In the spring each year the church I attend does a random acts of kindness initiative. This year the week set aside for the random kindness is April 1-8. How can it be random if there's a set week? I tell people it counts as random if it's not something they usually do. I'm the one telling people because I'm pretty much in charge of it this year. But, it's been a lot of fun, mostly because I get to talk about the things that people have already done (extra random points there) or are planning on doing:
1. In an effort to direct people to new or different ministries I made some phone calls one to Willow Pond, a local apartment complex that supplies transitional housing for women (and their families) leaving domestic violence situations. I called about future needs and obtained their wishlist (mostly household items for the women who usually show up with nothing). That's Random Act #1 - I know of at least one lady at the church that's already shopped off the wish list and made a donation.
2. Then Willow Pond told me of an immediate need. They needed an apartment readied for a new tenant. The sooner the better. So that became the Stratton Family's random act. We cleaned and we set them up with the basics (sheets, groceries, kitchen stuff, we decorated one bathroom...). And because of what Chris has been writing has been on the forefront of my mind, (namely that we need to make sure evangelism is part of our service ministries) we left a note that said we had prayed over their house (we did) and that we hoped they experienced peace and joy in this new place. We signed it, "In Christ's Love."
3-4. I know of two people who have paid for the car behind them in the drive-through
5. I have a friend who left cookies for her trash man.
6. One small group is supplying new dual-language Bibles for the ESL students who attend the church program.
7. One small group is doing yard work for a widow.
8. One small group is taking a group of underpriveledged kids to the aquarium and beach.
9. Another group is cleaning the Seaman's Center (a local center where ship crew hang out while their ship's are docked - we live on a big river!).
10. One lady is arranging for mom's with young kids to visit the elderly in a nursing home.
And that's just what I've been told about...
So hopefully by April 9th Wilmington, NC will be an even nicer place to live. And if someone randomly pays for your coffee at Port City Java that week, you'll know why!
Friday, March 31, 2006
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Falling
There's a magazine out of Chapel Hill that I like (though I don't subscribe) called The Sun and one of my favorite sections is "Reader's Write." They have a broad prompt such as, Coming Back, Nine to Five, or Gambling and they publish non fiction accounts by readers on the subject.
As a writing exercise more than anything (although I'll still send it in, if it's published I get a 6 month subscription free)I responded to the prompt "Falling." Here 'tis:
I am used to falling, literally falling down. Something about my kneecaps floating too high, a tendon being too stretched. Between the ages of 15 and 22 I experienced at least one bad knee sprain a year. This meant days in bed, knee propped on pillows and friends calling me “gimpy” when I did make it back up and around.
I played goalie on the girl’s soccer team in high school but my career ended when I failed to make a save and went to retrieve the ball by pulling it towards me with my foot. My cleat caught the net, my knee twisted, and suddenly I was being carried on a stretcher on my way to the emergency room. Even under the skin, my kneecap was visibly out of place.
In college another fall had me in the infirmary but the words of a female doctor equipped me for my next kneecap-out-of-place sprain: “If you were a male athlete they’d have you back on the field in no time.” When I fell a few months later during an intramural flag football game, I shoved my kneecap back myself and wrote my own prescription for ice and elevation.
When I finally faced Arthroscopic surgery, the doctor said I needed it right away, but I told him it would have to wait till after my summer plans – a job in Denali National Park, Alaska. I had a small window between when I returned and had to be back for classes – he could operate then.
While hiking with two friends we reached an impasse requiring us to scramble up a steep face of rocks. One misstep and I felt the all-to-familiar stab of pain resulting in collapse. Determined not to be the dorky girl whose knee required a helicopter rescue, I made it back down the mountain. I sprained it once more that summer in a volleyball game, but neither injury kept me from going on a solo day hike in the backcountry. As I climbed higher, often on slick rocks, I knew what I was risking, but I was willing. I saw a grizzly bear in the distance, counted geodes as I continued, and reached a precipice that dropped off so suddenly I felt like the ultimate risk taker simply by sitting close enough to allow my feet to linger off the edge.
Shortly after I recovered from the surgery I fell again, in my first attempt at racquetball. I’ve since grown to realize what risks are worth taking. That was six years ago, and it was the last time I sprained my knee. Most of my exercise these days comes from an elliptical machine at the gym (no lateral movement!) but if the right opportunity presented itself… I’m okay with falling. I’m practiced at getting up.
As a writing exercise more than anything (although I'll still send it in, if it's published I get a 6 month subscription free)I responded to the prompt "Falling." Here 'tis:
I am used to falling, literally falling down. Something about my kneecaps floating too high, a tendon being too stretched. Between the ages of 15 and 22 I experienced at least one bad knee sprain a year. This meant days in bed, knee propped on pillows and friends calling me “gimpy” when I did make it back up and around.
I played goalie on the girl’s soccer team in high school but my career ended when I failed to make a save and went to retrieve the ball by pulling it towards me with my foot. My cleat caught the net, my knee twisted, and suddenly I was being carried on a stretcher on my way to the emergency room. Even under the skin, my kneecap was visibly out of place.
In college another fall had me in the infirmary but the words of a female doctor equipped me for my next kneecap-out-of-place sprain: “If you were a male athlete they’d have you back on the field in no time.” When I fell a few months later during an intramural flag football game, I shoved my kneecap back myself and wrote my own prescription for ice and elevation.
When I finally faced Arthroscopic surgery, the doctor said I needed it right away, but I told him it would have to wait till after my summer plans – a job in Denali National Park, Alaska. I had a small window between when I returned and had to be back for classes – he could operate then.
While hiking with two friends we reached an impasse requiring us to scramble up a steep face of rocks. One misstep and I felt the all-to-familiar stab of pain resulting in collapse. Determined not to be the dorky girl whose knee required a helicopter rescue, I made it back down the mountain. I sprained it once more that summer in a volleyball game, but neither injury kept me from going on a solo day hike in the backcountry. As I climbed higher, often on slick rocks, I knew what I was risking, but I was willing. I saw a grizzly bear in the distance, counted geodes as I continued, and reached a precipice that dropped off so suddenly I felt like the ultimate risk taker simply by sitting close enough to allow my feet to linger off the edge.
Shortly after I recovered from the surgery I fell again, in my first attempt at racquetball. I’ve since grown to realize what risks are worth taking. That was six years ago, and it was the last time I sprained my knee. Most of my exercise these days comes from an elliptical machine at the gym (no lateral movement!) but if the right opportunity presented itself… I’m okay with falling. I’m practiced at getting up.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
What is Exactly is New Monasticism Anyway?
The 12 marks from www.newmonasticism.org:
1) Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire.
2) Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us.
3) Hospitality to the stranger
4) Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities
combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation.
5) Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church.
6) Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the
community along the lines of the old novitiate.
7) Nurturing common life among members of intentional community.
8) Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children.
9) Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life.
10) Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies.
11) Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18.
12) Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.
May God give us grace by the power of the Holy Spirit to discern rules for living that will help us embody these marks in our local contexts as signs of Christ’s kingdom for the sake of God’s world.
1) Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire.
2) Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us.
3) Hospitality to the stranger
4) Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities
combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation.
5) Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church.
6) Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the
community along the lines of the old novitiate.
7) Nurturing common life among members of intentional community.
8) Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children.
9) Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life.
10) Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies.
11) Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18.
12) Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.
May God give us grace by the power of the Holy Spirit to discern rules for living that will help us embody these marks in our local contexts as signs of Christ’s kingdom for the sake of God’s world.
Friday, March 24, 2006
Church Review - Part IV and Conclusion
learning from a cult
one clear example of a correct alternative to the seeker sensitive inversion of sunday worship can be seen in the ministry of a Christian cult, the “international churches of Christ” (not to be confused with the “united church of Christ”, a mainline denomination). i met this group in college, and for a while thought they were just a very mature group of Christian students committed to evangelism. i was excited to have the opportunity to join them in their work. but soon it became clear that i was part of that work. they argued to me from Scripture that i was not, in fact, saved—primarily because up to that point i had not lived a daily life committed to oral evangelism. they said to me, “you mean you don’t wake up every morning thinking about which ten or fifteen people you will talk to about Jesus that day? how can you call yourself a disciple? the Bible clearly says, ‘go and make disciples’, and ‘faith without works is dead’. if you had true faith, you would be living this life.”
having much less knowledge of Scripture than they, i was eventually worn down, and convinced that i was no friend of Christ. nor was my family. nor was anyone in my entire church. the ensuing months were, and still are—even after a potentially incurable tumor and a suddenly failed marriage—the most harrowing and terrifying of my life. once when i visited home in the midst of this my mom handed me a small porcelain bust of Christ so that she could dust the table it sat on; i shuddered as i took it. He was a stranger now; if i died today, i would fall below His left hand, damned.
days before being baptized into this group, a phone conversation with my dad halted the process, though i was still in mental and spiritual turmoil: if this group is wrong about my salvation, what does God think of them? where do they fit in Christendom, condemning every other church in the world, yet, unlike all other cults i know of, proclaiming the Bible as sole authority, Jesus, God incarnate, as the only way?
in my last meeting with them they became desperate as i asked bold questions and poked holes in their hermeneutics. they dodged and weaved, they changed the subject, they pretended to answer my questions by answering similar questions that i hadn’t actually asked. they had a remarkable gift for manipulation, but for the first time my eyes were open to it. here’s a nearly word-for-word statement the leader made to me in that meeting: “i can see someone of lesser intelligence having trouble with this, but a smart guy like you, chris, should understand this stuff.” the Gospel is only for smart people now. and the leader’s prayer at the end of the meeting asked that God would not allow me to experience some freak accident before i was saved. he hugged me several times before i left.
oh how confident and penetrating i was when i spoke with them that night. but when i left their apartment, i crossed a four-lane highway more carefully than ever, and sprinted back to my dorm. just whose side God was on and whose side satan was on was still horrifyingly unclear. it would take several more months and more discussions with my dad and a few others for me to regain the “blessed assurance” of my place in Christ.
so... what could there possibly be to emulate about this cult? well, if we strip from them the heretical soteriology (i.e. demanding a particular evangelistic lifestyle for salvation over and above Christ’s forgiveness of sins), the manipulative evangelism, and the exclusion of other churches, we’re left with what i saw when i first met them: a group of mature Christians passionate about helping others understand and accept the Gospel.
the particular structure of this process is what i want to highlight. their first step is typically to ask someone if he or she would like to study the Bible. this is one member of the group asking one non-Christian—a friend, an acquaintance, or a complete stranger—to meet with them, one-on-one, to discuss Scripture. they don’t ask people to their sunday morning church service. that comes later—maybe. if the first Bible study goes well, a second is arranged, and a third.
this type of one-on-one or two-on-one Bible study is the crux of their evangelism. and they don’t just wing it. they have a series of studies with different accompanying verses for a variety of topics. a study is chosen for a meeting based on the particular spiritual condition of the potential member. for instance, if you accept the reality of Christ as God’s Son but don’t know why you have to confess and repent of certain thoughts and actions, they will pull out the “sin study” and rattle off verse after verse telling what sin is and what you must do about it to be right with God.
after a few of these meetings, if you are progressing, they will invite you to sunday worship. here you will feel that you don’t really belong, though you are invited to worship along with everyone else. worship is lively and racially diverse; people are clapping, singing, and dancing, though focused and sober, not out of control. you want to be a part of something so exciting, but you know that you are not. these people have something special that you still lack—but they clearly love you enough to help you get it as soon as possible.
within the church there is a distinct hierarchical structure. new members are immediately paired with a more mature member, as a mentor and accountability partner. the pairs are required to meet for study, prayer, and confession on a regular basis. above the many mentors are church leaders, then regional leaders, all the way up to “world sector leaders”.
it should come as no surprise that no non-Christian can wander into a sunday service, or one of their midweek small group studies, without being “attacked” by several members and ultimately committed to meeting with one of them one-on-one. they will pull out their schedule book and put down a place and time to meet you to study the Bible, and hold you to it. of course you can refuse, and they will politely accept your decision and leave you alone. they will be content that they didn’t let the opportunity pass.
what if our mainstream churches adopted this model? let sunday worship go back to being about God speaking to His people, not God’s people speaking to non-Christians—that would now happen outside of the church building, and in a highly structured, efficient, and effective way. the sunday morning place of worship would provide sanctuary once again, a sacred and sheltered place where God encourages and challenges His people, equipping them and nourishing them to enter back into the world for another week. communion ought to be considered an essential part of this weekly revival (though i didn’t notice that it was for this cult... tisk, tisk).
and every regular attender, married or single, would be paired with a mentor of the same sex. their salvation would be confirmed. they would have regular meetings for accountability and growth. the small groups so popular with seeker churches are, alas, not small enough. accountability happens best one-on-one.
ISO sanctuary
in the meantime, i'm desperate for sanctuary. the worldliness of so many churches inspires me to think beyond this town and beyond the next few years, to the idea of joining some sort of separatist community. the amish are perhaps the most famous, or the jesuits. but my problem with these groups has always been that they are not “in the world”, as Jesus prayed for us to be. certainly they fulfill Christ's prayer to not be “of the world”, but to isolate themselves and essentially have no part in serving or evangelizing that world is unbiblical.
but there are other communities. i have read about “homestead heritage” in texas, similar to the amish in having their own Christian community where they live, attend church, grow their own food, etc.---except they invite people in, and they go out. many have jobs outside of the community and own cars. they are not as anti-modern as the amish. but, as with the amish, their close-knit community, close to nature and committed to ancient faith values like accountability and discipline, arouses deep yearnings in me.
perhaps the same yearnings in other people have resulted in the many small Christian communities that seem to be multiplying in urban areas of late. "christianity today" calls this movement “the new monasticism”; it was the magazine’s feature story for september, 2005. a typical community, as i understand it, is comprised of about a dozen people sharing a house in a downtown area, some married with children, some singles, various ages and races, united by a common ministry, usually towards the local poor and homeless.
i can’t think of a time when i was more excited about a church movement than when i surfed a few websites by these “new monastics”. i ended up pacing my apartment, begging God to show me how i could get involved. i was ready to pack my bags. i prayed most to find a way my passion for architecture could aid them in their work. after reading that the new monasticism is a branch of the larger “emergent” movement, i’m hopeful that they would be open to the idea of building as an expression of faith. could i become the architect for this movement? one community has started its own construction company, but made no mention of a designer/architect. i dream of taking their rock bottom budgets and piles of reclaimed and donated materials and making modest, simple, and profound structures, a new and unique image for an authentic, actualized, holistic Christian faith.
i have yet to contact any of these communities with the idea. i guess that’s the next step... courtship. i do fear rejection; or worse, indifference.
but back to new monasticism itself. don’t let the name mislead you into thinking anti-modern, anti-technology, out of touch, hermetic. in fact the opposite is the case: though some knit their own clothes, they have their own computers; they have websites and weblogs; some are college students, some established professionals; most significant of all, they are more intimately connected to their local ministries than any organized church i’ve seen. they live at the site of the ministry. their targets for service and evangelism are next door and down the street, and they work day and night on God-given projects. they LIVE church! they have erased the distinction between church and home, between sunday and monday, between church family and blood relatives.
i noticed some endearing quirks in the internet communications between members of these communities. some precede their names at the end of a note with “br.” or “sr.”—“brother” or “sister” (in Christ). and they have given the Christian fish symbol a far better home than the rear-ends of cars: concluding some notes we see greater-than and less-than signs arranged like this: <><
the first century church seems to ooze out of this twenty-first century movement. i think i’m in love.
if my brief summary of new monasticism hasn’t made you quiver with excitement, perhaps these websites will (be encouraged, faydra, that one of them uses “blogger”—and with the “next blog” option intact)—
www.newmonasticism.org
www.thesimpleway.org
www.msainfo.org
www.thechurchhasleftthebuilding.org
churchhasleftthebuilding.blogspot.com
conclusion
so where am i? i’m still at port city community church (at least, on sunday mornings), and i’ve joined a small group. but we've decided to take as our next study a book called “the irresistible revolution: living as an ordinary radical”. the author is shane claiborne, one of the founders of “the simple way”, a faith community in Philadelphia (see website above), and a prominent voice for the new monasticism.
courtship may lead to engagement.
grace and peace,
br. chris wellman <><
one clear example of a correct alternative to the seeker sensitive inversion of sunday worship can be seen in the ministry of a Christian cult, the “international churches of Christ” (not to be confused with the “united church of Christ”, a mainline denomination). i met this group in college, and for a while thought they were just a very mature group of Christian students committed to evangelism. i was excited to have the opportunity to join them in their work. but soon it became clear that i was part of that work. they argued to me from Scripture that i was not, in fact, saved—primarily because up to that point i had not lived a daily life committed to oral evangelism. they said to me, “you mean you don’t wake up every morning thinking about which ten or fifteen people you will talk to about Jesus that day? how can you call yourself a disciple? the Bible clearly says, ‘go and make disciples’, and ‘faith without works is dead’. if you had true faith, you would be living this life.”
having much less knowledge of Scripture than they, i was eventually worn down, and convinced that i was no friend of Christ. nor was my family. nor was anyone in my entire church. the ensuing months were, and still are—even after a potentially incurable tumor and a suddenly failed marriage—the most harrowing and terrifying of my life. once when i visited home in the midst of this my mom handed me a small porcelain bust of Christ so that she could dust the table it sat on; i shuddered as i took it. He was a stranger now; if i died today, i would fall below His left hand, damned.
days before being baptized into this group, a phone conversation with my dad halted the process, though i was still in mental and spiritual turmoil: if this group is wrong about my salvation, what does God think of them? where do they fit in Christendom, condemning every other church in the world, yet, unlike all other cults i know of, proclaiming the Bible as sole authority, Jesus, God incarnate, as the only way?
in my last meeting with them they became desperate as i asked bold questions and poked holes in their hermeneutics. they dodged and weaved, they changed the subject, they pretended to answer my questions by answering similar questions that i hadn’t actually asked. they had a remarkable gift for manipulation, but for the first time my eyes were open to it. here’s a nearly word-for-word statement the leader made to me in that meeting: “i can see someone of lesser intelligence having trouble with this, but a smart guy like you, chris, should understand this stuff.” the Gospel is only for smart people now. and the leader’s prayer at the end of the meeting asked that God would not allow me to experience some freak accident before i was saved. he hugged me several times before i left.
oh how confident and penetrating i was when i spoke with them that night. but when i left their apartment, i crossed a four-lane highway more carefully than ever, and sprinted back to my dorm. just whose side God was on and whose side satan was on was still horrifyingly unclear. it would take several more months and more discussions with my dad and a few others for me to regain the “blessed assurance” of my place in Christ.
so... what could there possibly be to emulate about this cult? well, if we strip from them the heretical soteriology (i.e. demanding a particular evangelistic lifestyle for salvation over and above Christ’s forgiveness of sins), the manipulative evangelism, and the exclusion of other churches, we’re left with what i saw when i first met them: a group of mature Christians passionate about helping others understand and accept the Gospel.
the particular structure of this process is what i want to highlight. their first step is typically to ask someone if he or she would like to study the Bible. this is one member of the group asking one non-Christian—a friend, an acquaintance, or a complete stranger—to meet with them, one-on-one, to discuss Scripture. they don’t ask people to their sunday morning church service. that comes later—maybe. if the first Bible study goes well, a second is arranged, and a third.
this type of one-on-one or two-on-one Bible study is the crux of their evangelism. and they don’t just wing it. they have a series of studies with different accompanying verses for a variety of topics. a study is chosen for a meeting based on the particular spiritual condition of the potential member. for instance, if you accept the reality of Christ as God’s Son but don’t know why you have to confess and repent of certain thoughts and actions, they will pull out the “sin study” and rattle off verse after verse telling what sin is and what you must do about it to be right with God.
after a few of these meetings, if you are progressing, they will invite you to sunday worship. here you will feel that you don’t really belong, though you are invited to worship along with everyone else. worship is lively and racially diverse; people are clapping, singing, and dancing, though focused and sober, not out of control. you want to be a part of something so exciting, but you know that you are not. these people have something special that you still lack—but they clearly love you enough to help you get it as soon as possible.
within the church there is a distinct hierarchical structure. new members are immediately paired with a more mature member, as a mentor and accountability partner. the pairs are required to meet for study, prayer, and confession on a regular basis. above the many mentors are church leaders, then regional leaders, all the way up to “world sector leaders”.
it should come as no surprise that no non-Christian can wander into a sunday service, or one of their midweek small group studies, without being “attacked” by several members and ultimately committed to meeting with one of them one-on-one. they will pull out their schedule book and put down a place and time to meet you to study the Bible, and hold you to it. of course you can refuse, and they will politely accept your decision and leave you alone. they will be content that they didn’t let the opportunity pass.
what if our mainstream churches adopted this model? let sunday worship go back to being about God speaking to His people, not God’s people speaking to non-Christians—that would now happen outside of the church building, and in a highly structured, efficient, and effective way. the sunday morning place of worship would provide sanctuary once again, a sacred and sheltered place where God encourages and challenges His people, equipping them and nourishing them to enter back into the world for another week. communion ought to be considered an essential part of this weekly revival (though i didn’t notice that it was for this cult... tisk, tisk).
and every regular attender, married or single, would be paired with a mentor of the same sex. their salvation would be confirmed. they would have regular meetings for accountability and growth. the small groups so popular with seeker churches are, alas, not small enough. accountability happens best one-on-one.
