Today is Sunday and I just went to church twice and heard the same message. In the morning I went to hear Jerry Herships speak about his pub-ministry in Denver. He holds a service on Monday nights in different pubs. They begin each service with a, service within the service, by making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the homeless. During the week they go out and serve them. Their service to those experiencing homelessness includes an option to participate in communion.
Jerry tells each person who comes up that communion is a reminder of how much God loves them. One day a man who has been coming a long time stops, looks him in the eye and says, “You guys are a reminder of how much God loves me.”
Jerry has found a way to BE church and BE love in his community.
When I got home I listed to a piece on The Moth by Al Letson. Al went to Malawi and visited young men in prison. The young men sang song after song and Al was swept up to join the singing and movement until he experienced God and heard the words, “It is well”. In the face of horror, pain, dictatorship and imprisonment—it is well.
He thought he might start going to church again when he got back to the states; but he ends by saying, “At church I was handed a glass of water. In Malawi I swam in the water and no glass was going to be big enough.”
In my last few years of contemplating, conversing and playing with what church might be next, these two things sum it up for me.
Church is going to continue to exist where it can give us a place to swim; where we can BE church, BE love, BE connected. Where we can BE spiritual AND religious. I don’t think that is impossible. We might not know what it’s going to look like yet, but it’s going to be life—changing for all of us.
Last Call- by Jerry Herships:
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Call-Serving-Drinks-Jesus/dp/0664260586