Hi, I haven’t blogged in a while. But some things have transpired that have led me to the solace of the keyboard. The one place where the messy bits of my life somehow fall into a rhythm and an art and I find the slivers of grace in the midst of the dark.
I am in a weird place of seeing many things leave or change. I’ve rearranged some pieces in my life to give me peace of mind. I got rid of four trash bags worth of stuff in my apartment I no longer use. In two days I’ll begin a fast with my church where I’ll let go of several things for a season in order to press into prayer. And yesterday, I watched a place that once was home for me become a strange, cold, dark place. And that is the church I grew up in, the one that planted the seed of faith in me so many years ago that still lives on today.
My experience of church growing up was so unique, and I realize now it was an incredibly privileged place to be. I grew up with kind and humble people who knew how to break bread together and laugh and lean on Jesus. As I grew older, the church organically expanded. We became the place for many people of many different walks of life to come and worship together and form genuine relationships. I see now how it was so much like the church I attend now, The Belonging. It’s funny how God sets you up for things and it’s only after you’ve walked through it, that you see how all the puzzle pieces fit together.
When I was at my home church back in the day, I became a part of a youth group that formed core memories in me that I still remember to this day. Our slogan was, “Play hard, worship deep.” It’s a philosophy I still live out now at The Belonging, where I dance and laugh and fall on my knees in reverence. At my home church back in the day, I made lifelong friends. I was given a space to bring my questions and sorrows and my youth pastor accepted them with grace and love. He made it a point to always listen to each person, to answer questions when he could, and to be himself, which gave us all permission to be ourselves. It was such a lovely place to be that even non-Christian teens came, just to hang out and form friendships.
I still hold those memories fondly, and I still attribute a large part of who I am to that space I was given to explore and fully be myself. The overall church’s mission statement back in those days was, “Whatever it takes.” Sometimes God will still bring that back to my mind, reminding me that he instilled in me a core value of going beyond the lines and boxes to do whatever it takes to love other people well.
When you have a good experience like that, sometimes you take it for granted, or you think it’ll be there forever. You want to believe that the church will live on even when you move away, that your parents and grandparents and other family will have a safe space to call their own. But as it stands now, my family no longer has that safe space. As it stands now, the place once called First Christian has died and some other thing has taken its place.
I tried to process that for many years and allow the thing I loved to die, hoping a new and better thing would emerge. Sometimes God wants us to let go so he can do something new. I did my best to let go. My family did their best to let go and respect the new thing that new leadership was doing. Even when it came down to changing the very name of the church that they have known all their lives.
I admittedly was salty and struggled to even visit when I was home. But I watched as my mom and grandfather and the rest of our family remained faithful. As they watched the church’s finances go down the drain because one pastor didn’t steward money well and the next continued not stewarding it well, they still showed up. Still tithed. Still exhibited a level of grace that I know can only come from the Lord.
But yesterday, things reached a new level. My grandfather was kicked out of the church I once called home, and the place he has called home for 59 years. He built the very foundations of one of the campus buildings over 20 years ago. I can remember running around the dusty concrete floors and climbing on the beams barefoot, not knowing that the very places I played would be the center for all of my spiritual foundation. My grandfather literally built the walls of where God met with me. Like so many things in my life, he silently worked behind the scenes and established smooth paths for me so I could achieve all the things I wanted to. I could never even begin to thank him enough for that.
My grandfather, and really all of my family for that matter, are the silent workers, doing good behind the scenes. If they even knew I was writing this, they would probably tell me to skip over this part because they don’t do good deeds for praise. My grandfather has helped countless people in the community of Dyer County, and I only know that because my mom has told me, and she only knows that because other people have told her. My mom is the same way. She used to (and maybe she still does, who knows) set up a jar at her work where she collected her own change and spare money and regularly used it to buy people medicine when they couldn’t afford it. She even worked out a barter system with one employee where he regularly cleaned her car and she bought his medicine.
I tell you that to tell you – my family are not the ones who are showy or super expressive or even comfortable being the center of attention of a small group of people. I am easily the most expressive and stage-comfortable person in our family, and I’m not even all that comfortable being the center of attention. I struggled to even walk in my own wedding in front of like 15-20 people if that tells you anything. So they are very behind-the-scenes people. Which makes the events of yesterday all the more important and telling.
In true writer fashion, I have gone around the world to get to the meat of the matter but simply because I think context matters. After many attempts at talking to church leadership and not being heard, my grandfather decided to make an announcement at church this past Sunday impromptu. He did his research and had a piece of paper of numbers and facts with him, because he’s nothing if not calculated (a trait I’ve inherited in spades). He simply wanted to tell the congregation that the church is on the market for sale because the bills can no longer be paid. And instead of prioritizing getting out of debt and finding a way to move forward, the church leadership has fired one long-standing and great employee only to replace her with the pastor’s wife, and together, they make a pretty significant figure yearly. My grandfather wanted to take a vote to see who was in favor of selling the church and who wasn’t.
But he wasn’t able to speak. The mics were taken from him. The music was turned up loud to drown him out. And then a group of leaders, in true dystopian fashion, circled him and my family who had joined him on stage to support him, and silenced him. The police were called (by whom, I don’t know), and the church essentially told my grandfather to not come back. A worship team member spoke up as well, and she was told she can no longer serve on the worship team.
What was once a place that did whatever it took to get people in the door and love them, now is a place that does whatever it takes to get accountability out the door and maintain an agenda.
I hear the refrains of all my favorite worship songs growing up and all the moments of laughter like ghosts in my head now. I know that what I grew up with isn’t actually dead, because it lives on in the lives of those it touched, like me. I see people I grew up with doing beautiful things in the world. I see the faith living on. But when I think about my family, who still lives in Dyersburg, I mourn for them. I mourn because even when they worked their whole lives and consistently served, the one moment they chose to speak up, they weren’t heard.
Alongside my grief, I am unbelievably proud of them. It wasn’t easy for my grandfather to do that. In a world full of people who say all kinds of awful things online because they can hide behind a screen, my grandfather stood up like a man and told a group of people the truth. He still stands by that truth. He still fights for a church that didn’t even fight for him.
The truth and good news is, God doesn’t live in a single building. He doesn’t need the original First Christian Church of Dyersburg to change people’s lives or revive hearts. It’s in these moments, the moments when the very human things you hold dear to your heart break, that you have an opportunity to see God in a bigger way. You remember that he is still with you. In the rubble, in the pain, in the ashes, he can never be taken from you.
Romans 8 says this way better than I ever could:
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
It wasn’t First Christian that changed me and impacted me for the better. It was God, and FCC was the vehicle. While I mourn the loss, I lift my eyes and remember where my help comes from. I remember that I can always play hard and worship deep, and that I will always be a person that will do whatever it takes to share God’s love.