ISO sanctuary
in the meantime, i'm desperate for sanctuary. the worldliness of so many churches inspires me to think beyond this town and beyond the next few years, to the idea of joining some sort of separatist community. the amish are perhaps the most famous, or the jesuits. but my problem with these groups has always been that they are not “in the world”, as Jesus prayed for us to be. certainly they fulfill Christ's prayer to not be “of the world”, but to isolate themselves and essentially have no part in serving or evangelizing that world is unbiblical.
but there are other communities. i have read about “homestead heritage” in texas, similar to the amish in having their own Christian community where they live, attend church, grow their own food, etc.---except they invite people in, and they go out. many have jobs outside of the community and own cars. they are not as anti-modern as the amish. but, as with the amish, their close-knit community, close to nature and committed to ancient faith values like accountability and discipline, arouses deep yearnings in me.
perhaps the same yearnings in other people have resulted in the many small Christian communities that seem to be multiplying in urban areas of late. "christianity today" calls this movement “the new monasticism”; it was the magazine’s feature story for september, 2005. a typical community, as i understand it, is comprised of about a dozen people sharing a house in a downtown area, some married with children, some singles, various ages and races, united by a common ministry, usually towards the local poor and homeless.
i can’t think of a time when i was more excited about a church movement than when i surfed a few websites by these “new monastics”. i ended up pacing my apartment, begging God to show me how i could get involved. i was ready to pack my bags. i prayed most to find a way my passion for architecture could aid them in their work. after reading that the new monasticism is a branch of the larger “emergent” movement, i’m hopeful that they would be open to the idea of building as an expression of faith. could i become the architect for this movement? one community has started its own construction company, but made no mention of a designer/architect. i dream of taking their rock bottom budgets and piles of reclaimed and donated materials and making modest, simple, and profound structures, a new and unique image for an authentic, actualized, holistic Christian faith.
i have yet to contact any of these communities with the idea. i guess that’s the next step... courtship. i do fear rejection; or worse, indifference.
but back to new monasticism itself. don’t let the name mislead you into thinking anti-modern, anti-technology, out of touch, hermetic. in fact the opposite is the case: though some knit their own clothes, they have their own computers; they have websites and weblogs; some are college students, some established professionals; most significant of all, they are more intimately connected to their local ministries than any organized church i’ve seen. they live at the site of the ministry. their targets for service and evangelism are next door and down the street, and they work day and night on God-given projects. they LIVE church! they have erased the distinction between church and home, between sunday and monday, between church family and blood relatives.
i noticed some endearing quirks in the internet communications between members of these communities. some precede their names at the end of a note with “br.” or “sr.”—“brother” or “sister” (in Christ). and they have given the Christian fish symbol a far better home than the rear-ends of cars: concluding some notes we see greater-than and less-than signs arranged like this: <><
the first century church seems to ooze out of this twenty-first century movement. i think i’m in love.
if my brief summary of new monasticism hasn’t made you quiver with excitement, perhaps these websites will (be encouraged, faydra, that one of them uses “blogger”—and with the “next blog” option intact)—
www.newmonasticism.org
www.thesimpleway.org
www.msainfo.org
www.thechurchhasleftthebuilding.org
churchhasleftthebuilding.blogspot.com
conclusion
so where am i? i’m still at port city community church (at least, on sunday mornings), and i’ve joined a small group. but we've decided to take as our next study a book called “the irresistible revolution: living as an ordinary radical”. the author is shane claiborne, one of the founders of “the simple way”, a faith community in Philadelphia (see website above), and a prominent voice for the new monasticism.
courtship may lead to engagement.
grace and peace,
br. chris wellman <><
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Church Review - Part III
port city community church
i heard of this church from someone at glad tidings. she told me about its two thousand members meeting in a middle school, and i wondered why i hadn’t heard about it in the three-and-a-half years i’ve lived here. attendance grew from a couple hundred seven years ago to the current two thousand—perhaps wilmington’s only “megachurch” (defined as two thousand or more members). so i visited.
and i’m still visiting. this may be partly because i’m just tired of searching. it is draining to visit a new church each week, because i typically end up having to tell someone my life story: where i grew up; why i came to wilmington; where i work; how i found their church; am i married; any kids; etc, etc.
there are some exciting things about port city, however; i wouldn’t have attended this long if there weren’t. though there is definitely a strong “seeker sensitive” influence (rock music, casual dress, “hip” pastor and sermons), this may be the first church where i’ve noticed some influence from the newer “emergent” church trend. i’ve read and heard a bit about emergent ideas, and find them to be far more promising than seeker theology. especially encouraging for me is the openness emergents seem to have about artistic visual expressions of faith. i see this at port city in relatively tame ways, but exciting nonetheless: the pastor makes extensive use of visual props during sermons (i heard of a time a few years ago when he actually had two painters work on a canvas on stage during his sermon), and bulletins and other literature make a valiant attempt to be visually savvy.
also evidence of emergent influence is the pastor’s frequent use of the words “journey” and “story” to describe faith life (his last sermon series—on the Bible—was called “the story of God”).
by the way, the pastor was trained as an architect, as i found out at my first visit. imagine my surprise and delight. he went through four years of an architecture school in georgia, graduated, worked for a firm for a year, then quit to enter seminary. the more i attend the more i see how the creative, visionary training he received in architecture school shines in the way he structures the services and delivers his sermons.
also, the sermons, though given in the typical seeker sensitive informal, conversational way, are more directly biblical than most seeker churches i’ve attended. he makes much use of the word “sin”, and has even named several of the more subtle (and more prominent) sins, complete with exact bible verses. one of the most startling instances of this was when he related a time when a friend of his said, about being around girls, “i can look but i can’t touch.” the pastor then looked sternly at the congregation and said, “well, what about matthew [insert appropriate verses], where it says if you look at a woman lustfully you’ve already committed adultery with her”. the silence in that room full of college students was exquisite.
but what i still miss is a clear explanation of what it takes to be saved, and the urgency bound up with it. though the pastor often expresses his interest in “helping people walk with God”, i have not heard from the pulpit (er, stage) any clear statements about what that entails.
though many positive aspects about this church keep me returning, during my first few sundays my impression was mainly negative. i viewed the services as the result of the seeker sensitive model of church achieving full maturity. in large part this is true, and in my experience of this church the problems with this approach were clarified for me more than ever. before moving on i’d like to write about these, to get them off my chest—because i think God put them there.
“unchurched” be damned
in the information booklet i picked up, port city community church advertises itself as built upon two goals: “be real” and “be clear”. but in the same booklet, as in sunday morning worship, there is a conspicuous lack of clarity about several significant faith issues. i’ve mentioned one already, which involves their primary mission: “reach people and help them walk with God”. the booklet actually says this mission is “crystal clear”. but in the vicinity of this statement there is no clear explanation of what this means. "reach people"—how? what people? and, "help them walk with God"—what does it mean to “walk”? and with which God? allah? the mission statement is so vague that we can’t even determine which religion we’re dealing with.
to be fair i should note that a full explanation of what it takes to be right with God can be found in this booklet—in the two-and-a-half page section entitled, “statement of faith”. but we are actually discouraged from reading this by the following note: “if you tend to get lost in the theological minutia, simply skip to the end of this section.”
it’s as if they want to hide the specifics of the Gospel from the reader. for a mission statement, why not just adopt the words of Jesus, where He expressed His mission: “to seek and save the lost”? we could make it more explicit: “to seek and save the lost by sharing the good news of Jesus.” immediately below this statement we could explain in clear and concise terms why Jesus is necessary, what our response must be, and the consequences of each decision.
but perhaps the most egregious lack of clarity is in port city’s use of the word “unchurched” to speak of their evangelical target. i’ve seen and heard this word for many years now, at many different seeker churches. i guess it trickled down from willow creek or saddleback—two meccas for the seeker sensitive faith. “save the lost” has been replaced by “reach the unchurched”. here’s a statement from port city’s booklet: “being purpose driven requires that we have a strategy as to how we will seek to reach unchurched people...” (notice also the use of rick warren's famous phrase.. is this a copyright violation?)again to be fair, the word “lost” can be found (sorry) in the booklet, and indeed it refers to people who have not accepted Christ. but, as before, this wording is generally relegated to the smaller and the discouraged sections. in the prominent, concise summaries of port city’s mission, we find a flurry of “unchurched”.
i would like to kill this word—torture, execute, and bury it. i will be the executioner, you will be the witnesses. for it is the illegitimate child of evangelism and subterfuge. evangelism played the harlot, went a whoring after dishonesty for its promise of purpose. truth, the perfect husband, was thereby cuckolded, and “unchurched” is the bastard child.
first consider the word’s meaning. given its construction and context, it obviously refers to people who do not regularly attend church. the ultimate goal of seeker churches, by their statements, is to reach these people and (in port city’s words) “help them walk with God”. if we read the fine print we find that this means getting lost people saved. but unchurched and unsaved are not synonymous. not all unchurched people are unsaved, and not all unsaved people are unchurched. there are some saved people—children of God—who do not go to church; and there are some regular church attenders (way too many) who in fact have no relationship with Christ. obviously attending church does not grant salvation, nor does a lack of attendance prevent salvation.
so if we were to consider the goal, “reach the unchurched”, to be accurately worded, we would have to conclude that these churches are not primarily interested in salvation, but in church attendance. but because we know they are primarily interested in salvation, we must ask why the wording of their goal is grossly inaccurate. the answer, i believe, can be seen in the effect of the word “unchurched” on those it describes: it is much less offensive than the words it replaces: lost, unsaved, unredeemed, unrepentant. these have deeply negative connotations, suggesting immorality, corruption, and ultimately damnation. but the word “unchurched” sheds these meanings by focusing on the mere condition of not going to church, which even non-Christians realize does not make a person bad.
thus the word “unchurched” is merely a euphemism for “unsaved” that tricks non-Christians into viewing their condition as not so bad after all. seeker churches, in their constant efforts to keep their stadium seating filled with non-Christians, derived a code word for use in their evangelical statements; Christians know what the word really means, and non-Christians are not put-off by words that sound offensive, condescending, and exclusive. but a result is that non-Christians are kept in the dark about their real problem: i’m “unchurched”, you say? okay, now i attend church. problem solved!
and the other result falls on the shoulders of the church: the Holy Spirit is grieved, because Christians use shady word games to intentionally mislead and manipulate the very persons with whom they seek to share the truth of Christ.
the loss of sanctuary
i must say port city is the only church i’ve been to as an adult where i actually felt self-conscious about whether i looked cool. hair and clothing styles are so consistent that i could write the dress code:
guys: pants—baggy blue jeans; shirt—long-sleeved, collared, un-tucked, cuffs unbuttoned and rolled back once (pastor’s choice); hair—choose one of two: 1) short and spiked in front (pastor’s choice); 2) long and bushy, ‘70’s style
girls: pants—tight blue jeans; shirt—choose one of three: 1) hanging off the shoulders to reveal bra straps; 2) cover-all sweater, but tight enough to show all curves; 3) covering shoulders but cut down in front to show as much cleavage as is legal (at least, in upright positions).
female church dress code motto: if you’ve got it, flaunt it, for Christ’s sake.
male church dress code motto: be stylish but comfortable while looking at girls.
i think that when so much worldly culture is embraced (music, dress, etc.) consciously by the church because of its particular evangelism technique, one downfall is that too much of the world inevitably creeps in. many girls and women seem by their clothes to be more interested in being like britney spears than Jesus Christ.
emerging directly from this observation was an insight that struck me while attending port city: seeker ecclesiology has caused a of loss of sanctuary. there is a double entendre here: there has been a loss of the word, “sanctuary”, as well as a loss of the experience of sanctuary, in sunday morning church. for years now i have noticed the reluctance of seeker churches to call the space in which they gather for worship a “sanctuary”; some prefer “worship center”. port city is using a new term, at least one i have not seen at any other church: the three auditorium spaces shown on their proposed plan (see www.portcitychurch.org) are labeled “theater”. one is the main worship space and the other two are for teens and children. talk about inappropriate associations: the pulpit becomes a stage for actors; the Bible, a work of fiction.
this loss of the word, “sanctuary”, is directly related to the loss of the experience of sanctuary. when seeker churches are successful at their goal of attracting non-Christians to Sunday morning worship (as port city clearly is) a large percentage of the Sunday morning attendance is non-Christian. add to this the worldly image and sound of the worship team itself, and we find ourselves in a place very similar to many places in secular culture. so i look around this church and see worldly dress, designed to inspire lust, and hear loud, rambunctious music with only hints of Christian faith and doctrine—and i feel there has been a heinous intrusion, a violation of sacred space. a place and time that once provided refuge from the world has itself been conquered and occupied by the world.
the word “sanctuary” suggests sanctified, sacred, holy, set apart unto God for righteousness. i agree with seeker pastors that this is not the right word for their place of worship.
i heard of this church from someone at glad tidings. she told me about its two thousand members meeting in a middle school, and i wondered why i hadn’t heard about it in the three-and-a-half years i’ve lived here. attendance grew from a couple hundred seven years ago to the current two thousand—perhaps wilmington’s only “megachurch” (defined as two thousand or more members). so i visited.
and i’m still visiting. this may be partly because i’m just tired of searching. it is draining to visit a new church each week, because i typically end up having to tell someone my life story: where i grew up; why i came to wilmington; where i work; how i found their church; am i married; any kids; etc, etc.
there are some exciting things about port city, however; i wouldn’t have attended this long if there weren’t. though there is definitely a strong “seeker sensitive” influence (rock music, casual dress, “hip” pastor and sermons), this may be the first church where i’ve noticed some influence from the newer “emergent” church trend. i’ve read and heard a bit about emergent ideas, and find them to be far more promising than seeker theology. especially encouraging for me is the openness emergents seem to have about artistic visual expressions of faith. i see this at port city in relatively tame ways, but exciting nonetheless: the pastor makes extensive use of visual props during sermons (i heard of a time a few years ago when he actually had two painters work on a canvas on stage during his sermon), and bulletins and other literature make a valiant attempt to be visually savvy.
also evidence of emergent influence is the pastor’s frequent use of the words “journey” and “story” to describe faith life (his last sermon series—on the Bible—was called “the story of God”).
by the way, the pastor was trained as an architect, as i found out at my first visit. imagine my surprise and delight. he went through four years of an architecture school in georgia, graduated, worked for a firm for a year, then quit to enter seminary. the more i attend the more i see how the creative, visionary training he received in architecture school shines in the way he structures the services and delivers his sermons.
also, the sermons, though given in the typical seeker sensitive informal, conversational way, are more directly biblical than most seeker churches i’ve attended. he makes much use of the word “sin”, and has even named several of the more subtle (and more prominent) sins, complete with exact bible verses. one of the most startling instances of this was when he related a time when a friend of his said, about being around girls, “i can look but i can’t touch.” the pastor then looked sternly at the congregation and said, “well, what about matthew [insert appropriate verses], where it says if you look at a woman lustfully you’ve already committed adultery with her”. the silence in that room full of college students was exquisite.
but what i still miss is a clear explanation of what it takes to be saved, and the urgency bound up with it. though the pastor often expresses his interest in “helping people walk with God”, i have not heard from the pulpit (er, stage) any clear statements about what that entails.
though many positive aspects about this church keep me returning, during my first few sundays my impression was mainly negative. i viewed the services as the result of the seeker sensitive model of church achieving full maturity. in large part this is true, and in my experience of this church the problems with this approach were clarified for me more than ever. before moving on i’d like to write about these, to get them off my chest—because i think God put them there.
