Dear Journal,
Today is Proper 21, September 25th, 2022.
So, I didn’t completely bomb the sermon…but let’s just say that voice inside was like “Yea, you just need to go ahead and wrap this one up.”
There was a point after the sermon where I exhaled and said “Hey y’all.”
Its the kind of exhale you share when you finally make it home after a tiresome journey, one where you drop the weight and can simply exist at your destination,
…when you’re amongst friends.
It’s comforting and comfortable, familial in a sense, the exhale, the release.
The response to my “Hey Y’all” was a complete affirmation: An energetic “Hey!” as though they, the congregation, had been waiting for this moment, a chance to exhale as well and be amongst friends, people whom they care about.
That’s who we are. A church of friends on the path towards friendship. A family of families. That’s the glue that ties us together, and in the hustle and bustle of church planting, I sometimes forget that. I create metrics in my head, I count bodies in seats, and over and over again, I’m reminded that that’s not what matters. What is beautiful is this journey we’re on, of families on the playground, or holding hands in a prayer circle, week by week, drawing nearer to God through each other.
Vertical through Friendship
10 years ago, I was a Senior Simeon Fellow at Christ Church Anglican in Winston Salem, NC. Admittingly, as one of the few Brown faces in the crowd, my bride and I felt out of place. I took this cradle Southern baptist and told her I wasn’t crazy, and put on an alb. This church was unlike any I’d ever experienced. My upbringing as a Reformed Episcopalian was very reformed, with the Wesley preaching robe.
This place of icons and chasubles was intimidating.
…..until friendships were formed.
The priest became my priest. He counseled me from Scripture, and I always left hearing the birds chirp in ways that I hadn’t prior to. The worship was weird at first. “All who are Thirsty” sounded like a college bar song played on a radio station that I didn’t listen to, but the guy playing, Sam, and his wife Gina, were starting to become friends.
We worked together and over the year something weird happened. They kept playing “weird” music, void of foot-stomping and guttural expressions, but more and more it became less about the awkwardness of being in the room, and more about supporting my friends. Then it turned to worshipping with my friends. I witnessed their praise as they worshipped. I knew their story and my “yes Lord,” was an affirmation of our pleas, collectively, for God to show up in their life, or in thanksgiving for what God had done. Soon it became multiple experiences of God doing, that taught me who God is, transforming my praise from situational, to an awareness of who God always is.
Friendship took the awkward space and made it into a language of worship.
Maybe that’s your experience at Emmanuel. You may feel like the only in the room. My experience of worshipping with friends, playing together, praying together, eating together, deepened my worship of God. That process happened together. Horizontal friendships strengthen our communal vertical worship.
We can say amen together with friends on Sunday morning. We can sing loudly with friends on Sunday morning. We can cry and worry with friends on Sunday morning, all because we do so Monday – Saturday with these same people.
May we always be headed towards friendship. Towards swings with laughing kids, pots of grease with fish being fried, or in circles sharing our deepest questions of the faith.
Friends first. Followers (of Jesus) always. True communion, up and out, the goal. Amen.
