Bring your weary bones
tired from the load
there's rest for you here.
Bring your hurting heart
that's been emptied and scarred
there's nothing to fear.
I heard this song for the first time this week.
It's beautiful.
It's musically beautiful and it's lyrically beautiful.
But it struck me not for it's beauty but for it's real-ness.
A scarred and emptied out heart is always afraid. It's the natural response to wounds. When we are wounded, we're afraid to trust again. To venture into that world of vulnerability. But when it is the offer of God, there really is nothing to fear.
My God casts on judgment.
I know what the First Testament texts say.
I know what Galatians 6:23 says.
I know.
But here's what I also know.
I know that there is no way a loving God would judge God's beloved.
We get so good at holding ourselves up, despite our weariness, don't we?
We wake up in the morning feeling like we have never rested, our souls weighed down with a burden of bricks, and we sigh and crawl out of our bed to face another day.
I spent a few days with some church planters and church transformers this week.
And do you want to know what I realized?
(Even if you don't, it's my blog!)
The church isn't "in decline" like we keep saying it is.
Sure, our aggregate numbers may be less than they were in the 1950s.
Sure, our kids and grandkids don't have any interest in what happens on Sunday morning at 11 am.
But The Church?
The Church is alive and well, thriving and pulsing with a creative energy I haven't seen in a long time!
We just haven't taken the time to see them.
After spending 3 days with these people, I am convinced that if our denominational leadership, particularly in the Mainline denominations, would look to church planters around them, they'd see that there is SO MUCH HOPE!
There are really great things going on in The Church, and I was so refreshed having had an opportunity to hear it.
I engaged in conversations that were real and raw and full of hurt.
I met pastors struggling to be understood by their denomination, their city, their churches.
I talked with longtime friends about the struggles in our ministries.
I hugged on a baby.
I prayed with an urgency I haven't had in quite some time.
I re-met Jesus this week.
I met a Jesus I used to know but had abandoned for the sake of a more refined, intellectual Jesus.
It was good to re-encounter the wild, gracious, extravagant Jesus.
The Jesus who feeds multitudes.
The Jesus who calls a child until himself.
The Jesus who says, "Have you not heard????"
THAT Jesus is who we are missing in the Mainline.
We've set aside the Jesus who we think smacks of Fundamentalism.
This week I realized that the Jesus of my childhood - the Jesus I was taught to love through prayer and devotion and worship - that Jesus doesn't just belong to the Fundamentalists.
You can be evangelical and desperately in love with Jesus and still be a progressive.
You can believe that Jesus' love has the power to heal the world and that LGBTQ+ people can be pastors.
You can believe that hands raised in worship of Jesus are good and that the old hymns are meaningful.
Because in God's Economy, there is never scarcity.
There is room for both.
It felt a little bit like going back home to be at this conference this weekend.
The songs have changed and the words are different in the sermons, but the atmosphere was very much the same.
But at this iteration of my childhood home, a black lesbian woman was not just welcomed in the pulpit, but BROUGHT THE WORD!!! (Seriously, if you don't know Brit Barron, get to know her!) She inspired and awed me because she brought me back to my roots. She challenged and pushed me because she is so much more than that.
I brought a tired and weary soul to this conference because it was my job to be here.
I leave this conference feeling something I haven't felt for the church in a long time: hope.
So if you've lost your love for Jesus, do something to find it again.
You don't have to give up your progressive and liberal beliefs to worship a majestic God.
Find a progressive evangelical and soak up his or her passion for Jesus.
Because we could all use a little bit of hope right about now.
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