“unchurched” be damned
in the information booklet i picked up, port city community church advertises itself as built upon two goals: “be real” and “be clear”. but in the same booklet, as in sunday morning worship, there is a conspicuous lack of clarity about several significant faith issues. i’ve mentioned one already, which involves their primary mission: “reach people and help them walk with God”. the booklet actually says this mission is “crystal clear”. but in the vicinity of this statement there is no clear explanation of what this means. "reach people"—how? what people? and, "help them walk with God"—what does it mean to “walk”? and with which God? allah? the mission statement is so vague that we can’t even determine which religion we’re dealing with.
to be fair i should note that a full explanation of what it takes to be right with God can be found in this booklet—in the two-and-a-half page section entitled, “statement of faith”. but we are actually discouraged from reading this by the following note: “if you tend to get lost in the theological minutia, simply skip to the end of this section.”
it’s as if they want to hide the specifics of the Gospel from the reader. for a mission statement, why not just adopt the words of Jesus, where He expressed His mission: “to seek and save the lost”? we could make it more explicit: “to seek and save the lost by sharing the good news of Jesus.” immediately below this statement we could explain in clear and concise terms why Jesus is necessary, what our response must be, and the consequences of each decision.
but perhaps the most egregious lack of clarity is in port city’s use of the word “unchurched” to speak of their evangelical target. i’ve seen and heard this word for many years now, at many different seeker churches. i guess it trickled down from willow creek or saddleback—two meccas for the seeker sensitive faith. “save the lost” has been replaced by “reach the unchurched”. here’s a statement from port city’s booklet: “being purpose driven requires that we have a strategy as to how we will seek to reach unchurched people...” (notice also the use of rick warren's famous phrase.. is this a copyright violation?)again to be fair, the word “lost” can be found (sorry) in the booklet, and indeed it refers to people who have not accepted Christ. but, as before, this wording is generally relegated to the smaller and the discouraged sections. in the prominent, concise summaries of port city’s mission, we find a flurry of “unchurched”.
i would like to kill this word—torture, execute, and bury it. i will be the executioner, you will be the witnesses. for it is the illegitimate child of evangelism and subterfuge. evangelism played the harlot, went a whoring after dishonesty for its promise of purpose. truth, the perfect husband, was thereby cuckolded, and “unchurched” is the bastard child.
first consider the word’s meaning. given its construction and context, it obviously refers to people who do not regularly attend church. the ultimate goal of seeker churches, by their statements, is to reach these people and (in port city’s words) “help them walk with God”. if we read the fine print we find that this means getting lost people saved. but unchurched and unsaved are not synonymous. not all unchurched people are unsaved, and not all unsaved people are unchurched. there are some saved people—children of God—who do not go to church; and there are some regular church attenders (way too many) who in fact have no relationship with Christ. obviously attending church does not grant salvation, nor does a lack of attendance prevent salvation.
so if we were to consider the goal, “reach the unchurched”, to be accurately worded, we would have to conclude that these churches are not primarily interested in salvation, but in church attendance. but because we know they are primarily interested in salvation, we must ask why the wording of their goal is grossly inaccurate. the answer, i believe, can be seen in the effect of the word “unchurched” on those it describes: it is much less offensive than the words it replaces: lost, unsaved, unredeemed, unrepentant. these have deeply negative connotations, suggesting immorality, corruption, and ultimately damnation. but the word “unchurched” sheds these meanings by focusing on the mere condition of not going to church, which even non-Christians realize does not make a person bad.
thus the word “unchurched” is merely a euphemism for “unsaved” that tricks non-Christians into viewing their condition as not so bad after all. seeker churches, in their constant efforts to keep their stadium seating filled with non-Christians, derived a code word for use in their evangelical statements; Christians know what the word really means, and non-Christians are not put-off by words that sound offensive, condescending, and exclusive. but a result is that non-Christians are kept in the dark about their real problem: i’m “unchurched”, you say? okay, now i attend church. problem solved!
and the other result falls on the shoulders of the church: the Holy Spirit is grieved, because Christians use shady word games to intentionally mislead and manipulate the very persons with whom they seek to share the truth of Christ.
the loss of sanctuary
i must say port city is the only church i’ve been to as an adult where i actually felt self-conscious about whether i looked cool. hair and clothing styles are so consistent that i could write the dress code:
guys: pants—baggy blue jeans; shirt—long-sleeved, collared, un-tucked, cuffs unbuttoned and rolled back once (pastor’s choice); hair—choose one of two: 1) short and spiked in front (pastor’s choice); 2) long and bushy, ‘70’s style
girls: pants—tight blue jeans; shirt—choose one of three: 1) hanging off the shoulders to reveal bra straps; 2) cover-all sweater, but tight enough to show all curves; 3) covering shoulders but cut down in front to show as much cleavage as is legal (at least, in upright positions).
female church dress code motto: if you’ve got it, flaunt it, for Christ’s sake.
male church dress code motto: be stylish but comfortable while looking at girls.
i think that when so much worldly culture is embraced (music, dress, etc.) consciously by the church because of its particular evangelism technique, one downfall is that too much of the world inevitably creeps in. many girls and women seem by their clothes to be more interested in being like britney spears than Jesus Christ.
emerging directly from this observation was an insight that struck me while attending port city: seeker ecclesiology has caused a of loss of sanctuary. there is a double entendre here: there has been a loss of the word, “sanctuary”, as well as a loss of the experience of sanctuary, in sunday morning church. for years now i have noticed the reluctance of seeker churches to call the space in which they gather for worship a “sanctuary”; some prefer “worship center”. port city is using a new term, at least one i have not seen at any other church: the three auditorium spaces shown on their proposed plan (see www.portcitychurch.org) are labeled “theater”. one is the main worship space and the other two are for teens and children. talk about inappropriate associations: the pulpit becomes a stage for actors; the Bible, a work of fiction.
this loss of the word, “sanctuary”, is directly related to the loss of the experience of sanctuary. when seeker churches are successful at their goal of attracting non-Christians to Sunday morning worship (as port city clearly is) a large percentage of the Sunday morning attendance is non-Christian. add to this the worldly image and sound of the worship team itself, and we find ourselves in a place very similar to many places in secular culture. so i look around this church and see worldly dress, designed to inspire lust, and hear loud, rambunctious music with only hints of Christian faith and doctrine—and i feel there has been a heinous intrusion, a violation of sacred space. a place and time that once provided refuge from the world has itself been conquered and occupied by the world.
the word “sanctuary” suggests sanctified, sacred, holy, set apart unto God for righteousness. i agree with seeker pastors that this is not the right word for their place of worship.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
A Few Thoughts on Part I
Chris Question: “so how do i commit to a church, make friends, pursue ministries, knowing i'll leave in two years?”
Faydra Answer: Two years is a long time to serve in ministry and apply your gifts where needed at a church.
It’s been a long time since I’ve “church-shopped.” (Crude language but let’s be honest.) When I moved to Wilmington in August 2000 I was a single gal, grad student and I stopped shopping the minute I found a church with people my age. Pretty simple. But then…. The pastor slammed the Goosebumps series from the pulpit. That was my first flag. (I don't give a flip about this series but as a writer I’m not so into book censorship.) Then one Sunday he gave a strong Biblical sermon on a passage (good, yeah!) but proceeded to give examples from popular culture that were therefore sins including another book (bad). One night while on the phone with my boyfriend back in Gainesville (now the hubby up in Wilmington) he joked that if the pastor ever slammed Harry Potter from the pulpit I’d have to just let go. Guess what happened?
So when Kevin got to Wilmington we started shopping again. It got so frustrating that we started going to Sunday morning services and then Sunday evening we’d attend a different church just to speed up the process. I remember one Sunday evening service we attended where I was the only woman in pants (dress slacks even, not jeans!). We didn’t go back there.
Some churches were too “chicken soup” (too many feel good stories, not enough Bible) other churches just weren’t us. (as "The Rock" just isn't Chris)
We found Winter Park Baptist because one day some girl in a high school class I was substitute teaching mentioned it. (Crazy, huh?) We stayed at WP because we connected with people there.
As an artist type with a European background my convictions haven’t quite measured up to those of some of the southern Baptist churches of my past, and so as an adult looking for a church I was a little paranoid about being “judged” by the church. This may sound… sacrilegious but early on in our WP attendance, seeing a staff member at a party with all church folks, beer in hand, made me embrace WP that much quicker.
Early in our church attendance we also witnessed in Bible studies people willing to question and speak doubt, and rather than be shushed or dismissed, their opinions were discussed with respect.
At WP we were invited by married couples our age into a weekly small group (although at the time we were just engaged). We found friends, experienced honesty, and unlike Chris, we were all about the “rock” style music of the contemporary service. In the spring of 2001 we officially joined just in time for the pastor to start our marriage counseling for our upcoming August wedding.
Have we been bothered by things since? Sure. Chris started off his critique with WP and I’m not going to defend my church probably because I agree with much of what he says. But I still love my church. This church became my home, and as I told one member recently, there would have to be some serious theological misguidance coming from the pulpit to get me to up and look for a new church in this city. (People leaving our church has been an issue because the pastor Chris mentioned left for a church in Atlanta last May and we are in a transition period – inevitably a time where some people change churches.)
If I see a necessary change I’m committed to being the change I want to see. The apathy from the pews (uh, chairs) is probably my biggest frustration. So I pray for more harvesters, lead by example, and endeavor to spur on my fellow believers. Sometimes it’s frustrating (the class Chris mentioned, the one more interested in socials than service or evangelism, I have to take breathers from them on a regular basis or I’m likely to just start shaking someone someday. Although I will say that in the past year they’ve come a long way if not in actual service, at least in monetary donations) but usually it’s a blessing just to be a working, thriving part of the body regardless of what’s going on elsewhere in the body. Obedience is its own reward.
I say all that to get to this point: Sometimes you just have to take the church plunge and it’s amazing what God can do with your commitment. As an undergrad I joined a church that I even had theological issues with (because of their stance on women in ministry)! But that church embraced and loved me, on occasion fed me, and the sermons inspired me, so I joined. It’s not where I wanted to be as a tithing adult but as a college student who’s time to commit to a church was running out, (I joined my junior year.) I knew I needed to make a decision. The last time I was in Gainesville on a Sunday, I attended. I still love that church.
Unfortunately, fortunately (it depends on how you look at it) Kevin and I will be “shopping” again sooner rather than later (more on why in a subsequent post). When we picture our next church home we predict we’ll be at a small to medium sized community church where our talents are needed. (Kevin jokes that this time next year he’ll be in charge of a children’s ministry.)
In the meantime, my list of things to get done at WP seems to be growing, not shrinking. In spite of, no, because of, our limited timeframe we are more committed than ever.
Now off to read the post below, Part 2.
Faydra Answer: Two years is a long time to serve in ministry and apply your gifts where needed at a church.
It’s been a long time since I’ve “church-shopped.” (Crude language but let’s be honest.) When I moved to Wilmington in August 2000 I was a single gal, grad student and I stopped shopping the minute I found a church with people my age. Pretty simple. But then…. The pastor slammed the Goosebumps series from the pulpit. That was my first flag. (I don't give a flip about this series but as a writer I’m not so into book censorship.) Then one Sunday he gave a strong Biblical sermon on a passage (good, yeah!) but proceeded to give examples from popular culture that were therefore sins including another book (bad). One night while on the phone with my boyfriend back in Gainesville (now the hubby up in Wilmington) he joked that if the pastor ever slammed Harry Potter from the pulpit I’d have to just let go. Guess what happened?
So when Kevin got to Wilmington we started shopping again. It got so frustrating that we started going to Sunday morning services and then Sunday evening we’d attend a different church just to speed up the process. I remember one Sunday evening service we attended where I was the only woman in pants (dress slacks even, not jeans!). We didn’t go back there.
Some churches were too “chicken soup” (too many feel good stories, not enough Bible) other churches just weren’t us. (as "The Rock" just isn't Chris)
We found Winter Park Baptist because one day some girl in a high school class I was substitute teaching mentioned it. (Crazy, huh?) We stayed at WP because we connected with people there.
As an artist type with a European background my convictions haven’t quite measured up to those of some of the southern Baptist churches of my past, and so as an adult looking for a church I was a little paranoid about being “judged” by the church. This may sound… sacrilegious but early on in our WP attendance, seeing a staff member at a party with all church folks, beer in hand, made me embrace WP that much quicker.
Early in our church attendance we also witnessed in Bible studies people willing to question and speak doubt, and rather than be shushed or dismissed, their opinions were discussed with respect.
At WP we were invited by married couples our age into a weekly small group (although at the time we were just engaged). We found friends, experienced honesty, and unlike Chris, we were all about the “rock” style music of the contemporary service. In the spring of 2001 we officially joined just in time for the pastor to start our marriage counseling for our upcoming August wedding.
Have we been bothered by things since? Sure. Chris started off his critique with WP and I’m not going to defend my church probably because I agree with much of what he says. But I still love my church. This church became my home, and as I told one member recently, there would have to be some serious theological misguidance coming from the pulpit to get me to up and look for a new church in this city. (People leaving our church has been an issue because the pastor Chris mentioned left for a church in Atlanta last May and we are in a transition period – inevitably a time where some people change churches.)
If I see a necessary change I’m committed to being the change I want to see. The apathy from the pews (uh, chairs) is probably my biggest frustration. So I pray for more harvesters, lead by example, and endeavor to spur on my fellow believers. Sometimes it’s frustrating (the class Chris mentioned, the one more interested in socials than service or evangelism, I have to take breathers from them on a regular basis or I’m likely to just start shaking someone someday. Although I will say that in the past year they’ve come a long way if not in actual service, at least in monetary donations) but usually it’s a blessing just to be a working, thriving part of the body regardless of what’s going on elsewhere in the body. Obedience is its own reward.
I say all that to get to this point: Sometimes you just have to take the church plunge and it’s amazing what God can do with your commitment. As an undergrad I joined a church that I even had theological issues with (because of their stance on women in ministry)! But that church embraced and loved me, on occasion fed me, and the sermons inspired me, so I joined. It’s not where I wanted to be as a tithing adult but as a college student who’s time to commit to a church was running out, (I joined my junior year.) I knew I needed to make a decision. The last time I was in Gainesville on a Sunday, I attended. I still love that church.
Unfortunately, fortunately (it depends on how you look at it) Kevin and I will be “shopping” again sooner rather than later (more on why in a subsequent post). When we picture our next church home we predict we’ll be at a small to medium sized community church where our talents are needed. (Kevin jokes that this time next year he’ll be in charge of a children’s ministry.)
In the meantime, my list of things to get done at WP seems to be growing, not shrinking. In spite of, no, because of, our limited timeframe we are more committed than ever.
Now off to read the post below, Part 2.
Church Review - Part II
st. matthew’s evangelical lutheran church
upon entering the lobby i was encouraged to see a large area of one wall covered with small slips of paper describing the various ministries currently active at this church. i knew i was searching for an active, lively, fired-up church, and this was a promising sign. but particularly i wondered if this church lived up to its middle name, “evangelical.” as i scanned each ministry i pulled copies of the ones that interested me; one was called “evangelism committee”. here’s a quote from the slip: “they review the congregation’s pulse in its evangelism passion, and they come up with ways to keep inviting others into an encounter with Jesus Christ.” check.
i pulled two others: “spiritual gifts ministry team”, a course to help match people’s gifts with particular ministries; and my favorite, “church council”: “this includes visioning, and setting the strategic direction of the church... and requires a time commitment of two years.”
i like a church that offers open invitation to all members to participate in, or at least witness, the steering of the ship. this invitation is rare in my experience. often a pastor will make decisions behind closed doors, with a hand-picked inner circle, and effect significant change gradually, so as to be less noticeable: arrogant, manipulative, dishonest, corrupt.
sunday school was first, led by the pastor. i think it was the only adult class. the study was about some passages of Scripture, from the old testament. the pastor was jovial, talkative, and funny. he has a ph.d. i appreciated his boldness in pointing out to the large group of middle-aged adults (to illustrate a point that i don’t recall) that God placed the greatest tactile sensitivity in the genitals. a few snickered uncomfortably. i did not.
i appreciated even more his openness in sharing his divorce. his wife suddenly decided she no longer wanted to be married, and no longer wanted to be a mother. so she left. his new wife was seated at his right. her face was lovely.
the service contained the expected liturgy, but the pastor’s personality breathed life into it. he addressed the congregation from different places in the sanctuary, and looked to us for lively response. he smiled. i had never considered “crossing” myself until i watched him do it, clearly reveling in its symbolism, looking up to heaven. i sensed that if he were alone, he would still do it. though reciting centuries-old writings, he was authentic; his heart seemed to be behind his actions.
communion is celebrated every week—the only church besides first baptist’s “vintage” service that did this.
once, a man sang during the offering—a tenor, i think, and well trained. one voice, one piano, one poem. simple, profound, beautiful.
i attended the eleven o’clock service for a few consecutive weeks. there is an early service too, more “contemporary”, someone told me. i wanted to try it, but haven’t yet.
it was refreshing to experience an ancient, meaningful and beautiful liturgy of action, word, and song, especially after so many non-denominational contemporary churches with often vacuous and repetitive song lyrics, and inarticulate prayers (“just, like, be with us, God...”). clearly st. matthew’s lutheran has been touched only lightly, if at all, by the seeker sensitive wave. this church is one of only two or three still on my mind as a potential place to attend regularly.
of course i have some concerns, the main one being whether the “lutheran” identity of the church is an obstacle, a stumbling block, to evangelism. i can imagine someone being converted to Christ by the church’s outreach, but then having to be sold lutheranism. why is the church called “lutheran”, instead of just “Christian”?—i imagine him or her asking. they would rightly wonder why both st. matthew and martin luther warrant a place on the church’s sign, while Jesus Christ does not.
i think one positive move seeker churches have made is to downplay denominational affiliation. rick warren’s “saddleback community church” is southern baptist, but you have do research worthy of a master’s degree to discover this fact. (this isn’t all good: denominational affiliation should not be hidden, which is tantamount to lying, but rather considered as relatively unimportant and peripheral.) the main point is “Christ, and Him crucified.” if some historical figure or movement helped us recover that simplicity, fine; but claiming and naming our entire identity after it segregates us from other Christians.
another concern is how committed and passionate the congregation really is about the ministries on the lobby wall. i didn’t see more faith or fire in the people there than in other churches. but i could be blind.
st. paul’s evangelical lutheran church
i attended this church one sunday because i had just read or heard something about a “st. paul’s lutheran” in downtown wilmington, and had never noticed it. you mean i could be walking to a lutheran church instead of driving fifteen minutes (as to st. matthew’s)? somehow i had missed it even though i drove by it every other day. but nothing at st. paul’s grabbed me, aside from a lovely building; the same concerns i have about all denominational churches were with me there, but the exciting things about st. matthew’s—lively preacher, multiplicity of ministries on display—were not.
glad tidings of wilmington
small but lively, and faithful. and friendly. meeting in a middle school. the contemporary music was decent, better than many, and the sermon was better than just about all the others i had heard. it was biblical, clear, direct. it seemed to directly challenge mature Christians rather than pander to non-Christians.
but this church has a particular emphasis that i am not sold on. i noticed it first on their website, and it was confirmed in the service. it reminds me of the “health and wealth” theology of some churches—if you truly obey God, He will bless you with health, happiness, material possessions, etc. which of course is a lie. you don’t have to look far in scripture, or general history, to see cases where as soon as a person started obeying God they were tortured and executed. i didn’t sense that the pastor is as far along those lines as some churches, but still there seemed to be a clear emphasis on material blessings in this life. here’s the subtitle of one of their publications: “a weekly support magazine for those interested in achieving success, wholeness, and abundance in all areas of their lives.” inside, the pastor and his wife say, “may God bless you in every way and bring joy and abundance into your lives...”
success and abundance in all areas of life? if he were speaking of spiritual successes, fine, but abundance in “all areas” of earthly life reeks of materialism, and places God in the role of wish granter. this view paralizes ministry, because it deafens the congregation to God’s frequent calls to abandon earthly success.
grace harbor church
another small and lively church meeting in a middle school, but very different in focus from glad tidings. as the service progressed, i began to wonder why this church wouldn’t just join forces with “the rock of wilmington”—the music at grace harbor was mostly soul, the worship style mostly spiritualist (plenty of swaying and dancing); and probably a third of the 40 to 50 people there were black (though the pastor was white). so i was not surprised to read in their literature that they have a vested interest in racial integration in church.
if i had a choice between grace harbor and the rock, i would naturally gravitate towards the rock for its much larger size and much more professional soul music.
also, the pastor’s sermon that day was primarily about problems with the church’s attendance, discipline, and finances. he said he had decided to get a part-time job because the church wasn’t giving enough to support him. this is not ideal, he said; biblically, a pastor should be supported by his church. as soon as that happened he would drop the extra job.
perhaps just as there is a time when a church becomes so large that it should divide, there is a time when two churches ought to combine. when one or both are struggling but have nearly identical ministry goals, the two would be better as one. their proximity of location, and their “proximity” of ministry direction, could inspire them to join, like droplets of water moving closer and closer until they touch and merge into one larger body.
but later i was not sure grace harbor should go this route. it seemed to have potential by itself. it was fledgling, but promising; crippled, but fighting. also, the rock meets far outside of town, on the outskirts of the suburbs, essentially in a rural area. but grace harbor is at the outskirts of downtown wilmington, in a generally lower class, urban neighborhood. so perhaps as grace harbor struggles in its current place it will become more and more vital to the immediately surrounding community, where the rock may never touch.
the friendliness of this church outshined all the others. i was hugged several times during the service, just for being there. i was approached by one woman before, during, and after the service, once to give me the bulletin, once to remind me to fill out the visitor’s card, once to collect my visitor’s card, and once, apparently, to detain me after service long enough for the pastor to get to me. when he did, we couldn’t have chatted for more than a couple of minutes before he asked me if i was a believer. i like that.
