Would you like to come back to church with me?
We’ll have to go back about 20 or 25 years.
There, now. Here we are.
Let’s just settle in,
shall we?
Sorry about the metal folding chairs that will
make that spot just under your shoulder blades
ache right around the second or third hour
but they come with the school gym rental.
I see you looking around.
I know we’re a bit of a mismatched crew
but we all have a reason why we’re
a bit distrustful of authority and the establishment,
most of us fresh out of sin and ideas.
Oh, oh. Here we go at last!
“As the deer panteth for the water
so my soul longeth after you”
and we mean it even if we did sing it
over and over and over again.
Yes, that’s an old Yamaha piano
and the chap on a small drum set is kind of off-beat but it’s okay,
not too many of us are clapping on beat either.
Our hands are flung towards heaven,
our arms are wide, our chests open.
We bang on tambourines when things really get going.
Our hips sway with the music,
clumsy feet are trying to dance,
it’s all a bit undignified.
Our only pastor works construction Monday to Friday, you know,
but he went to Bible school – Imagine! Bible school!
Doesn’t that sound amazing? Just to study the Bible all day!
And he knows whole chapters of the Bible by heart.
When you were baptised in cold lake water last week,
everyone shouted with joy
and cried real tears
because we know
how freaking amazing that is,
The old-you dead and the new-you now alive! Imagine!
If you have the gift to preach, then
brother, get on up there and preach.
Sister, if you think you are hearing from God,
don’t hold back, teach us all.
We’ll be silent here for a space and wait
just in case, you feel that
fire is shut up in your bones and there is room and time for us all.
We pray together, all at once,
hands gentle on your back or raised forward,
many voices muttering,
consonants and vowels running together.
We’re all talking in tongues
and being healed
(this was before any one told us
that God doesn’t do that stuff anymore).
In the back row, there’s an old man
with grizzled hair,
pacing across the back of the gym,
he’s saying,
“Praise be to the Most High God.
Praise be to the Most High God.”
But before we go,
everyone has to say hello and visit and
hug your neck. They call you Brother and Sister
without the slightest hint of irony.
That’s church, friend,
my small Word of Faith church
in a small city in western Canada.
Before the books called us Name It And Claim It heretics
before the blogs made fun of us (what’s a blog anyway?),
before podcast preachers picked apart our theology line by line,
before we discovered that
we were the red-headed step-child
of evangelicalism,
the easy target for everyone to agree was the wrongest,
we were just small churches,
feeling a bit on the outside of things really
but we were a family used to that.
And maybe we didn’t know much,
and maybe I know more now
(or so I like to think),
and you know more now
(or so you like to think),
and so we aren’t Word of Faith anymore,
but oh, we loved Jesus hard,
didn’t we?
And it was a nice place
to meet God.
Thanks for coming,
friend.
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow. I grew up this way. I miss those times of freedom to just expect God to show up in whatever way He wanted. No inhibitions.
I miss that, too.
Fantastic! This is like a description of my church of 20 years ago and my current church all mushed into one. Thinking and theology matter, but so too does passion and ‘loving Jesus hard’. Thank you, Sarah, I will spend my evening reminiscing.
Thanks, Mike. I find the same thing in my adulthood – balance is so needed and we definitely lacked some. But even as I grew out of the excess and into a more “balanced” way of doing things, I still cherish those small beginnings.
I was raised Baptist (not southern) but when I was in elementary school, my mom was invited to a women’s Aglow meeting. She started attending each week, and there she learned about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I remember being so embarrassed when she got up the courage to raise her hands in our tiny church! But then she took me a few of those meetings when I got older, and I met Him and saw His power. And God showed up! It changed me. In fact, it changed the rest of my life, as I decided to attend a “charismatic” college, and I even started raising my hands in worship. Still do.
My parents no longer attend the tiny Baptist church. Oftentimes she’s still the only one raising her hand in the Reformed church they now attend. But it doesn’t embarrass me anymore.
Thanks for this reminder today of the spiritual heritage my parents blessed me with.
Good for your mama! And for you. That takes guts.
