Good morning from Atlanta! Where the people are friendly,
the food is amazing, and everything is damp and sticky. J
Together with several hundred other pastors and church
leaders from around the country, we have worshipped and prayed and praised and
talked a whole lot about the history, the present, and the future of the
church. We have looked at different ways of “doing” church: traditional, with
giant pipe organs and hymnals from the 1930s; wildly contemporary with
elaborate artwork, poetry, modern music, and church “in the round”; ancient
chants, careful liturgy, and beautiful singing with no instruments at all, led by a
brilliant tattoo-covered pastor who is a recovering addict. We have talked about ways to provide
worship that is meaningful in this day and age, ways to encourage church
members to bring their faith into real life, ways to satisfy the needs of our
communities, ways to bring people suspicious of church into life with Christ.
In all of it, we have come away with pages of notes and questions, and one real
conclusion:
People are hungry. Starving.
We are starving for love and acceptance, starving for a life
with meaning, starving for truth and justice and forgiveness and grace. We are
starving for a place where we are welcome and loved, no matter what country we
come from, no matter what color our skin is or what language we speak, no
matter what our history was or our present is. We are starving for the gospel,
sung and proclaimed and especially lived
out, in which all are welcome and all are fed.
Earlier this week, after the horrible events in
Charlottesville and then later in Barcelona, I was reading an interview with a
young man who had joined some white supremacist group or other. He described
feeling lost in the world, rejected and angry, and said that the group he joined
gave him identity, community, and purpose. I remember reading the same thing
about gangs in this country, and about young people who join ISIS. I remember
reading the same thing about drug culture, too, these same needs expressed in
despair, numbness, and self-destructiveness. I am heartbroken that these needs in us are so deep that we look to satisfy
them in the most horrible, corrosive ways. And I know that the church has a
desperately important, vital purpose.
In the sanctuary here at Peachtree Road UMC, full of all
different kinds of people, we sang and prayed and shared Holy Communion, and we
are galvanized. Joyful, even. Because we know that ESPECIALLY now, God is
moving. The church is moving. We are here to tell people that we DO have an
identity: children of God, deeply loved, cherished, healed and forgiven. We DO
have a community: a church full of beautiful misfits who listen to and support
and love each other, in good times and in bad. We DO have a purpose: to love God and each other so deeply and fully that no one ever feels lost or rejected, ever
again, and all of the twisted, corrosive, destructive, evil powers of this
world lose their power. I see God moving and people being fed, body and soul, in our worship every Sunday, in meals at Fallon Daily Bread, in the ways you love and care for each other, in the ways you lead Bible studies and teach and preach and cook and clean and visit each other, in the ways we sing loud and clear and strong. People of Epworth UMC, God is moving in you! And I am so blessed to be a part of it.
In the endless love of God,
Pastor Dawn