exciting church, but like the rock, not quite for me. i’m all for racial integration, but God has not called me to be directly, continuously involved in it. and, also as at the rock, there was a sense during worship that if you aren’t moving physically, you aren’t moving spiritually. i think i recall the pastor actually making a statement to that effect.
upon entering the lobby i was encouraged to see a large area of one wall covered with small slips of paper describing the various ministries currently active at this church. i knew i was searching for an active, lively, fired-up church, and this was a promising sign. but particularly i wondered if this church lived up to its middle name, “evangelical.” as i scanned each ministry i pulled copies of the ones that interested me; one was called “evangelism committee”. here’s a quote from the slip: “they review the congregation’s pulse in its evangelism passion, and they come up with ways to keep inviting others into an encounter with Jesus Christ.” check.
i pulled two others: “spiritual gifts ministry team”, a course to help match people’s gifts with particular ministries; and my favorite, “church council”: “this includes visioning, and setting the strategic direction of the church... and requires a time commitment of two years.”
i like a church that offers open invitation to all members to participate in, or at least witness, the steering of the ship. this invitation is rare in my experience. often a pastor will make decisions behind closed doors, with a hand-picked inner circle, and effect significant change gradually, so as to be less noticeable: arrogant, manipulative, dishonest, corrupt.
sunday school was first, led by the pastor. i think it was the only adult class. the study was about some passages of Scripture, from the old testament. the pastor was jovial, talkative, and funny. he has a ph.d. i appreciated his boldness in pointing out to the large group of middle-aged adults (to illustrate a point that i don’t recall) that God placed the greatest tactile sensitivity in the genitals. a few snickered uncomfortably. i did not.
i appreciated even more his openness in sharing his divorce. his wife suddenly decided she no longer wanted to be married, and no longer wanted to be a mother. so she left. his new wife was seated at his right. her face was lovely.
the service contained the expected liturgy, but the pastor’s personality breathed life into it. he addressed the congregation from different places in the sanctuary, and looked to us for lively response. he smiled. i had never considered “crossing” myself until i watched him do it, clearly reveling in its symbolism, looking up to heaven. i sensed that if he were alone, he would still do it. though reciting centuries-old writings, he was authentic; his heart seemed to be behind his actions.
communion is celebrated every week—the only church besides first baptist’s “vintage” service that did this.
once, a man sang during the offering—a tenor, i think, and well trained. one voice, one piano, one poem. simple, profound, beautiful.
i attended the eleven o’clock service for a few consecutive weeks. there is an early service too, more “contemporary”, someone told me. i wanted to try it, but haven’t yet.
it was refreshing to experience an ancient, meaningful and beautiful liturgy of action, word, and song, especially after so many non-denominational contemporary churches with often vacuous and repetitive song lyrics, and inarticulate prayers (“just, like, be with us, God...”). clearly st. matthew’s lutheran has been touched only lightly, if at all, by the seeker sensitive wave. this church is one of only two or three still on my mind as a potential place to attend regularly.
of course i have some concerns, the main one being whether the “lutheran” identity of the church is an obstacle, a stumbling block, to evangelism. i can imagine someone being converted to Christ by the church’s outreach, but then having to be sold lutheranism. why is the church called “lutheran”, instead of just “Christian”?—i imagine him or her asking. they would rightly wonder why both st. matthew and martin luther warrant a place on the church’s sign, while Jesus Christ does not.
i think one positive move seeker churches have made is to downplay denominational affiliation. rick warren’s “saddleback community church” is southern baptist, but you have do research worthy of a master’s degree to discover this fact. (this isn’t all good: denominational affiliation should not be hidden, which is tantamount to lying, but rather considered as relatively unimportant and peripheral.) the main point is “Christ, and Him crucified.” if some historical figure or movement helped us recover that simplicity, fine; but claiming and naming our entire identity after it segregates us from other Christians.
another concern is how committed and passionate the congregation really is about the ministries on the lobby wall. i didn’t see more faith or fire in the people there than in other churches. but i could be blind.
st. paul’s evangelical lutheran church
i attended this church one sunday because i had just read or heard something about a “st. paul’s lutheran” in downtown wilmington, and had never noticed it. you mean i could be walking to a lutheran church instead of driving fifteen minutes (as to st. matthew’s)? somehow i had missed it even though i drove by it every other day. but nothing at st. paul’s grabbed me, aside from a lovely building; the same concerns i have about all denominational churches were with me there, but the exciting things about st. matthew’s—lively preacher, multiplicity of ministries on display—were not.
glad tidings of wilmington
small but lively, and faithful. and friendly. meeting in a middle school. the contemporary music was decent, better than many, and the sermon was better than just about all the others i had heard. it was biblical, clear, direct. it seemed to directly challenge mature Christians rather than pander to non-Christians.
but this church has a particular emphasis that i am not sold on. i noticed it first on their website, and it was confirmed in the service. it reminds me of the “health and wealth” theology of some churches—if you truly obey God, He will bless you with health, happiness, material possessions, etc. which of course is a lie. you don’t have to look far in scripture, or general history, to see cases where as soon as a person started obeying God they were tortured and executed. i didn’t sense that the pastor is as far along those lines as some churches, but still there seemed to be a clear emphasis on material blessings in this life. here’s the subtitle of one of their publications: “a weekly support magazine for those interested in achieving success, wholeness, and abundance in all areas of their lives.” inside, the pastor and his wife say, “may God bless you in every way and bring joy and abundance into your lives...”
success and abundance in all areas of life? if he were speaking of spiritual successes, fine, but abundance in “all areas” of earthly life reeks of materialism, and places God in the role of wish granter. this view paralizes ministry, because it deafens the congregation to God’s frequent calls to abandon earthly success.
grace harbor church
another small and lively church meeting in a middle school, but very different in focus from glad tidings. as the service progressed, i began to wonder why this church wouldn’t just join forces with “the rock of wilmington”—the music at grace harbor was mostly soul, the worship style mostly spiritualist (plenty of swaying and dancing); and probably a third of the 40 to 50 people there were black (though the pastor was white). so i was not surprised to read in their literature that they have a vested interest in racial integration in church.
if i had a choice between grace harbor and the rock, i would naturally gravitate towards the rock for its much larger size and much more professional soul music.
also, the pastor’s sermon that day was primarily about problems with the church’s attendance, discipline, and finances. he said he had decided to get a part-time job because the church wasn’t giving enough to support him. this is not ideal, he said; biblically, a pastor should be supported by his church. as soon as that happened he would drop the extra job.
perhaps just as there is a time when a church becomes so large that it should divide, there is a time when two churches ought to combine. when one or both are struggling but have nearly identical ministry goals, the two would be better as one. their proximity of location, and their “proximity” of ministry direction, could inspire them to join, like droplets of water moving closer and closer until they touch and merge into one larger body.
but later i was not sure grace harbor should go this route. it seemed to have potential by itself. it was fledgling, but promising; crippled, but fighting. also, the rock meets far outside of town, on the outskirts of the suburbs, essentially in a rural area. but grace harbor is at the outskirts of downtown wilmington, in a generally lower class, urban neighborhood. so perhaps as grace harbor struggles in its current place it will become more and more vital to the immediately surrounding community, where the rock may never touch.
the friendliness of this church outshined all the others. i was hugged several times during the service, just for being there. i was approached by one woman before, during, and after the service, once to give me the bulletin, once to remind me to fill out the visitor’s card, once to collect my visitor’s card, and once, apparently, to detain me after service long enough for the pastor to get to me. when he did, we couldn’t have chatted for more than a couple of minutes before he asked me if i was a believer. i like that.
exciting church, but like the rock, not quite for me. i’m all for racial integration, but God has not called me to be directly, continuously involved in it. and, also as at the rock, there was a sense during worship that if you aren’t moving physically, you aren’t moving spiritually. i think i recall the pastor actually making a statement to that effect.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Church Review - Introduction
and i don't post for forever, because i was taking forever to write my next post. initially i intended to spend a few days, perhaps a week, writing briefly about my experiences with many different churches, and making it a single post. two months later i'm looking over a microsoft word document of sixteen and a half pages, single spaced, trying to decide where to divide it up to post it in increments. so, here's the first of four, or five..
Church Review: A (Truthful) Memoir
PART I
i have attended fifteen churches in the last nine months.
author joshua harris might offer a criticism in the form of his book, "stop dating the church."
i accept. i want to settle down with a single church, become a member, plug in, grow deep roots, bear fruit.
and maybe harris wouldn't be bothered by my time-frame: nine months wouldn't be all that long to date a girl before marrying her. besides, it was fifteen different girls. and many i only saw once. how could i possibly decide?
still, dating churches for nine months has drawn out, seems too long. i'm frustrated. faydra's comment a few months ago about starting a new and unique church service sparked a flash of excitement in me, because i've had similar thoughts of late. perhaps my standards for church have increased so much over the years that no existing church measures up; so i imagine churches i might actually like. it's revealing that not one of the fifteen churches i attended struck me immediately as something i'd love to be a part of. faydra spoke of people who are "disenchanted with church"; i guess i'm one of them.
my current situation makes the decision particularly difficult. i regularly attended winterpark baptist (faydra's church) for about three years, mainly because my wife had chosen this as her regular church for a year or so before i moved to the area. she had formed friendships there, and though i had my usual complaints about "seeker sensitive" churches, which winterpark basically is, saw enough exciting things going on to accept her decision. a few years later, my wife left God, the church, and me. the month of our separation marks the beginning of my tour of area churches. not having developed any deep friendships at winterpark, and having grown weary of the overall character and direction of the church, i decided to do what i originally planned to do upon moving to wilmington: visit many churches and see where God calls me.
so one difficulty in deciding is: if my prayer that my wife returns to God and to me is answered, would i leave whatever church i join---including friends, ministries, etc.---to go back to winterpark with her? such a question makes me want to keep touring, or at least attend one church without committing, since to settle in a new church would suggest i don't expect God to answer my prayer; or, that my wife would join my new church instead of going back to winterpark (presumptuous? selfish?).
a second issue that makes deciding on a church difficult is that, whether or not my wife returns, i plan to move out of the area, and likely out of the state, in a few years (we had this plan early in our marriage). my career was (and is) a major reason: the traditional culture in southeastern north carolina is not open to new and original (and better) ideas about building. i sense that i need significant experience designing and detailing buildings that are not beach cottages, craftsman bungalows, italianate mansions, pre-engineered metal buildings, or trailer parks (yes, i have designed all of these here). i think God wants me to fully employ the creativity He gave me, and make something far better, far more representative of His truth, beauty, and love. so how do i commit to a church, make friends, pursue ministries, knowing i'll leave in two years?
i'm fairly certain that God does not want me to sit idle; i don't think He would be content with only my personal Bible studies and prayers for the next two years, however regular and intense---especially with so many church activities and ministries going on around me. so i will keep touring, and listening. as far as my wife is concerned, we will deal with those issues when/if she comes around. ideally, we would be so busy celebrating if she returns, ala the prodigal son party, that the question of which church to attend would be moot.
anyway, in the midst this journey i felt compelled to chronicle some of my experiences with the many different churches i've been to (with a few forays into the more distant past, and future). i'm not yet sure why. perhaps because the insights God has given me along the way are valuable, both for me to write and for others to read. or perhaps i will come to some conclusion about what church to attend as i bring each one to mind.
i guess i should start with winterpark baptist, since that's where i started. first the sermons: though they were eloquently delivered and well thought-out, they had a lightness about them, a lack of substance. they didn't often delve deep into Scripture. they were essentially moralisms. i recall one sermon about gossip; another about selfishness. though i listened carefully, and enjoyed listening carefully, agreeing with most of what was said, my understanding and spiritual awareness remained basically the same.
i've noticed this problem with a lot of seeker sensitive churches. if the idea is to attract non-Christians to sunday worship, and especially to keep them coming, the whole service must be attractive to them---which means not offensive. how to deliver a sermon that doesn't offend non-Christians? tell them to be good; tell them how to behave in their lives, their marriages, with their children, so that all will go well with them; they'll have more peace, and stay out of trouble. definitely don't talk about hell or salvation.
it became (and still is) deeply disturbing to me to realize that if i was not a Christian when i started attending winterpark, three years of sermons would have not gotten me much closer. the Gospel was not articulated, and no urgency was communicated. if i was not a Christian, i would like this church, because it would ask of me only that i try a little harder to be selfless, to love my children better, to affirm my wife more.
here we see one of the contradictions of seeker sensitive ecclesiology: under the good motivation to save souls, the sunday morning worship environment is transformed into something that does not offer salvation. to continue to attract non-Christians to the service, we must not ask them to become Christians. our original goal is undermined by our methods; the means are hostile to the end.
further, no one ever approached me before or after church to see where i stood (at another church i was asked flat-out, "are you a believer?"). it’s definitely a "friendly" church, as advertised, but the friendliness, for me anyway, never went beyond small talk after a service. members welcome you heartily if they don’t recognize you, but that’s it.
faydra has mentioned the lack of commitment of many members, given the low stats on how many official members actually attend regularly. but i was also bothered by a certain nominalism i noticed even in the regular attenders; though they attended regularly and participated in some activities outside of sunday services, few seemed to rise above a rather complacent faith life---a sort of suburban contentment with the way things are; a stagnation, really. one time i saw this problem was when i realized that the couples’ class i attended spent much more time and energy on social events for the group than on outreach or service. better to have a holy restlessness, a constant and urgent pushing, pulling, adjusting towards deeper obedience.
the music garners a more positive review. the two sunday services are quite different here, the earlier one a bit too one-sided, playing mainly contemporary worship band style songs and sounds (since it is the more seeker sensitive of the two). but in the more traditional service i heard a uniquely wide variety of sounds, from a full choir, to a cappella duets and quartets, to small symphony orchestras and handbells (for special occasions), to one man singing with his acoustical guitar (a personal favorite).
i left winterpark partly to search for a congregation that’s more fired up. maybe this is because i have trouble being fired up by myself, and i have trouble firing other people up. i have noticed that when surrounded by Christians who are more mature than i, i am compelled to rise to their level; to participate in life with them, to bask in their faith often. other Christians are repelled by maturity; they are scared by accountability and change.
first presbyterian church
this is the first church i visited after leaving winterpark baptist, partly because it is a mere block from my apartment, and mostly because it is a beautiful granite cathedral. never have i had such a sense of displacement as when i first set foot in its sanctuary. having only experienced architecture this grand, and this gothic, in europe, and in some major u.s. cities, i had to consciously remind myself that i was still in wilmington, north carolina.
the first time i walked through the interior was after a service, when the place was empty. the main sanctuary was enough to make me walk with my head up and mouth gaping, but the much smaller side chapel hit me the hardest. upon entering its intimate space, my knees became weak, tears filled my eyes, and i sat down. i think i was affected most by the materiality of the space, combined with its smallness (creating a profound kind of density): having lived most of my life surrounded by sheetrock (chalk sandwiched by paper), paint (architectural lipstick), carpet (fuzz), and vinyl (congealed oil), all of which i had learned to hate, i found myself enveloped by a space with a slate floor, dark wood pews, brick walls, brick arches, and a timber ceiling, all illumined by saturated colors thrown across the space by small, deep-set stained glass windows. the place exuded reality.
alas, a few sunday school classes made me worry. too many members undermined God's Word. one LEADER of a class said, "some people believe all the answers are in the Bible, but i'm going to keep looking." a LEADER of another class was way too excited about a very skeptical pbs series on the new testament, and none of the other five or so members of the class seemed to be bothered. i felt that if i joined this church, my main task would be to help the members trust the Bible. i wondered how someone could base their life, and indeed their eternity, on one story in this Book, then turn the page to the next story and call it fiction.
so i experienced another kind of displacement: as an architect i felt more at home in that building than in any other i've been to in this town, but as a Bible-centered Christian i felt alien.
shouldn't i join a church i can partner with to reach out to the community? maybe unity in asserting scriptural authority is necessary to getting lots of Kingdom work done. how else could we agree on what we should do? then again, the historical theology of the presbyterian church that i heard from the pulpit sounded great to me, and called the Bible "God's Word". should i stay and help the members get back to their roots?
if i did, i may have to wear a suit and tie: on more than one occasion i glanced around and noticed that i was the only male without a tie. most startling was that one of those occasions was a meeting of newcomers considering membership. i'm not sure yet what to make of this. but i was sure i should keep looking.
first baptist church
a highlight: a young brother and sister duo played violin and cello pieces by bach and beethoven. i was moved.
another highlight: two people in the couples’ sunday school class i mistakenly attended revealed to me that their "Christian" spouses deserted them. one had recently remarried. the other’s husband left her just several months prior. so we three went to lunch that day, and i lunched with one of them once more a few weeks later, where we shared our marital war stories.
alas, at a meeting with the pastor i became discouraged, perhaps mostly because of two books in his office, prominently displayed, by rick warren.
i admit i have developed something of a knee-jerk response against all things "seeker". but i generally trust this response because it is based on a lot of thought and a lot of research. and part of the reason for my church tour is to experience some churches that have not been touched by the seeker movement.
still, i attended several services and a few different sunday school classes before moving on. many of these experiences had rick warren's fingerprints all over them. sermons were basically moralisms, like those at winterpark. and i perceived the same sort of nominal faith i have seen too often elsewhere.
i was, however, encouraged by first baptist's "vintage service", the earliest service on sunday: very small; held in "the chapel" instead of the main sanctuary; communion served every week; hymns; mostly older people. i noticed some special things about small gatherings. one is accountability: you're so close to the pastor, and there are so few of you, that he can look you in the eye frequently. no naps here! no restless fidgeting, no running to the bathroom for non-emergencies. contrast this with the megachurch; pictures i see of these worship spaces show many people standing, walking, not really paying attention. the church looks like a stadium during a sporting event. also, in the small service everyone feels connected to everyone else. i wonder if there is a "critical mass" for a worship service, beyond which a church would be compelled to divide into two, like cell division; we could call it "church mitosis". it would not happen because of divisiveness, a kind of death, but because of growth, a kind of birth.
north grove evangelical presbyterian church
having been generally pleased by presbyterian theology but depressed by presbyterians, i though an "evangelical" presbyterian church might be just right. (if you think "evangelical presbyterian" sounds strange, consider "charismatic episcopal"---a church i saw in the phone book but have not visited... though i have seriously considered it out of sheer curiosity.)
ironically, this presbyterian church had the worst building of all the churches i visited. the sanctuary was a large sheetrock-clad box, with small square windows high in the walls, so that the overall impression was of being in a basement. carpeted floors, individual padded chairs for seating, rubber base board. the very place where there should be an architectural exclamation point---the altar/pulpit---was the most diminutive space in the sanctuary: the ceiling dropped down from several stories high to barely one story. this was the place for the worship band. some contractor (i hope no architect was involved) must have been thinking of clerestory lighting in cathedrals, but not having the sensitivity to apply it correctly, built a surprisingly sterile and uninspiring space. as i walked back to my car after the service i noticed that their parking lot, because interspersed with many large trees, was far more pleasant than their sanctuary.
nothing i saw or heard denoted "presbyterian". this church could have been called "north grove community church" and i would have thought nothing of it.
though there were some good things (the sermon was better than most), the church did not seem to have any more life or faith than others i’d been to. no one even welcomed me.
the rock of wilmington
this is the first church that i felt a twinge of excitement about. upon entering the building i was immediately struck by the relatively high number of blacks in attendance---though the pastor and most of the staff, and most of the congregation, was white. i started to understand why when the music began: heavy soul influence. if i were blind i would have thought i walked into an african-american church.