“(this was before any one told us
that God doesn’t do that stuff anymore).”
Oh yes, I’ve been so guilty of this – limiting the Holy Spirit within the confines of my personality. When will I learn that just because I don’t doesn’t mean he can’t?
I wish I knew – that is a question I often return to now. it was easier then because I didn’t know all the reasons why not, I just…believed.
I was raised in a very similar setting. Over the years, I’ve tried to distance myself from that emotional upbringing, but I haven’t been able to find a deep relationship with God elsewhere. Last year, my little family and I decided to just embrace it, and now we attend a somewhat “charismatic” evangelical church. I love it, and I finally feel at home.
i can relate to this cheyenne. we were so ‘emotional’ where i came from that we really didnt’ need the spirit to ‘have church.’
so i totally went the opposite way. worshipping without emotion.
finally, years later, i’m learning that god made my emotions and so i should worship him with them, but even more so with my heart and my life and my being. heck! all of me. so i guess that includes my emotions.
still not 100% there, but working on it.
thanks for your thoughts.
I really relate to what you wrote here, mary. I think that’s why I’m writing about it – I was there and then I left and now I’m coming back around again.
*sigh*
Yeah. We seem to have come from similar backgrounds
Inspired me to write a poem on my blog today.
Now my brain is churning and my heart is aching.
So ready to be “there” ya know?
xxx
Sounds very familiar, cheyanne! We did the same thing. I pushed back so hard against my upbringing and did find tremendous richness and depth in traditions different than my own. But now I’m coming back to those roots, maybe calling it post-charismatic as there are many things that I do disagree with or struggle with (some theological, others are cultural) but at the end of the day, it’s family, isn’t it? It just feels like home.
“We’re all talking in tongues
and being healed
(this was before any one told us
that God doesn’t do that stuff anymore).”
Yeah.
I so relate to this post.
I’m glad God still does that stuff . . .
So very thankful for my roots – the good, the bad and the ugly. All of it.
Made me who I am today. Even though I’m no longer in that church or that place.
And I still want to have that passion of “loving Jesus hard.”
Thanks Sarah. Beautiful post. xxx
He’s worth it.
Even if status quo says He isn’t.
I hope to someday soon echo your comment, “So thankful for my roots–the good, the bad and the ugly. All of it.”
I’m working towards that–probably stuck in a place of “despising small beginnings,” trying to sift out the wheat from the chaff, the bad theology and self-centered-let’s-worship-and-then-do-nothing-for-our-neighbor stuff from the feeling that I can’t shake, that then, with all of its problems, was a time we undoubtedly, undignifiedly, loved Jesus hard.
This post and your comment, Mary, pushes me to cherish more that time.
hey april …
i had a few years of struggling with accepting the ‘bad and ugly’ part. came out of a church that pretty much was cult-like. . .but there was something there (i can definitely see it now) that was worth sifting and keeping. . .
i want the balance of the new testament church – the new spirit-filled believers in acts who, worshipped with complete abandon, believed god for everything – and totally expected him to do it – and yet found time to help those (the widow, orphan, etc). there is balance. i want to find that balance.
yeah.
i do.
I have a lot of hope for that as well, luv. I see it – more and more, I see it.
I think we all feel that, april. At least, I know that I do/did! I pushed back pretty hard against how I was raised both from a theological and a cultural standpoint, finding a lot of depth in other traditions. I like my cafeteria style of Christianity now quite a bit.
But yes, now I’ve come back around again and I am thankful for it all – even the stuff that wasn’t great pushed me in a new or different direction on the path laid before me.
Thanks for the thoughts, Mary and Sarah.
I find my experience had a pendulum type effect. I reacted over the crazy-out-of-balance emphasis on hearing’s God voice and manifestations of the Spirit (but no outreach, no service to the poor, no consideration of those far from God) and ran to a church that emphasizes strategic outreach to the unchurched. And now, I find myself missing the times we just lingered in worship, like you wrote, Sarah.
I do have hope for that balance, Mary. Jesus promised his Spirit would lead us into truth and I pray that for me, for you, and see evidence of it in this conversation and in this post as well.
