to, this group was it, so we were forced to examen our hearts and invite the Spirit to show us the way. Or we could avoid it and begin a long slow exit through the gate of bitterness.
TO BE CONTINUED…