the racial mix is undeniably positive. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.." heaven will be all cultures and races standing side by side praising our Lord. but i worried that the worship style was designed around the goal of attracting blacks. instead of "seeker sensitive", is this church "black sensitive"? i’m not sure which is worse. "God sensitive" is what all churches should be.
there is some pride in the church, about the church. the phone book advertisement actually says "we love our church!" and the pastor made mention of aberrant theologies we’ve absorbed because of other churches.
but i left that day thinking i saw nothing deeply problematic. the racial integration was very encouraging. and the place was packed and worship was very lively. i did wish the music was more varied---just as seeker churches tend to have a monotony of rock style music, "the rock" has a monotony of soul music.
but in some sense it was not the church that kept me from returning (so far), it was me. their worship style simply is not a good fit for me. this church is actually listed under the "spiritualist" section of the phone book, and it should be: people were swaying, jumping, dancing in the aisles. of course a select few apparent regular attenders were much more stationary, but still i sensed that if i made this church my home i would always be a bit at odds with the congregation as a whole as far as worship behavior goes. i worship best when still and quiet, pensive. i lose focus if i get loud or active.
so my lesson was that though a great church may be found, it is not necessarily great for me.
north brunswick fellowship church
perhaps the smallest church i visited: 30 to 50 people. meeting in a middle school. i wanted to visit this church because the pastors who started it just a few years earlier spoke about their ideas for church at winterpark, and i liked what i heard.
even now i can’t recall what they said. and my visit to the church didn’t remind me, though it was generally a good experience. not as much stress on seeker sensitive ideas, and that was refreshing. also, there seemed to be quite a few outreach ministries going on for such a small congregation. but these ministries seemed mainly service oriented rather than evangelical. liberal first presbyterian was like that, as if they were somewhat ashamed of the Gospel. i doubt north brunswick goes as far as first presbyterian down that road, but still i guess i’m looking for more evangelical fire. not politically, mind you, just a passion for penetrating the community with the Good News. service activities are great, but without some sort of inclusion of the Gospel along with them they seem pointless: "man does not live by bread alone.."
music here was better than most, even though it was just the pastor and his guitar. the songs chosen had some meat to their lyrics, a rarity in contemporary churches.
the salvation army
only when i saw the church building---just a few blocks from my apartment---and the sign out front giving times of service and sunday school did i realize that "the salvation army" was a church and not just a good-will organization. maybe i’m alone in my ignorance here. anyway, pure curiosity (well, also frustration from my lack of guidance about any of the other churches i had attended) led me to the sanctuary one sunday morning. the service was not for another hour, which i would soon learn, though i was immediately encouraged by intense prayer going on at the altar by a few women. it went on for quite a while, and i just listened, though i couldn’t make out the words. i absorbed my surroundings: lovely timber structure above, and stained glass softly filtering the september sun.
when the women finished praying i approached them, introduced myself, and they gladly ushered me to an adult sunday school class. the teacher was a woman, and quite competent at teaching the study, which was about a book of the Bible; ephesians, i think. i learned some things.
the class was a refreshingly diverse group; one man was bearded, disheveled, loudmouthed; i though of him as homeless; another man was asian, maybe in his 20s, a first-time visitor like me; i seem to remember seeing a black man; several women of varying ages, from 20s to 70s, by the looks of them. i sensed that some of these people were in the midst of serious issues; divorce, abuse, alcoholism.
if so, i thought, they have a wonderful ministry indeed---though perhaps not for me. i’m not called or gifted to deal directly with such situations and people.
though the sermon was fine, and biblical, the music here was perhaps the worst of all the churches i’ve been to. someone played a poor quality tape of worship songs, complete with singers, and we sang along with the tape, following words projected onto a screen hung from the rafters. i was pining for live music, and towards the end of the service a couple of men played some---on trombones, i think---but not very well. i’m no musician, so i could offer no real help to them in this area, either.
another bit of ignorance i held about the salvation army was cleared up that day: they take the "army" metaphor much further than i thought: i visited the church on "cadet" sunday; a "major" taught the sunday school class; i think the preacher was a "lieutenant colonel"; i saw a picture of the founder of the movement: "general" so-and-so. the most surprising thing to me though was that they had full outfits for the different ranks; contrasting colors, patches, symbols, for women and men, just like the military.
i have attended fifteen churches in the last nine months.
author joshua harris might offer a criticism in the form of his book, "stop dating the church."
i accept. i want to settle down with a single church, become a member, plug in, grow deep roots, bear fruit.
and maybe harris wouldn't be bothered by my time-frame: nine months wouldn't be all that long to date a girl before marrying her. besides, it was fifteen different girls. and many i only saw once. how could i possibly decide?
still, dating churches for nine months has drawn out, seems too long. i'm frustrated. faydra's comment a few months ago about starting a new and unique church service sparked a flash of excitement in me, because i've had similar thoughts of late. perhaps my standards for church have increased so much over the years that no existing church measures up; so i imagine churches i might actually like. it's revealing that not one of the fifteen churches i attended struck me immediately as something i'd love to be a part of. faydra spoke of people who are "disenchanted with church"; i guess i'm one of them.
my current situation makes the decision particularly difficult. i regularly attended winterpark baptist (faydra's church) for about three years, mainly because my wife had chosen this as her regular church for a year or so before i moved to the area. she had formed friendships there, and though i had my usual complaints about "seeker sensitive" churches, which winterpark basically is, saw enough exciting things going on to accept her decision. a few years later, my wife left God, the church, and me. the month of our separation marks the beginning of my tour of area churches. not having developed any deep friendships at winterpark, and having grown weary of the overall character and direction of the church, i decided to do what i originally planned to do upon moving to wilmington: visit many churches and see where God calls me.
so one difficulty in deciding is: if my prayer that my wife returns to God and to me is answered, would i leave whatever church i join---including friends, ministries, etc.---to go back to winterpark with her? such a question makes me want to keep touring, or at least attend one church without committing, since to settle in a new church would suggest i don't expect God to answer my prayer; or, that my wife would join my new church instead of going back to winterpark (presumptuous? selfish?).
a second issue that makes deciding on a church difficult is that, whether or not my wife returns, i plan to move out of the area, and likely out of the state, in a few years (we had this plan early in our marriage). my career was (and is) a major reason: the traditional culture in southeastern north carolina is not open to new and original (and better) ideas about building. i sense that i need significant experience designing and detailing buildings that are not beach cottages, craftsman bungalows, italianate mansions, pre-engineered metal buildings, or trailer parks (yes, i have designed all of these here). i think God wants me to fully employ the creativity He gave me, and make something far better, far more representative of His truth, beauty, and love. so how do i commit to a church, make friends, pursue ministries, knowing i'll leave in two years?
i'm fairly certain that God does not want me to sit idle; i don't think He would be content with only my personal Bible studies and prayers for the next two years, however regular and intense---especially with so many church activities and ministries going on around me. so i will keep touring, and listening. as far as my wife is concerned, we will deal with those issues when/if she comes around. ideally, we would be so busy celebrating if she returns, ala the prodigal son party, that the question of which church to attend would be moot.
anyway, in the midst this journey i felt compelled to chronicle some of my experiences with the many different churches i've been to (with a few forays into the more distant past, and future). i'm not yet sure why. perhaps because the insights God has given me along the way are valuable, both for me to write and for others to read. or perhaps i will come to some conclusion about what church to attend as i bring each one to mind.
i guess i should start with winterpark baptist, since that's where i started. first the sermons: though they were eloquently delivered and well thought-out, they had a lightness about them, a lack of substance. they didn't often delve deep into Scripture. they were essentially moralisms. i recall one sermon about gossip; another about selfishness. though i listened carefully, and enjoyed listening carefully, agreeing with most of what was said, my understanding and spiritual awareness remained basically the same.
i've noticed this problem with a lot of seeker sensitive churches. if the idea is to attract non-Christians to sunday worship, and especially to keep them coming, the whole service must be attractive to them---which means not offensive. how to deliver a sermon that doesn't offend non-Christians? tell them to be good; tell them how to behave in their lives, their marriages, with their children, so that all will go well with them; they'll have more peace, and stay out of trouble. definitely don't talk about hell or salvation.
it became (and still is) deeply disturbing to me to realize that if i was not a Christian when i started attending winterpark, three years of sermons would have not gotten me much closer. the Gospel was not articulated, and no urgency was communicated. if i was not a Christian, i would like this church, because it would ask of me only that i try a little harder to be selfless, to love my children better, to affirm my wife more.
here we see one of the contradictions of seeker sensitive ecclesiology: under the good motivation to save souls, the sunday morning worship environment is transformed into something that does not offer salvation. to continue to attract non-Christians to the service, we must not ask them to become Christians. our original goal is undermined by our methods; the means are hostile to the end.
further, no one ever approached me before or after church to see where i stood (at another church i was asked flat-out, "are you a believer?"). it’s definitely a "friendly" church, as advertised, but the friendliness, for me anyway, never went beyond small talk after a service. members welcome you heartily if they don’t recognize you, but that’s it.
faydra has mentioned the lack of commitment of many members, given the low stats on how many official members actually attend regularly. but i was also bothered by a certain nominalism i noticed even in the regular attenders; though they attended regularly and participated in some activities outside of sunday services, few seemed to rise above a rather complacent faith life---a sort of suburban contentment with the way things are; a stagnation, really. one time i saw this problem was when i realized that the couples’ class i attended spent much more time and energy on social events for the group than on outreach or service. better to have a holy restlessness, a constant and urgent pushing, pulling, adjusting towards deeper obedience.
the music garners a more positive review. the two sunday services are quite different here, the earlier one a bit too one-sided, playing mainly contemporary worship band style songs and sounds (since it is the more seeker sensitive of the two). but in the more traditional service i heard a uniquely wide variety of sounds, from a full choir, to a cappella duets and quartets, to small symphony orchestras and handbells (for special occasions), to one man singing with his acoustical guitar (a personal favorite).
i left winterpark partly to search for a congregation that’s more fired up. maybe this is because i have trouble being fired up by myself, and i have trouble firing other people up. i have noticed that when surrounded by Christians who are more mature than i, i am compelled to rise to their level; to participate in life with them, to bask in their faith often. other Christians are repelled by maturity; they are scared by accountability and change.
first presbyterian church
this is the first church i visited after leaving winterpark baptist, partly because it is a mere block from my apartment, and mostly because it is a beautiful granite cathedral. never have i had such a sense of displacement as when i first set foot in its sanctuary. having only experienced architecture this grand, and this gothic, in europe, and in some major u.s. cities, i had to consciously remind myself that i was still in wilmington, north carolina.
the first time i walked through the interior was after a service, when the place was empty. the main sanctuary was enough to make me walk with my head up and mouth gaping, but the much smaller side chapel hit me the hardest. upon entering its intimate space, my knees became weak, tears filled my eyes, and i sat down. i think i was affected most by the materiality of the space, combined with its smallness (creating a profound kind of density): having lived most of my life surrounded by sheetrock (chalk sandwiched by paper), paint (architectural lipstick), carpet (fuzz), and vinyl (congealed oil), all of which i had learned to hate, i found myself enveloped by a space with a slate floor, dark wood pews, brick walls, brick arches, and a timber ceiling, all illumined by saturated colors thrown across the space by small, deep-set stained glass windows. the place exuded reality.
alas, a few sunday school classes made me worry. too many members undermined God's Word. one LEADER of a class said, "some people believe all the answers are in the Bible, but i'm going to keep looking." a LEADER of another class was way too excited about a very skeptical pbs series on the new testament, and none of the other five or so members of the class seemed to be bothered. i felt that if i joined this church, my main task would be to help the members trust the Bible. i wondered how someone could base their life, and indeed their eternity, on one story in this Book, then turn the page to the next story and call it fiction.
so i experienced another kind of displacement: as an architect i felt more at home in that building than in any other i've been to in this town, but as a Bible-centered Christian i felt alien.
shouldn't i join a church i can partner with to reach out to the community? maybe unity in asserting scriptural authority is necessary to getting lots of Kingdom work done. how else could we agree on what we should do? then again, the historical theology of the presbyterian church that i heard from the pulpit sounded great to me, and called the Bible "God's Word". should i stay and help the members get back to their roots?
if i did, i may have to wear a suit and tie: on more than one occasion i glanced around and noticed that i was the only male without a tie. most startling was that one of those occasions was a meeting of newcomers considering membership. i'm not sure yet what to make of this. but i was sure i should keep looking.
first baptist church
a highlight: a young brother and sister duo played violin and cello pieces by bach and beethoven. i was moved.
another highlight: two people in the couples’ sunday school class i mistakenly attended revealed to me that their "Christian" spouses deserted them. one had recently remarried. the other’s husband left her just several months prior. so we three went to lunch that day, and i lunched with one of them once more a few weeks later, where we shared our marital war stories.
alas, at a meeting with the pastor i became discouraged, perhaps mostly because of two books in his office, prominently displayed, by rick warren.
i admit i have developed something of a knee-jerk response against all things "seeker". but i generally trust this response because it is based on a lot of thought and a lot of research. and part of the reason for my church tour is to experience some churches that have not been touched by the seeker movement.
still, i attended several services and a few different sunday school classes before moving on. many of these experiences had rick warren's fingerprints all over them. sermons were basically moralisms, like those at winterpark. and i perceived the same sort of nominal faith i have seen too often elsewhere.
i was, however, encouraged by first baptist's "vintage service", the earliest service on sunday: very small; held in "the chapel" instead of the main sanctuary; communion served every week; hymns; mostly older people. i noticed some special things about small gatherings. one is accountability: you're so close to the pastor, and there are so few of you, that he can look you in the eye frequently. no naps here! no restless fidgeting, no running to the bathroom for non-emergencies. contrast this with the megachurch; pictures i see of these worship spaces show many people standing, walking, not really paying attention. the church looks like a stadium during a sporting event. also, in the small service everyone feels connected to everyone else. i wonder if there is a "critical mass" for a worship service, beyond which a church would be compelled to divide into two, like cell division; we could call it "church mitosis". it would not happen because of divisiveness, a kind of death, but because of growth, a kind of birth.
north grove evangelical presbyterian church
having been generally pleased by presbyterian theology but depressed by presbyterians, i though an "evangelical" presbyterian church might be just right. (if you think "evangelical presbyterian" sounds strange, consider "charismatic episcopal"---a church i saw in the phone book but have not visited... though i have seriously considered it out of sheer curiosity.)
ironically, this presbyterian church had the worst building of all the churches i visited. the sanctuary was a large sheetrock-clad box, with small square windows high in the walls, so that the overall impression was of being in a basement. carpeted floors, individual padded chairs for seating, rubber base board. the very place where there should be an architectural exclamation point---the altar/pulpit---was the most diminutive space in the sanctuary: the ceiling dropped down from several stories high to barely one story. this was the place for the worship band. some contractor (i hope no architect was involved) must have been thinking of clerestory lighting in cathedrals, but not having the sensitivity to apply it correctly, built a surprisingly sterile and uninspiring space. as i walked back to my car after the service i noticed that their parking lot, because interspersed with many large trees, was far more pleasant than their sanctuary.
nothing i saw or heard denoted "presbyterian". this church could have been called "north grove community church" and i would have thought nothing of it.
though there were some good things (the sermon was better than most), the church did not seem to have any more life or faith than others i’d been to. no one even welcomed me.
the rock of wilmington
this is the first church that i felt a twinge of excitement about. upon entering the building i was immediately struck by the relatively high number of blacks in attendance---though the pastor and most of the staff, and most of the congregation, was white. i started to understand why when the music began: heavy soul influence. if i were blind i would have thought i walked into an african-american church.
the racial mix is undeniably positive. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.." heaven will be all cultures and races standing side by side praising our Lord. but i worried that the worship style was designed around the goal of attracting blacks. instead of "seeker sensitive", is this church "black sensitive"? i’m not sure which is worse. "God sensitive" is what all churches should be.
there is some pride in the church, about the church. the phone book advertisement actually says "we love our church!" and the pastor made mention of aberrant theologies we’ve absorbed because of other churches.
but i left that day thinking i saw nothing deeply problematic. the racial integration was very encouraging. and the place was packed and worship was very lively. i did wish the music was more varied---just as seeker churches tend to have a monotony of rock style music, "the rock" has a monotony of soul music.
but in some sense it was not the church that kept me from returning (so far), it was me. their worship style simply is not a good fit for me. this church is actually listed under the "spiritualist" section of the phone book, and it should be: people were swaying, jumping, dancing in the aisles. of course a select few apparent regular attenders were much more stationary, but still i sensed that if i made this church my home i would always be a bit at odds with the congregation as a whole as far as worship behavior goes. i worship best when still and quiet, pensive. i lose focus if i get loud or active.
so my lesson was that though a great church may be found, it is not necessarily great for me.
north brunswick fellowship church
perhaps the smallest church i visited: 30 to 50 people. meeting in a middle school. i wanted to visit this church because the pastors who started it just a few years earlier spoke about their ideas for church at winterpark, and i liked what i heard.
even now i can’t recall what they said. and my visit to the church didn’t remind me, though it was generally a good experience. not as much stress on seeker sensitive ideas, and that was refreshing. also, there seemed to be quite a few outreach ministries going on for such a small congregation. but these ministries seemed mainly service oriented rather than evangelical. liberal first presbyterian was like that, as if they were somewhat ashamed of the Gospel. i doubt north brunswick goes as far as first presbyterian down that road, but still i guess i’m looking for more evangelical fire. not politically, mind you, just a passion for penetrating the community with the Good News. service activities are great, but without some sort of inclusion of the Gospel along with them they seem pointless: "man does not live by bread alone.."
music here was better than most, even though it was just the pastor and his guitar. the songs chosen had some meat to their lyrics, a rarity in contemporary churches.
the salvation army
only when i saw the church building---just a few blocks from my apartment---and the sign out front giving times of service and sunday school did i realize that "the salvation army" was a church and not just a good-will organization. maybe i’m alone in my ignorance here. anyway, pure curiosity (well, also frustration from my lack of guidance about any of the other churches i had attended) led me to the sanctuary one sunday morning. the service was not for another hour, which i would soon learn, though i was immediately encouraged by intense prayer going on at the altar by a few women. it went on for quite a while, and i just listened, though i couldn’t make out the words. i absorbed my surroundings: lovely timber structure above, and stained glass softly filtering the september sun.
when the women finished praying i approached them, introduced myself, and they gladly ushered me to an adult sunday school class. the teacher was a woman, and quite competent at teaching the study, which was about a book of the Bible; ephesians, i think. i learned some things.
the class was a refreshingly diverse group; one man was bearded, disheveled, loudmouthed; i though of him as homeless; another man was asian, maybe in his 20s, a first-time visitor like me; i seem to remember seeing a black man; several women of varying ages, from 20s to 70s, by the looks of them. i sensed that some of these people were in the midst of serious issues; divorce, abuse, alcoholism.
if so, i thought, they have a wonderful ministry indeed---though perhaps not for me. i’m not called or gifted to deal directly with such situations and people.
though the sermon was fine, and biblical, the music here was perhaps the worst of all the churches i’ve been to. someone played a poor quality tape of worship songs, complete with singers, and we sang along with the tape, following words projected onto a screen hung from the rafters. i was pining for live music, and towards the end of the service a couple of men played some---on trombones, i think---but not very well. i’m no musician, so i could offer no real help to them in this area, either.
another bit of ignorance i held about the salvation army was cleared up that day: they take the "army" metaphor much further than i thought: i visited the church on "cadet" sunday; a "major" taught the sunday school class; i think the preacher was a "lieutenant colonel"; i saw a picture of the founder of the movement: "general" so-and-so. the most surprising thing to me though was that they had full outfits for the different ranks; contrasting colors, patches, symbols, for women and men, just like the military.