Thanks for engaging me here,
April
Yay! This post makes me super happy! I remember in high school when someone in the pulpit taught me that God doesn’t do that stuff anymore. I was sad. Today I don’t know what it looks like or how to be a part of it, but I so badly want to believe He still does do that stuff.
This community of Christians is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. So deeply intellectual and deeply spiritual. Questioning and Open. I love you all.
Well, we just love you right back! Questions, doubts, openness – imagine, eh?
I grapple with it, too, Lara. And have for years. The big hole I found in being raised Word of Faith is that it never sufficiently answered or even gave a lot of thoughtfulness to the questions I had about suffering and evil in the world. I am still trying to answer those for myself, to be honest.
This brought me back and brought tears to my eyes. It wasn’t about how you looked or if the music fit into the 25 minutes and the preaching fit into 30 minutes and you had five minutes left for offering and meet and greet. It was just easy and beautiful. It was just family getting together and loving. This is why I have a hard time going to church now. Why have we all forgotten the good stuff? Thank you for sharing. ~Jessica
Sometimes simple is best, I agree. Strip it down and what do you have? That’s your family, right.
What a beautifully crafted post, Sarah. I. Love. It!
Thanks, luv! I appreciate that a lot.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for reminding me of my very first church…my home church. Those people were, and always will be, my family. I am who I am today because of the very things you just explained.
My traditional baptist upbringing mentioned nothing of the Holy Spirit. But there I was at summer camp, year after year, sitting beside whoever I had a crush on at the time (there were many), and in the middle of worship I felt something. And that little twinge of ‘something’ made me hungry for more. I have a hockey arena revival night and 6 months of YWAM to thank for opening me up to the power of the Holy Spirit.
The fact that he is alive and well, filling my mouth with a language I can’t understand, healing the sick and being who he says he is, is my lifeline. If I didn’t know that power, I think I would have drowned many years ago in all the craziness of this earth. But his steadfast love and power never fail me, and when I still my soul and hear him speak to me (and he does)…well…there is no one on earth that could convince me that he no longer works in the supernatural. He does, he is, he will. Thank you Jesus.
Ahh.. this touched my heart and sparked a little flame inside me, remembering. I’m a girl who spent her teen years in a Pentecostal church in Western Canada.. I remember those days, and churches like that. Thanks for the reminder..
You could have easily been describing my own childhood church. Much of what happened there led to my eventual church issues but I’ve been reminded in the last couple of months to remember the good. Remember the Sunday school classes that taught me the books of the Bible, the Sword Drills, the sweet praise songs. And most importantly, remember the fellowship among believers. I’m not certain I’ve experienced a group of people that loved as well as the family friends we knew back then.
Beautiful words. I grew up without a church, but I met God through things that I sometimes look down on today—the cheesy email forwards, the undignified prayers, the cliches, the healings, the really corny photo montages set to Christian music, the Yahoo prayer groups where people called me ‘sister’ without even knowing what I looked like… Back then, I think, I somehow understood that God didn’t need us to worship or share him in cool, hip, or ‘relevant’ ways. He was bigger than all of that. Nonetheless, somewhere along the line, I started cringing at those things.
Now, I find myself at a church that reminds me a bit of your childhood church. There’s so much variety, honesty, passion, and genuine community packed into that rented gymnasium each weekend. People aren’t afraid of getting vulnerable or undignified, and slowly, I’m learning to let my defenses down too. As I let go of my snobbiness, I put fewer limits on God, and see so much more of him. I’m learning that -right here- is as beautiful a place to meet him as any.
Thanks for this post. I’m a new reader and haven’t commented much before, but this really spoke to me.
Is it strange to say that I wish I would have started out this way?
I was raised in a family where Jesus was just a handy swearword, and when I was saved as a pre-teen, the church I started out at was quite conservative (Open Brethren). I still dearly love my church and the people who go there, but my set of underlying issues with my faith are now the tendency to return to and rely on strict adherence to rules and cold tradition.
I wonder how different my walk would have been if I would have started out in a more “charismatic” tradition? Isn’t it interesting how our beginnings inform our journeys with Christ.