You Too Can Buy Organic
“The organic-food movement is in danger of exacerbating the growing gap between rich and poor in this country by contributing to a two-tiered national food supply, with healthy food for the rich.” This sentence is from an article on Slate about the chain Whole Foods. We don’t have a Whole Foods in Wilmington but we do have an organic co-op (I've mentioned it before. I'm a member.) as well as nice grocery stores with expansive organic sections. I buy a lot of organic food. I certainly buy a lot of healthy food and I’m not in the least bit rich, so this sentence annoys me.
Because the idea that organic food is for the rich (even if it is expensive) annoys me. People of all incomes need to become responsible consumers. If more is spent on healthy foods it is highly likely less will be spent on doctor bills and medicine. My church is about to send a group to Mississippi on its second Hurricane Katrina relief trip. I inquired about resources they could take and was told that they needed coffee, so I went down to Folks Café (Chris mentioned it in a comment once before.) and I spent $48 on four pounds of coffee. I imagine my dollar would have gone much further on Folgers purchased at Walmart but I bought fair trade coffee and I supported a local non-chain business through my donation. To me, that’s being a responsible consumer.
Going back to the fact that I’m not rich… We don’t even have cable (much less DVR or TIVO). We wouldn’t have a cell phone if it weren’t for the fact that my mother sent me one because it annoyed and worried her too much that we didn’t have one (and she put us on her plan and pays for it and then complains that we don’t use enough minutes. Uh, mom, we don’t NEED a cell phone! But thank you.) $48 is a chunk of change for our household but it’s something I wanted to do and I want to set the example for others. I’m solid middle class folk but I buy expensive food and I’m here to say… You can too!
I am incapable of eating white bread for sandwiches (but can manage if it’s in bun form). Kraft singles gross me out. The last time I ate Reese Peanut cups I thought – that was so not worth the calories, from now on all chocolate must be Lindt or Ritter Sport sqaures. I make my cookies from scratch, not those bizarre square break-off things. I buy pricier olive oil. I like good food. I like knowing what goes into my food. I LOVE that on the ingredients list of my apple juice it says: apples.
Granted when other kids were eating PB and Js at school I had deli salami with butte kasse (German butter cheese) slapped between some fancy mustard on some fancy bread. (Seriously, so all this is my mother’s fault.) And I’m rearing a child the same way. My two-year-old loves all the "fancy" breads I've put in front of him and has never eaten a PB and J. (I have given him peanut butter toast though – organic, all natural sugar-free peanut butter on whole grain bread – and he loves it.) Did I mention that we’re pretty solid middle class?
But this kind of eating doesn’t have us in credit card debt. We save in other ways (see above: no cable, no cell phone bill) like driving moderate vehicles that get good gas mileage. (My only priority when I bought my car.) Healthy eating and good food is a priority to me. (Keeping up with Johnny Socio-Economic-Ladder-Climber is not a priority to me.) And my husband who grew up on white bread and Kraft singles, well, he eats what I put in front of him and stopped looking at the receipts.
I HATE that organic food is associated with the well-off. I want this LIE to go away. Organic food, free-trade food, locally grown food – these are products for the more responsible consumer and if the middle class consumer would reprioritize their budgets a little and would put down the Oreo for the locally grown apple, I truly believe we could enter into a world with a better, fairer distribution of wealth around the world and healthier, thinner, not-so-medicated Americans. It's totally possible. Really. (If my husband can do it anyone can.)
Because the idea that organic food is for the rich (even if it is expensive) annoys me. People of all incomes need to become responsible consumers. If more is spent on healthy foods it is highly likely less will be spent on doctor bills and medicine. My church is about to send a group to Mississippi on its second Hurricane Katrina relief trip. I inquired about resources they could take and was told that they needed coffee, so I went down to Folks Café (Chris mentioned it in a comment once before.) and I spent $48 on four pounds of coffee. I imagine my dollar would have gone much further on Folgers purchased at Walmart but I bought fair trade coffee and I supported a local non-chain business through my donation. To me, that’s being a responsible consumer.
Going back to the fact that I’m not rich… We don’t even have cable (much less DVR or TIVO). We wouldn’t have a cell phone if it weren’t for the fact that my mother sent me one because it annoyed and worried her too much that we didn’t have one (and she put us on her plan and pays for it and then complains that we don’t use enough minutes. Uh, mom, we don’t NEED a cell phone! But thank you.) $48 is a chunk of change for our household but it’s something I wanted to do and I want to set the example for others. I’m solid middle class folk but I buy expensive food and I’m here to say… You can too!
I am incapable of eating white bread for sandwiches (but can manage if it’s in bun form). Kraft singles gross me out. The last time I ate Reese Peanut cups I thought – that was so not worth the calories, from now on all chocolate must be Lindt or Ritter Sport sqaures. I make my cookies from scratch, not those bizarre square break-off things. I buy pricier olive oil. I like good food. I like knowing what goes into my food. I LOVE that on the ingredients list of my apple juice it says: apples.
Granted when other kids were eating PB and Js at school I had deli salami with butte kasse (German butter cheese) slapped between some fancy mustard on some fancy bread. (Seriously, so all this is my mother’s fault.) And I’m rearing a child the same way. My two-year-old loves all the "fancy" breads I've put in front of him and has never eaten a PB and J. (I have given him peanut butter toast though – organic, all natural sugar-free peanut butter on whole grain bread – and he loves it.) Did I mention that we’re pretty solid middle class?
But this kind of eating doesn’t have us in credit card debt. We save in other ways (see above: no cable, no cell phone bill) like driving moderate vehicles that get good gas mileage. (My only priority when I bought my car.) Healthy eating and good food is a priority to me. (Keeping up with Johnny Socio-Economic-Ladder-Climber is not a priority to me.) And my husband who grew up on white bread and Kraft singles, well, he eats what I put in front of him and stopped looking at the receipts.
I HATE that organic food is associated with the well-off. I want this LIE to go away. Organic food, free-trade food, locally grown food – these are products for the more responsible consumer and if the middle class consumer would reprioritize their budgets a little and would put down the Oreo for the locally grown apple, I truly believe we could enter into a world with a better, fairer distribution of wealth around the world and healthier, thinner, not-so-medicated Americans. It's totally possible. Really. (If my husband can do it anyone can.)
Friday, March 17, 2006
What?!
On the way to dinner last night (for my husband's birthday - the big 29!) we passed a church that had the following banner in their lawn:
Gad hasn't changed and neither have we.
Old fashioned preaching. Old fashioned singing.
What the heck is that supposed to mean?
By old fashioned I'm thinking 50's/early 60's. Does this mean God was a 30 to 40 (I pick this age because I figure that's the group that most appreciates "old fashioned") year old worshipper in that era and this is still what he likes best?
So let's say God was about 35 in 1955. That makes God only 86 years old. What about Jesus? Then who created the world? I am so confused.
Gad hasn't changed and neither have we.
Old fashioned preaching. Old fashioned singing.
What the heck is that supposed to mean?
By old fashioned I'm thinking 50's/early 60's. Does this mean God was a 30 to 40 (I pick this age because I figure that's the group that most appreciates "old fashioned") year old worshipper in that era and this is still what he likes best?
So let's say God was about 35 in 1955. That makes God only 86 years old. What about Jesus? Then who created the world? I am so confused.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Wilmingtonians Mark Your Calendars
UNCW (where I got my MFA) does an annual Writer's Week in the spring, so last night I decided finally go to their site and see who was going to be coming to town. I'm pleased and annoyed to see that the featured speaker is Jonathan Franzen. Pleased because he's a big name. Annoyed because now I have to finally read The Corrections.
To hear Jonathan: "Jonathan Franzen will read from his work Tuesday, Mar. 28, at 8:00 p.m. in Kenan Auditorium. A book signing will follow. Tickets for this event are $5 ($3 for senior citizens) and are available through the Kenan Auditorium box office at 962.3500." (taken from the press release)
Other authors coming:Amy Benson, Will Blythe, Camille Dungy, Alicia Erian, Bill Roorbach, Tracy K. Smith, Gordon Weaver
No, I hadn't heard of them either, but Alicia Erian's bio is particurly envy-envoking (has sold movie rights - big name directors involved) so I'll try to be reading her between now and then as well. Try being the operative word. It's lent afterall and I've been doing much more Bible reading...
But at least Project Runway has ended - that should free up some time.
Go to http://www.uncw.edu/writers/writersweek_press.htm for the full press release.
To hear Jonathan: "Jonathan Franzen will read from his work Tuesday, Mar. 28, at 8:00 p.m. in Kenan Auditorium. A book signing will follow. Tickets for this event are $5 ($3 for senior citizens) and are available through the Kenan Auditorium box office at 962.3500." (taken from the press release)
Other authors coming:Amy Benson, Will Blythe, Camille Dungy, Alicia Erian, Bill Roorbach, Tracy K. Smith, Gordon Weaver
No, I hadn't heard of them either, but Alicia Erian's bio is particurly envy-envoking (has sold movie rights - big name directors involved) so I'll try to be reading her between now and then as well. Try being the operative word. It's lent afterall and I've been doing much more Bible reading...
But at least Project Runway has ended - that should free up some time.
Go to http://www.uncw.edu/writers/writersweek_press.htm for the full press release.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Wanda After Richard
Wanda After Richard
Ten minutes into mowing the front lawn, Wanda realized she mowed like she vacuumed – generally straight, but if something caught her eye, a dandelion or other tall weed, she’d run the lawn mower over it and back just as she would the vacuum over a string or crumb on the living room rug.
It had been a month since Richard, her husband, passed. The first week after his death she’d been in efficient to-do-list mode: funeral arrangements, seeing to out-of-town guests, choosing a charity in lieu of flowers, calling the boy down the street to mow her lawn. But that first time she sat alone in her house three days after the funeral, the noise of all the children, grandchildren, and other visitors gone, she’d felt it. A wall growing up around herself. Without Richard’s soft snoring while he napped on the couch and she read on the recliner, without Richard’s warm body stretched next to her in the bed, without Richard at the seat beside her at dinner, resalting what she’d already seasoned, without Richard… She didn’t want any more change. She didn’t want any more people near her. She wanted to be with herself. She hadn’t cried since the funeral and she didn’t know what to make of that. She didn’t know what to make of any of her feelings.
Then came the two weeks of soap operas and dimmed lights. She kept the shades drawn and stayed in her bathrobe only leaving the house to replenish her ice cream and microwave popcorn supplies.
But even lounging felt exhausting, avoiding so many phone calls, worrying about what her friends were thinking, conjuring excuses for missing church two Sundays and Wednesday nights in a row. Creating more excuses for missing Sunday afternoon bell choir practice. During the fourth week she developed a compromise. School would be starting in a week and she’d have to return to work so she might as well ease back into life someway or another. She decided she would get off the couch, but she wasn’t ready for people yet. Cleaning – fine. Small talk – no way. In that week she boxed up Richard’s clothing and arranged for it to be taken to Good Will. By Sunday she was ready to tackle the lawn, a task never before attempted in her fifty-five years of living.
Wanda had been the first in her circle of friends to marry. She met Richard her sophomore year at Chapel Hill in the Baptist Student Center. The summer before their senior year they married. It seemed to silly to wait longer, after all they were Baptists and avoiding premarital sex was difficult. Their senior year they chuckled thinking they were the only two who could leave the Baptist Student Center’s Thursday night supper and Bible study and go home to romp in the bedroom. Well, without sinning, anyway.
Aside from one divorce, Wanda was also the first of her friends to reenter the world of singleness. Married at twenty-one, widowed after thirty-four years. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be. For their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary they were supposed to take a cruise to Alaska. Richard wasn’t allowed to die until eighty-five or older and even then, she’d planned they’d go together, holding hands in their sleep. He’d cheated her out of thirty years.
After finishing the front lawn Wanda had to go inside for ice water. She made a mental note to start the lawn earlier in the morning next time. It was entirely too hot outside. Then she thought about that. Next time. Would she become the permanent lawn mower? It was August. The lawn would have to be mowed into October. Her friends had offered their spouses. She could probably afford to pay someone. But the exercise was good, she hadn’t sweated this much since, well probably since the mission trip they went on with the church five years back to build a little cinder block house for a Mexican family. She’d have to think about this lawn mowing business some more.
The phone rang. Before Richard’s death, it rang maybe a few times a day, often a solicitor, but now it seemed to ring on the hour, every hour. Always someone checking in on her. She let the machine pick up, still Richard’s cheerful voice, “You’ve reached the Turners, but we’re not about to answer the phone right now. It’s gonna beep, then you know what to do.”
The voice of her daughter, Kathleen, followed, “Mom, you home? Why don’t you ever answer your phone? Screening your calls from too many well-wishing church ladies? Well, it’s me.” She paused. “Fine. Maybe you’re out. I’m still planning on coming down Friday after work. Call me.”
Wanda downed the last of her water, wiped her hands and forehead with a kitchen towel and returned to the mower so she could start on the backyard. She opened the gate and pushed it through then she abandoned the machine to prepare the yard. First she marched around and picked up sticks and pinecones. Next she returned inside to scrounge in her pantry for plastic bags so she could de-dog-poop the yard. As she entered she heard her son’s voice mid-message, “Lindsay and I were talking about coming done for a weekend. Give you some time with Clara while we go to the beach. Let me know.”
Undoubtedly her children had conspired and she was going to be subjected to getting babysat on the weekends even if it was under the pretense that she’d do the babysitting. Her son, Garrison, lived in Manteo, near his wife’s parents. They could go to the beach anytime. They didn’t need her Wilmington shoreline for that.
After cleaning up the backyard to her satisfaction she returned to the lawn mower and cranked it up, but three rows in, the machine sputtered and coughed. She managed another half row before the machine died. She titled it back and tried to peer underneath. Maybe something had gotten stuck? She slammed the mower back down hoping to dislodge whatever it was. She yanked at the chord to start it up again but it only offered one smoky hiccup. Gas. Maybe it was out of gas. Did they have extra gas in the garage?
She walked back to the front of the house where she’d left the garage door open and scanned the room. Richard had kept an organized garage. Yard tools hung against one wall, a workbench lined the adjacent wall, and next to it home-made shelves filled with supplies: paint brushes, bug spray, weed killer, duct tape, full size trash bags and more. She glanced to the vacant spot where the lawn mower had been parked. Next to it, on the floor, sat a red plastic container. She lifted it and felt the weight of a few gallons then unscrewed the black cap and smelled. Bingo. Gasoline.
Carrying the container, she marched back to the mower and unscrewed a similar black cap located on its top. She tilted the red container so that it would pour in. Gasoline splashed onto her hands just as her hair fell into her face.
“Crap,” she mumbled, tilting back the container. She tried using her upper arms to brush back her hair but couldn’t get all of her thick brown bob back. She carefully nudged the stray strands behind her ears, the smell of gasoline burning as it came near her eyes and nose. As she prepared to try pouring again, she felt a burning sensation on her shins.
“Crap! Crap! Shit!” Wanda jumped back at the site of red ants climbing above her sock line and chomping at her legs. She began hopping around and one spastic foot shot forth and knocked over the gas container. Slapping at her legs, she cussed all the while. Her fingers flew to the laces and began to pull. Within seconds her socks and shoes were off and she danced over to the garden hose. She blasted her legs with the water and stood not noticing as she flooded the mulch in a bed of daylilies behind her. She brought the hose over her head and doused her sweaty body.
“Wanda! Wanda?” Wanda heard the voice coming from the front yard, then the heads of the Bryans peered over the gate. Bruce Bryan was the deacon leader of her Sunday school class and his wife Hillary always planned the socials, usually potluck suppers. Bruce unlatched the gate and opened it for his wife. The two walked towards Wanda.
“Good heavens what are you doing?” said Hillary.
Wanda looked around. A partially mowed yard, lawn mower stopped midway, a kicked over container of gasoline, shoes and socks tossed about and herself, soaking wet, holding the garden hose, mulch sticking to her feet.
“Just doing some yard work.” She reached over and turned the water off then tucked the hose back on its reel.
Bruce stepped forward, “You know you don’t need to be doing that. Men from the class will be happy to take turns on your yard till you find something more permanent.”
“I appreciate the offer.”
Hillary smiled, “Appreciate it and take him up on it! Look at you!”
Wanda tugged at the t-shirt she was wearing and twisted the front to ring out some of the water. “Can I get you anything?”
“We were just in the neighborhood and we missed you at church this morning. Thought we’d say hello.” said Hillary.
The whole world is in on the plot to not leave me alone for one second, thought Wanda.
“Just wanted to see if you needed anything and make sure everything was all right,” Bruce paused, “as all right as it can be.”
“I’m fine. Just needed some downtime after all the relatives and the busyness with… all the arrangements.”
Hillary stepped closer and touched Wanda’s hand. “We understand, but you need to lean on your friends too.”
Wanda smiled. “I know, thank you.”
“So I’ll send Bruce back by tomorrow to finish up your lawn?”
Bruce walked over to the gasoline container and screwed the cap back on. He handed it to his wife.
“We’ll take this, fill it up for you and I can be back tomorrow ‘round 4.” He put the cap back on the mower’s gas tank and pushed it towards the garage. Wanda reached for her shoes and socks and followed them into the front yard. Bruce reparked the mower and then he and Hillary climbed into his oversized SUV and drove out of sight.
Wanda rated her first attempt at lawn mowing a C+ then prepared herself a milkshake before taking a shower and retiring to the couch where she watched home decorating shows until falling asleep.
The next afternoon when Wanda returned from her first day back to work she decided to tackle another project. She changed out of the long dark dress she’d worn to her job as an office assistant at the elementary school and stepped into some sweat pants. She’d had to wear looser clothing because when she first tried to put on dress pants that morning they were too hard to button after her weeks of poor eating. Still, she refused to step on a scale to gage her damage. Who was there to look good for? She just didn’t want to have to go out to buy all new clothes. She deliberated having a salad for dinner but knew this would require a trip to the grocery store. Next week, she thought.
She walked to her dresser and leafed to the bottom where she kept her work shirts. Bruce would be over in an hour and that thought irritated her. The only man she wanted to rely on was Richard and if she couldn’t have Richard then she wanted to figure out a way to do things herself. If God wanted her to be independent then fine. She’d rise to the challenge. The ant bites on her ankles itched and Wanda propped her leg on the bed to scratch them.
She emerged from her bedroom and set out to find her yellow rubber gloves. She’d been noticing some grime collecting in her dishwasher, so she decided to start there figuring she could wipe down the seems with bleach and pour some more bleach into the net at the bottom and she’d be done. A project completed. Wanda poured and watched. She waited, poured again, and waited again. The bleach didn’t seem to do the trick, so she knelt down on the cool tile and peered into the machine to flick at the darkest spot on the net. Nothing happened.
The kitchen phone mounted on the wall above her head began ringing but Wanda ignored it. Shortly Hillary chirped that Bruce was on his way over and she’d sent a lasagna with him.
“I want to make sure you’re eating!” said Hillary.
“Oh, I’m eating,” mumbled Wanda to herself. She rolled out the bottom dish rack and set it down on the floor then pulled up on the spinner to get to the net. She tugged gently and it gave easily so she pulled it off.
“Oh gross.” The underside of the net was covered in slime. Presuming it to be food debris now unrecognizable, Wanda held her breath and tried not to look too closely. To make matters worse, the section she’d just uncovered was full of water. She mused about clogging and then scolded herself for only finding ridiculous, over-her-head projects. She could have simply dusted the bookcase, but no… The doorbell rang, so she peeled back her gloves and slapped them on the counter.
“Doing a little housework?” Bruce said when she opened the door.
Did she look that bad?
“I just need you to pop open that garage and I’ll be out of your hair. Oh and,” he nodded towards his hands then handed Wanda a casserole dish covered in aluminum foil, “Hillary sent this for you. She said you could eat some and freeze some.”
Wanda took the dish and thanked him. “I’ll get the garage.”
Once she heard the lawn mower buzzing in the back, Wanda returned to her kitchen dilemma. She needed to clear out the water so she grabbed the turkey baster to suck it up and a milk jug from her recycling container to dump it into. It didn’t take but five minutes but the goop that remained made her stomach churn. She knew she’d have to take each piece outside to the hose because there was no use sending the stuff down her kitchen sink and starting another clog. But she’d have to wait till Bruce had gone. She didn’t want him knowing what she was up to, offering to save her from this problem as well.
Wanda didn’t know why exactly she felt so resistant to help, to people in general.
That evening she answered the phone when her daughter called yet again and managed to convince her to hold off another week before coming down. Maybe she liked asserting her independence. Maybe she feared the touch of grace that would send her back into her emotions. Maybe she was just bitter.
She enjoyed Hillary’s lasagna then set the rest of the pan on the floor and watched as her yellow Labrador, Mason, set to work. She liked the feeling of waste and irresponsibility as she watched him, the red sauce staining his light fur. She went to bed with her dishwasher still in pieces on the floor.
The next Sunday Wanda meant to go to church but didn’t. She hit the snooze button on her alarm clock, took a long shower, spent too much time deciding what to wear, and before she knew it the service had started and she hadn’t even located her car keys. So she made herself pancakes.
Later that morning the doorbell rang. Hillary and Janette, another lady from their Sunday school class, stood on her front porch in their skirts and blouses. Wanda considered not answering the door but knew this was ridiculous. Her silver Ford Taurus sat out front, so clearly she was home. As she walked toward the door she wondered if she could feign congestion to convince them she had a cold.
“I’d invite you in, but I don’t want to get you sick,” Wanda said after they’d greeted one another.
“You think it’s that flu bug going around?” Janette said.
“You know the beginning of the school year. It’s the worst for spreading new germs,” Wanda said.
“All those summer camp germs coming together. We go through so much Germ X in my room. It’s the only way to keep ‘em alive,” Hillary said. She taught third grade at another school. Wanda smiled in agreement.
“We’ll get off your porch, just wanted to say hello,” said Hillary.
“Tell the ladies I’ll be back in bell choir next week.” Wanda said, closing the door. If only the funeral hadn’t been so expensive. She could really use a spa vacation.
She knew she wouldn’t be bell choir next week, or possibly ever. Wanda had meant to fall back into her life but her intentions weren’t enough. Mason rubbed up against her leg and she reached down to tug on his ear absentmindedly. She had no idea what to do with her afternoon.
When her children visited two weekends in a row, Wanda attended church, had the strength to sit in her usual pew. With family beside her, she could simply pretend Richard had been called in to work in order to explain his absence. But when she didn’t have family in town, her attendance remained sporadic, then dwindled to nothing. She questioned why she’d ever gone. It seemed more a social club than anything else and these had been her friends with Richard. Who were they now that she was single?
Wanda considered moving closer to her daughter. Then she considered Manteo to be near her son, but she never actually called a realtor. Before she knew it one school semester was over and the kids were out for the holidays. Months had passed since Richard’s death but Wanda still felt set adrift with no idea where to even look for a new anchor.
She thought she would learn new things about herself in her solitude. Instead she gained twenty pounds (the number finally confirmed at her annual physical) and had a cleaner house. She felt no more independent. She certainly didn’t feel strong. And rather than grow closer to her faith during her struggles she pushed God to the other side of her wall suddenly suspicious of what else He might throw her way.
For the first time in memory, Wanda wrote down her New Year’s resolutions:
1. Join a gym. Lose the twenty pounds.
2. Find an initiative that gives me purpose.
Number one actually proved easy. By the end of the month she’d lost ten pounds and made a friend in her Saturday morning Lite Yoga class, a non church going, divorcee, who kept beer in her fridge. The two women started going to movies together or hosting one another for dinner. Wanda discovered she did indeed like Corona with her enchiladas and she could drink two without feeling a buzz.
But she couldn’t get a handle on the second resolution. When school resumed she spearheaded a Books for Africa campaign. But in her mind the attempt to teach sharing and global compassion felt empty. She knew that for every book the children sacrificed they had another twenty on their shelves at home.
She started sneaking into the back pew of a popular nondenominational church. She knew there was nothing wrong with her former church and that the intentions of her friends there had been right. It was her own commitment that had been shallow and she couldn’t afford to fall back into that rut. And a part of her missed church. If not for God, than for the familiarity of the ritual. She wanted to strike a balance where she felt at home, but not so comfortable as to be complacent, unsuspecting. And she wasn’t even sure what she meant by that. She collected her insight in pieces.
Wanda liked this new church but her newfound distrust kept her from gleaning too much meaning from the sermons. Wanda was used to getting teary-eyed over a special song or particularly powerful message, but not since the funeral. Her greatest source of comfort removed, Wanda’s perceptions and emotions were dislodged. She just felt hollow.
But her search for purpose continued. She’d scan the church bulletin for needs for volunteers. Most didn’t appeal to her. She certainly did not want to be a Sunday school teacher for the teenagers, and she couldn’t provide childcare on Wednesday mornings for English as a Second Language students, she worked. But she could sleep overnight at the church when they hosted homeless women and their children for a week. When she read this announcement she called the number.
They needed her on a Friday night. She and another lady would be the church hosts. Their primary purpose was simply to enforce lights out, lock up, and stay the night…. just in case. The lady on the phone hadn’t said just in case of what.
“Nothing ever happens,” she’d said. “It’s a really easy job.”
So that Friday Wanda arrived at church with her pillow and overnight bag. Four women and six kids sat scattered around two tables eating dinner when Wanda entered the large room. Church volunteers were scurrying around with dishes offering seconds of the grilled chicken or mashed potatoes. A small, gray haired woman entered with a tray of green Jell-O in yellow bowls and one little girl clapped her hands with anticipation.
Sectioned off by partitions were rooms for each family. This was their home for the week then they moved on to their next church host, rotating like this until they found a home or got kicked out the program for drug use or other breach of the rules. All of this had been explained to Wanda on the phone.
Wanda turned down a portion of Jell-O, found the partitioned room marked “volunteers” and placed her things on a cot. It didn’t appear as though the other over-night host had arrived and Wanda wasn’t sure what to do. She considered staying tucked behind the wall to read for awhile but didn’t want to seem unfriendly. When she peeked back out, she noticed two of the children had left the tables to amble near a section of the room scattered with toys. She approached the boy and tried to interest him in a wood puzzle. He laughed and ran away.
“Diante!” yelled a lady from across the room. “What I tell you about running in here?”
Wanda stayed near the toys demonstrating the various functions of buttons or knobs for the children who approached. By the end of the evening she determined who belonged with whom but learned little about their stories. The mother’s ignored her as they shuffled back and forth from the bathroom preparing for bed. Intermittently they’d call for a child to brush her hair or finish his homework and the child would dart away.
At 10pm the other night host gave the ten-minute warning. By then all the children were in their beds. Fifteen minutes later the room was dark and quiet except for a few hushed whispers.
“This is a good crowd,” said the other volunteer. “Sometimes they fight the lights out thing.”
Wanda nodded.
“We still have to listen to make sure they don’t go out. Some of them will sneak outside and smoke even after curfew.”
Wanda lay alert in her bed, listening for the shuffling of feet or the turn of the lock, but all she could hear was the clicking of the air conditioner when it kicked on or off. The last time she glanced at her watch was 11pm and then she must have faded into sleep.
A repetitious wailing entered her dream and then slowly brought her out of it. She clicked on the small lamp next to her and put her wrist under the light. 2am. She whispered to the other volunteer, “Are you awake?”
Nothing.
Wanda waited for the reassuring sounds of a mother but none came. She slid her feet into her slippers.
Diante, the little boy Wanda had learned was not yet two, stood in the middle of the room, rubbing his eyes and wailing. He sounded scared, proving panic with volume.
Wanda couldn’t believe that his mother, or one of the other mothers hadn’t already scooped him up to quiet him. Could they possibly be sleeping through this?
Wanda assumed the boy had awakened to find his mother missing, perhaps in the bathroom, or outside smoking, and became alarmed. She knelt down in front of him.
“Shhhhhh. It’s ok. Let’s go find Mommy.” She took his hand and started towards the restrooms. His volume died down but his crying continued, shaking his little shoulders as he walked. Wanda bent over and picked him up.
“Baby, it’s ok. We’ll find her. I promise.” She opened the bathroom door and peered in, no one stood at the sink and the room sounded empty.
“Hello?” she called into the room. “I’ve got Diante with me. Is his mom in hear?”
She paused and waited. Diante looked curious, as though he too were expecting a reply, but no one answered. Wanda looked at him.
“Don’t worry. She’s here somewhere.” Wanda balanced him on one hip as she reached for some paper towels to bat at his tear-streaked cheeks. He’d finished crying but had developed the hiccups.
She decided next to try outside. When she reached the door it was still locked which made her doubt her smoking suspicions, but maybe it had locked automatically and his mother had gotten stuck outside. Wanda found a box to prop the door and twisted it open. She stepped into the cool night air.
“Hello?” She repeated the word louder but she couldn’t see or hear anyone. Diante craned his neck to look down the sidewalk. “Nope, not hear either, but we’ll keep looking,” Wanda said to him.
Wanda considered another bathroom, further away but still accessible from this part of the building. She asked Diante if he wanted to walk, but instead of answering he squeezed her tighter. It had been awhile since Wanda had carried a child for any length of time and she was beginning to feel Diante’s weight in her arms. Her twenty-month-old granddaughter weighed twenty-five pounds at her last check-up and this boy looked heavier. Diante nestled into her neck, and she guessed he shared her weariness.
At the next bathroom there was still no sign of his mother and Wanda began to feel worried. Now her pace quickened. She walked back to the door that led outside to peek out one more time. Still, nothing. She brought Diante to the table and chairs in the middle of the room and sat him on a chair. Now she felt like crying as she knelt down in front of him.
“I don’t know what to say, I don’t know where she is.”
Diante stared at her wide-eyed.
“Aren’t you tired? Should I just put you back in bed and hope she comes back?” Wanda mused out loud.
She pulled herself up onto the chair next to him and reached to take him into her lap. She set him facing her and rested his head on her chest. Slowly, as best she could in the cold metal fold-out chair, Wanda rocked him and softly sang, “Jesus loves you.” Diante shivered with a wide yawn then relaxed against her. She marveled at his trust and her eyes watered. Wanda held onto him in the dark room listening to his soft breathing, feeling his warmth. She lingered awhile longer before standing to replace him to his bed.
As she stepped into the partition she felt confused for a moment. A lady lying in the bed, sat upright.
“I must have the wrong room,” Wanda whispered stepping backward.
“Diante?” said the woman. “You can bring him here.”
As Wanda handed over the child she recognized that this was in fact the boy’s mother. Had she been there the whole time? Had she slept through the cries or ignored them? The cots had been pushed together, how could she have not heard him stumble from the bed in fear and panic? He’d been gone so long, hadn’t she felt his absence?
None of this made sense to Wanda. As she placed the boy back on the bed she revisited in her mind when she first heard Diante crying. He had been so loud, so needy. She shuffled past the partition and into the main room then rushed towards the outside door and stepped back into the humid night. The thought of this small boy’s cry, so pitiful, going unanswered, broke the dam of her tears. Her mind wouldn’t release the image of his face when she’d first found him, and she couldn’t shake the feeling of loneliness that crept through her for his sake, for her own.
She remained standing and crying, her back pressed against the door, but eventually she became aware of the low hum of insects, the splash of a passing car going through a puddle and her thoughts shifted. He had held onto her, seemed to believe in her simple willingness. He’d relaxed against her finding peace in her arms, of all places, in her arms. Wanda crossed her arms against herself and squeezed on her own shoulders before taking in another breath of the crisp evening air. She squinted past the street lamps, concentrating on the starlight, and gathered more pieces.
Ten minutes into mowing the front lawn, Wanda realized she mowed like she vacuumed – generally straight, but if something caught her eye, a dandelion or other tall weed, she’d run the lawn mower over it and back just as she would the vacuum over a string or crumb on the living room rug.
It had been a month since Richard, her husband, passed. The first week after his death she’d been in efficient to-do-list mode: funeral arrangements, seeing to out-of-town guests, choosing a charity in lieu of flowers, calling the boy down the street to mow her lawn. But that first time she sat alone in her house three days after the funeral, the noise of all the children, grandchildren, and other visitors gone, she’d felt it. A wall growing up around herself. Without Richard’s soft snoring while he napped on the couch and she read on the recliner, without Richard’s warm body stretched next to her in the bed, without Richard at the seat beside her at dinner, resalting what she’d already seasoned, without Richard… She didn’t want any more change. She didn’t want any more people near her. She wanted to be with herself. She hadn’t cried since the funeral and she didn’t know what to make of that. She didn’t know what to make of any of her feelings.
Then came the two weeks of soap operas and dimmed lights. She kept the shades drawn and stayed in her bathrobe only leaving the house to replenish her ice cream and microwave popcorn supplies.
But even lounging felt exhausting, avoiding so many phone calls, worrying about what her friends were thinking, conjuring excuses for missing church two Sundays and Wednesday nights in a row. Creating more excuses for missing Sunday afternoon bell choir practice. During the fourth week she developed a compromise. School would be starting in a week and she’d have to return to work so she might as well ease back into life someway or another. She decided she would get off the couch, but she wasn’t ready for people yet. Cleaning – fine. Small talk – no way. In that week she boxed up Richard’s clothing and arranged for it to be taken to Good Will. By Sunday she was ready to tackle the lawn, a task never before attempted in her fifty-five years of living.
Wanda had been the first in her circle of friends to marry. She met Richard her sophomore year at Chapel Hill in the Baptist Student Center. The summer before their senior year they married. It seemed to silly to wait longer, after all they were Baptists and avoiding premarital sex was difficult. Their senior year they chuckled thinking they were the only two who could leave the Baptist Student Center’s Thursday night supper and Bible study and go home to romp in the bedroom. Well, without sinning, anyway.
Aside from one divorce, Wanda was also the first of her friends to reenter the world of singleness. Married at twenty-one, widowed after thirty-four years. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be. For their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary they were supposed to take a cruise to Alaska. Richard wasn’t allowed to die until eighty-five or older and even then, she’d planned they’d go together, holding hands in their sleep. He’d cheated her out of thirty years.
After finishing the front lawn Wanda had to go inside for ice water. She made a mental note to start the lawn earlier in the morning next time. It was entirely too hot outside. Then she thought about that. Next time. Would she become the permanent lawn mower? It was August. The lawn would have to be mowed into October. Her friends had offered their spouses. She could probably afford to pay someone. But the exercise was good, she hadn’t sweated this much since, well probably since the mission trip they went on with the church five years back to build a little cinder block house for a Mexican family. She’d have to think about this lawn mowing business some more.
The phone rang. Before Richard’s death, it rang maybe a few times a day, often a solicitor, but now it seemed to ring on the hour, every hour. Always someone checking in on her. She let the machine pick up, still Richard’s cheerful voice, “You’ve reached the Turners, but we’re not about to answer the phone right now. It’s gonna beep, then you know what to do.”
The voice of her daughter, Kathleen, followed, “Mom, you home? Why don’t you ever answer your phone? Screening your calls from too many well-wishing church ladies? Well, it’s me.” She paused. “Fine. Maybe you’re out. I’m still planning on coming down Friday after work. Call me.”
Wanda downed the last of her water, wiped her hands and forehead with a kitchen towel and returned to the mower so she could start on the backyard. She opened the gate and pushed it through then she abandoned the machine to prepare the yard. First she marched around and picked up sticks and pinecones. Next she returned inside to scrounge in her pantry for plastic bags so she could de-dog-poop the yard. As she entered she heard her son’s voice mid-message, “Lindsay and I were talking about coming done for a weekend. Give you some time with Clara while we go to the beach. Let me know.”
Undoubtedly her children had conspired and she was going to be subjected to getting babysat on the weekends even if it was under the pretense that she’d do the babysitting. Her son, Garrison, lived in Manteo, near his wife’s parents. They could go to the beach anytime. They didn’t need her Wilmington shoreline for that.
After cleaning up the backyard to her satisfaction she returned to the lawn mower and cranked it up, but three rows in, the machine sputtered and coughed. She managed another half row before the machine died. She titled it back and tried to peer underneath. Maybe something had gotten stuck? She slammed the mower back down hoping to dislodge whatever it was. She yanked at the chord to start it up again but it only offered one smoky hiccup. Gas. Maybe it was out of gas. Did they have extra gas in the garage?
She walked back to the front of the house where she’d left the garage door open and scanned the room. Richard had kept an organized garage. Yard tools hung against one wall, a workbench lined the adjacent wall, and next to it home-made shelves filled with supplies: paint brushes, bug spray, weed killer, duct tape, full size trash bags and more. She glanced to the vacant spot where the lawn mower had been parked. Next to it, on the floor, sat a red plastic container. She lifted it and felt the weight of a few gallons then unscrewed the black cap and smelled. Bingo. Gasoline.
Carrying the container, she marched back to the mower and unscrewed a similar black cap located on its top. She tilted the red container so that it would pour in. Gasoline splashed onto her hands just as her hair fell into her face.
“Crap,” she mumbled, tilting back the container. She tried using her upper arms to brush back her hair but couldn’t get all of her thick brown bob back. She carefully nudged the stray strands behind her ears, the smell of gasoline burning as it came near her eyes and nose. As she prepared to try pouring again, she felt a burning sensation on her shins.
“Crap! Crap! Shit!” Wanda jumped back at the site of red ants climbing above her sock line and chomping at her legs. She began hopping around and one spastic foot shot forth and knocked over the gas container. Slapping at her legs, she cussed all the while. Her fingers flew to the laces and began to pull. Within seconds her socks and shoes were off and she danced over to the garden hose. She blasted her legs with the water and stood not noticing as she flooded the mulch in a bed of daylilies behind her. She brought the hose over her head and doused her sweaty body.
“Wanda! Wanda?” Wanda heard the voice coming from the front yard, then the heads of the Bryans peered over the gate. Bruce Bryan was the deacon leader of her Sunday school class and his wife Hillary always planned the socials, usually potluck suppers. Bruce unlatched the gate and opened it for his wife. The two walked towards Wanda.
“Good heavens what are you doing?” said Hillary.
Wanda looked around. A partially mowed yard, lawn mower stopped midway, a kicked over container of gasoline, shoes and socks tossed about and herself, soaking wet, holding the garden hose, mulch sticking to her feet.
“Just doing some yard work.” She reached over and turned the water off then tucked the hose back on its reel.
Bruce stepped forward, “You know you don’t need to be doing that. Men from the class will be happy to take turns on your yard till you find something more permanent.”
“I appreciate the offer.”
Hillary smiled, “Appreciate it and take him up on it! Look at you!”
Wanda tugged at the t-shirt she was wearing and twisted the front to ring out some of the water. “Can I get you anything?”
“We were just in the neighborhood and we missed you at church this morning. Thought we’d say hello.” said Hillary.
The whole world is in on the plot to not leave me alone for one second, thought Wanda.
“Just wanted to see if you needed anything and make sure everything was all right,” Bruce paused, “as all right as it can be.”
“I’m fine. Just needed some downtime after all the relatives and the busyness with… all the arrangements.”
Hillary stepped closer and touched Wanda’s hand. “We understand, but you need to lean on your friends too.”
Wanda smiled. “I know, thank you.”
“So I’ll send Bruce back by tomorrow to finish up your lawn?”
Bruce walked over to the gasoline container and screwed the cap back on. He handed it to his wife.
“We’ll take this, fill it up for you and I can be back tomorrow ‘round 4.” He put the cap back on the mower’s gas tank and pushed it towards the garage. Wanda reached for her shoes and socks and followed them into the front yard. Bruce reparked the mower and then he and Hillary climbed into his oversized SUV and drove out of sight.
Wanda rated her first attempt at lawn mowing a C+ then prepared herself a milkshake before taking a shower and retiring to the couch where she watched home decorating shows until falling asleep.
The next afternoon when Wanda returned from her first day back to work she decided to tackle another project. She changed out of the long dark dress she’d worn to her job as an office assistant at the elementary school and stepped into some sweat pants. She’d had to wear looser clothing because when she first tried to put on dress pants that morning they were too hard to button after her weeks of poor eating. Still, she refused to step on a scale to gage her damage. Who was there to look good for? She just didn’t want to have to go out to buy all new clothes. She deliberated having a salad for dinner but knew this would require a trip to the grocery store. Next week, she thought.
She walked to her dresser and leafed to the bottom where she kept her work shirts. Bruce would be over in an hour and that thought irritated her. The only man she wanted to rely on was Richard and if she couldn’t have Richard then she wanted to figure out a way to do things herself. If God wanted her to be independent then fine. She’d rise to the challenge. The ant bites on her ankles itched and Wanda propped her leg on the bed to scratch them.
She emerged from her bedroom and set out to find her yellow rubber gloves. She’d been noticing some grime collecting in her dishwasher, so she decided to start there figuring she could wipe down the seems with bleach and pour some more bleach into the net at the bottom and she’d be done. A project completed. Wanda poured and watched. She waited, poured again, and waited again. The bleach didn’t seem to do the trick, so she knelt down on the cool tile and peered into the machine to flick at the darkest spot on the net. Nothing happened.
The kitchen phone mounted on the wall above her head began ringing but Wanda ignored it. Shortly Hillary chirped that Bruce was on his way over and she’d sent a lasagna with him.
“I want to make sure you’re eating!” said Hillary.
“Oh, I’m eating,” mumbled Wanda to herself. She rolled out the bottom dish rack and set it down on the floor then pulled up on the spinner to get to the net. She tugged gently and it gave easily so she pulled it off.
“Oh gross.” The underside of the net was covered in slime. Presuming it to be food debris now unrecognizable, Wanda held her breath and tried not to look too closely. To make matters worse, the section she’d just uncovered was full of water. She mused about clogging and then scolded herself for only finding ridiculous, over-her-head projects. She could have simply dusted the bookcase, but no… The doorbell rang, so she peeled back her gloves and slapped them on the counter.
“Doing a little housework?” Bruce said when she opened the door.
Did she look that bad?
“I just need you to pop open that garage and I’ll be out of your hair. Oh and,” he nodded towards his hands then handed Wanda a casserole dish covered in aluminum foil, “Hillary sent this for you. She said you could eat some and freeze some.”
Wanda took the dish and thanked him. “I’ll get the garage.”
Once she heard the lawn mower buzzing in the back, Wanda returned to her kitchen dilemma. She needed to clear out the water so she grabbed the turkey baster to suck it up and a milk jug from her recycling container to dump it into. It didn’t take but five minutes but the goop that remained made her stomach churn. She knew she’d have to take each piece outside to the hose because there was no use sending the stuff down her kitchen sink and starting another clog. But she’d have to wait till Bruce had gone. She didn’t want him knowing what she was up to, offering to save her from this problem as well.
Wanda didn’t know why exactly she felt so resistant to help, to people in general.
That evening she answered the phone when her daughter called yet again and managed to convince her to hold off another week before coming down. Maybe she liked asserting her independence. Maybe she feared the touch of grace that would send her back into her emotions. Maybe she was just bitter.
She enjoyed Hillary’s lasagna then set the rest of the pan on the floor and watched as her yellow Labrador, Mason, set to work. She liked the feeling of waste and irresponsibility as she watched him, the red sauce staining his light fur. She went to bed with her dishwasher still in pieces on the floor.
The next Sunday Wanda meant to go to church but didn’t. She hit the snooze button on her alarm clock, took a long shower, spent too much time deciding what to wear, and before she knew it the service had started and she hadn’t even located her car keys. So she made herself pancakes.
Later that morning the doorbell rang. Hillary and Janette, another lady from their Sunday school class, stood on her front porch in their skirts and blouses. Wanda considered not answering the door but knew this was ridiculous. Her silver Ford Taurus sat out front, so clearly she was home. As she walked toward the door she wondered if she could feign congestion to convince them she had a cold.
“I’d invite you in, but I don’t want to get you sick,” Wanda said after they’d greeted one another.
“You think it’s that flu bug going around?” Janette said.
“You know the beginning of the school year. It’s the worst for spreading new germs,” Wanda said.
“All those summer camp germs coming together. We go through so much Germ X in my room. It’s the only way to keep ‘em alive,” Hillary said. She taught third grade at another school. Wanda smiled in agreement.
“We’ll get off your porch, just wanted to say hello,” said Hillary.
“Tell the ladies I’ll be back in bell choir next week.” Wanda said, closing the door. If only the funeral hadn’t been so expensive. She could really use a spa vacation.
She knew she wouldn’t be bell choir next week, or possibly ever. Wanda had meant to fall back into her life but her intentions weren’t enough. Mason rubbed up against her leg and she reached down to tug on his ear absentmindedly. She had no idea what to do with her afternoon.
When her children visited two weekends in a row, Wanda attended church, had the strength to sit in her usual pew. With family beside her, she could simply pretend Richard had been called in to work in order to explain his absence. But when she didn’t have family in town, her attendance remained sporadic, then dwindled to nothing. She questioned why she’d ever gone. It seemed more a social club than anything else and these had been her friends with Richard. Who were they now that she was single?
Wanda considered moving closer to her daughter. Then she considered Manteo to be near her son, but she never actually called a realtor. Before she knew it one school semester was over and the kids were out for the holidays. Months had passed since Richard’s death but Wanda still felt set adrift with no idea where to even look for a new anchor.
She thought she would learn new things about herself in her solitude. Instead she gained twenty pounds (the number finally confirmed at her annual physical) and had a cleaner house. She felt no more independent. She certainly didn’t feel strong. And rather than grow closer to her faith during her struggles she pushed God to the other side of her wall suddenly suspicious of what else He might throw her way.
For the first time in memory, Wanda wrote down her New Year’s resolutions:
1. Join a gym. Lose the twenty pounds.
2. Find an initiative that gives me purpose.
Number one actually proved easy. By the end of the month she’d lost ten pounds and made a friend in her Saturday morning Lite Yoga class, a non church going, divorcee, who kept beer in her fridge. The two women started going to movies together or hosting one another for dinner. Wanda discovered she did indeed like Corona with her enchiladas and she could drink two without feeling a buzz.
But she couldn’t get a handle on the second resolution. When school resumed she spearheaded a Books for Africa campaign. But in her mind the attempt to teach sharing and global compassion felt empty. She knew that for every book the children sacrificed they had another twenty on their shelves at home.
She started sneaking into the back pew of a popular nondenominational church. She knew there was nothing wrong with her former church and that the intentions of her friends there had been right. It was her own commitment that had been shallow and she couldn’t afford to fall back into that rut. And a part of her missed church. If not for God, than for the familiarity of the ritual. She wanted to strike a balance where she felt at home, but not so comfortable as to be complacent, unsuspecting. And she wasn’t even sure what she meant by that. She collected her insight in pieces.
Wanda liked this new church but her newfound distrust kept her from gleaning too much meaning from the sermons. Wanda was used to getting teary-eyed over a special song or particularly powerful message, but not since the funeral. Her greatest source of comfort removed, Wanda’s perceptions and emotions were dislodged. She just felt hollow.
But her search for purpose continued. She’d scan the church bulletin for needs for volunteers. Most didn’t appeal to her. She certainly did not want to be a Sunday school teacher for the teenagers, and she couldn’t provide childcare on Wednesday mornings for English as a Second Language students, she worked. But she could sleep overnight at the church when they hosted homeless women and their children for a week. When she read this announcement she called the number.
They needed her on a Friday night. She and another lady would be the church hosts. Their primary purpose was simply to enforce lights out, lock up, and stay the night…. just in case. The lady on the phone hadn’t said just in case of what.
“Nothing ever happens,” she’d said. “It’s a really easy job.”
So that Friday Wanda arrived at church with her pillow and overnight bag. Four women and six kids sat scattered around two tables eating dinner when Wanda entered the large room. Church volunteers were scurrying around with dishes offering seconds of the grilled chicken or mashed potatoes. A small, gray haired woman entered with a tray of green Jell-O in yellow bowls and one little girl clapped her hands with anticipation.
Sectioned off by partitions were rooms for each family. This was their home for the week then they moved on to their next church host, rotating like this until they found a home or got kicked out the program for drug use or other breach of the rules. All of this had been explained to Wanda on the phone.
Wanda turned down a portion of Jell-O, found the partitioned room marked “volunteers” and placed her things on a cot. It didn’t appear as though the other over-night host had arrived and Wanda wasn’t sure what to do. She considered staying tucked behind the wall to read for awhile but didn’t want to seem unfriendly. When she peeked back out, she noticed two of the children had left the tables to amble near a section of the room scattered with toys. She approached the boy and tried to interest him in a wood puzzle. He laughed and ran away.
“Diante!” yelled a lady from across the room. “What I tell you about running in here?”
Wanda stayed near the toys demonstrating the various functions of buttons or knobs for the children who approached. By the end of the evening she determined who belonged with whom but learned little about their stories. The mother’s ignored her as they shuffled back and forth from the bathroom preparing for bed. Intermittently they’d call for a child to brush her hair or finish his homework and the child would dart away.
At 10pm the other night host gave the ten-minute warning. By then all the children were in their beds. Fifteen minutes later the room was dark and quiet except for a few hushed whispers.
“This is a good crowd,” said the other volunteer. “Sometimes they fight the lights out thing.”
Wanda nodded.
“We still have to listen to make sure they don’t go out. Some of them will sneak outside and smoke even after curfew.”
Wanda lay alert in her bed, listening for the shuffling of feet or the turn of the lock, but all she could hear was the clicking of the air conditioner when it kicked on or off. The last time she glanced at her watch was 11pm and then she must have faded into sleep.
A repetitious wailing entered her dream and then slowly brought her out of it. She clicked on the small lamp next to her and put her wrist under the light. 2am. She whispered to the other volunteer, “Are you awake?”
Nothing.
Wanda waited for the reassuring sounds of a mother but none came. She slid her feet into her slippers.
Diante, the little boy Wanda had learned was not yet two, stood in the middle of the room, rubbing his eyes and wailing. He sounded scared, proving panic with volume.
Wanda couldn’t believe that his mother, or one of the other mothers hadn’t already scooped him up to quiet him. Could they possibly be sleeping through this?
Wanda assumed the boy had awakened to find his mother missing, perhaps in the bathroom, or outside smoking, and became alarmed. She knelt down in front of him.
“Shhhhhh. It’s ok. Let’s go find Mommy.” She took his hand and started towards the restrooms. His volume died down but his crying continued, shaking his little shoulders as he walked. Wanda bent over and picked him up.
“Baby, it’s ok. We’ll find her. I promise.” She opened the bathroom door and peered in, no one stood at the sink and the room sounded empty.
“Hello?” she called into the room. “I’ve got Diante with me. Is his mom in hear?”
She paused and waited. Diante looked curious, as though he too were expecting a reply, but no one answered. Wanda looked at him.
“Don’t worry. She’s here somewhere.” Wanda balanced him on one hip as she reached for some paper towels to bat at his tear-streaked cheeks. He’d finished crying but had developed the hiccups.
She decided next to try outside. When she reached the door it was still locked which made her doubt her smoking suspicions, but maybe it had locked automatically and his mother had gotten stuck outside. Wanda found a box to prop the door and twisted it open. She stepped into the cool night air.
“Hello?” She repeated the word louder but she couldn’t see or hear anyone. Diante craned his neck to look down the sidewalk. “Nope, not hear either, but we’ll keep looking,” Wanda said to him.
Wanda considered another bathroom, further away but still accessible from this part of the building. She asked Diante if he wanted to walk, but instead of answering he squeezed her tighter. It had been awhile since Wanda had carried a child for any length of time and she was beginning to feel Diante’s weight in her arms. Her twenty-month-old granddaughter weighed twenty-five pounds at her last check-up and this boy looked heavier. Diante nestled into her neck, and she guessed he shared her weariness.
At the next bathroom there was still no sign of his mother and Wanda began to feel worried. Now her pace quickened. She walked back to the door that led outside to peek out one more time. Still, nothing. She brought Diante to the table and chairs in the middle of the room and sat him on a chair. Now she felt like crying as she knelt down in front of him.
“I don’t know what to say, I don’t know where she is.”
Diante stared at her wide-eyed.
“Aren’t you tired? Should I just put you back in bed and hope she comes back?” Wanda mused out loud.
She pulled herself up onto the chair next to him and reached to take him into her lap. She set him facing her and rested his head on her chest. Slowly, as best she could in the cold metal fold-out chair, Wanda rocked him and softly sang, “Jesus loves you.” Diante shivered with a wide yawn then relaxed against her. She marveled at his trust and her eyes watered. Wanda held onto him in the dark room listening to his soft breathing, feeling his warmth. She lingered awhile longer before standing to replace him to his bed.
As she stepped into the partition she felt confused for a moment. A lady lying in the bed, sat upright.
“I must have the wrong room,” Wanda whispered stepping backward.
“Diante?” said the woman. “You can bring him here.”
As Wanda handed over the child she recognized that this was in fact the boy’s mother. Had she been there the whole time? Had she slept through the cries or ignored them? The cots had been pushed together, how could she have not heard him stumble from the bed in fear and panic? He’d been gone so long, hadn’t she felt his absence?
None of this made sense to Wanda. As she placed the boy back on the bed she revisited in her mind when she first heard Diante crying. He had been so loud, so needy. She shuffled past the partition and into the main room then rushed towards the outside door and stepped back into the humid night. The thought of this small boy’s cry, so pitiful, going unanswered, broke the dam of her tears. Her mind wouldn’t release the image of his face when she’d first found him, and she couldn’t shake the feeling of loneliness that crept through her for his sake, for her own.
She remained standing and crying, her back pressed against the door, but eventually she became aware of the low hum of insects, the splash of a passing car going through a puddle and her thoughts shifted. He had held onto her, seemed to believe in her simple willingness. He’d relaxed against her finding peace in her arms, of all places, in her arms. Wanda crossed her arms against herself and squeezed on her own shoulders before taking in another breath of the crisp evening air. She squinted past the street lamps, concentrating on the starlight, and gathered more pieces.
Decisions
So I'll keep the blog here. At least for now. I appreciated Chris' comments but I also don't want to seem... compromised. I'm reading this book, "God's Politics," by Jim Wallis and it has me tired of compromise and political apathy from Christians.
the little things - take 2
I recently decided our church needs to serve Fair Trade coffee. After the morning service they serve coffee and donuts. At Wednesday night dinner there is always coffee... At Tuesday lunch for the senior citizens I imagine there's coffee. We go through a lot of coffee. We're a church that claims to care for people. We should be serving Fair Trade coffee.
A little about Fair Trade Coffee: "Fair Trade is an innovative, market-based approach to sustainable development. Fair Trade helps family farmers in developing countries to gain direct access to international markets, as well as to develop the business capacity necessary to compete in the global marketplace. By learning how to market their own harvests, Fair Trade farmers are able to bootstrap their own businesses and receive a fair price for their products. This leads to higher family living standards, thriving communities and more sustainable farming practices. Fair Trade empowers farming families to take care of themselves - without developing dependency on foreign aid."
To read more go to: www.transfairusa.org
I know that the grumpy old men on the kitchen committee won't like that Fair Trade Coffee costs more, so I'm definitely going to have to compile my information before I can convince anyone to make the change. But I'm gonna try.
A little about Fair Trade Coffee: "Fair Trade is an innovative, market-based approach to sustainable development. Fair Trade helps family farmers in developing countries to gain direct access to international markets, as well as to develop the business capacity necessary to compete in the global marketplace. By learning how to market their own harvests, Fair Trade farmers are able to bootstrap their own businesses and receive a fair price for their products. This leads to higher family living standards, thriving communities and more sustainable farming practices. Fair Trade empowers farming families to take care of themselves - without developing dependency on foreign aid."
To read more go to: www.transfairusa.org
I know that the grumpy old men on the kitchen committee won't like that Fair Trade Coffee costs more, so I'm definitely going to have to compile my information before I can convince anyone to make the change. But I'm gonna try.
the little things
My kid's 2nd birthday is March 7 and we're going to have party for him on March 11th. (Invite only - don't drop by!) And the invitations - ordered on cute paper, typed up - went out over a week ago.
Yup, I'm that mom.
But here's where I'm really annoying: we put on the invites for kids not to bring presents, but that they can make donations in Kaden's honor to Hefeir International if they'd like. And then as party favors they're all getting a copy of Beatrice's Goat, a children's book about a young girl whose family receives a goat from Heifer.
One family in particulr is going to think I'm over the top because for their son's birthday party in mid February we gave him Faith the Cow, a children's book about Dan West, the guy who started Heifer.
I can do this because my kid is weird. Today he took a coaster from off an end table and put it back in the drawer where it belongs. He's not even two and he's picking up after his mom and dad. His attention span is abnormal. I'm in here on the computer being a slack mom and he's in his room playing. By himself. He'll play and play and if I don't check on him, then he'll check on me. And he doesn't need a lot of toys for this play. He's insanely intent with what he has. I still have two of his Christmas presents in their boxes. Clearly we don't need to add to the pile which is why we're doing the Heifer thing. Maybe people will make a donation. Maybe they won't, but at least I've given the organization more advertising and worried my mother-in-law that Kevin and I stretch ourselves financially too thin by supporting too many good causes - all in one little birthday invite!
I'm also naive enough to think that it's the little things that can change the world. Spur one another on... Snowball effect. Rippling.
Yup, I'm that mom.
But here's where I'm really annoying: we put on the invites for kids not to bring presents, but that they can make donations in Kaden's honor to Hefeir International if they'd like. And then as party favors they're all getting a copy of Beatrice's Goat, a children's book about a young girl whose family receives a goat from Heifer.
One family in particulr is going to think I'm over the top because for their son's birthday party in mid February we gave him Faith the Cow, a children's book about Dan West, the guy who started Heifer.
I can do this because my kid is weird. Today he took a coaster from off an end table and put it back in the drawer where it belongs. He's not even two and he's picking up after his mom and dad. His attention span is abnormal. I'm in here on the computer being a slack mom and he's in his room playing. By himself. He'll play and play and if I don't check on him, then he'll check on me. And he doesn't need a lot of toys for this play. He's insanely intent with what he has. I still have two of his Christmas presents in their boxes. Clearly we don't need to add to the pile which is why we're doing the Heifer thing. Maybe people will make a donation. Maybe they won't, but at least I've given the organization more advertising and worried my mother-in-law that Kevin and I stretch ourselves financially too thin by supporting too many good causes - all in one little birthday invite!
I'm also naive enough to think that it's the little things that can change the world. Spur one another on... Snowball effect. Rippling.
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