Celebrating Fruition
Hope #3
As mentioned in the last two posts, leading up to this Sunday’s Vision & Business Meeting we’re celebrating answered prayers in at The Journey. Today’s post is in regards to our third Hope (Hope #3 – A Place To Begin Or A Place To Restart), which we began praying for a year and a half ago.
In a nutshell, this hope had two different angles. First of all, we prayed that The Journey could be a church for people who have never had a church before in their life. In this neck of the woods there aren’t that many people who have never been to church. Almost any and everyone I’ve met can at least share with me a time in their childhood in which grandma used to pick them up on Sunday mornings or for a week of vacation bible school in the summer. However, there are a ton of people in our communities who have never had a church to call home in their adult life for whatever reason.
Secondly, this prayer was in hope of seeing not only the UNchurched welcomed but the DEchurched as well. The dechurched are typically people who have been wounded by or have done the wounding in a past church experience that resulted in their church homelessness. Just yesterday there was an article posted on a popular Christian website entitled “Taking Space: When You Love The Church Too Much To Go To Church” by author Benjamin L. Corey. Though there is a lot more I’d like to say about these case-by-case situations, Benjamin’s sentiments are HIGHLY relatable to people in the Mid-Ohio Valley. Unfortunately, there would be a plethora of people in this area who share a similar story ready to hug and cry with this guy. I wanted to pass out a hug to him myself (as well as have a conversation with him about his post, ha). My heart truly does ache for him and can really relate to people in his boat.
If we were able to somehow bring in a Barna research group to find what percentage of our population would fall into these two categories I’d bet the farm it would be significant. So in the summer of 2012 we began praying for these two people groups. We prayed that The Journey would be a place where these people could come and hear what we all need to hear daily, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
As for the UNchurched, by God’s grace, we’ve seen many at The Journey. We have people coming to our church who are hearing the Gospel of Jesus for the first time in their life. Just recently while we have been working through the Gospel of John discussing the arrest of Jesus I had a pleasant lady say to me:
“I’ve never really heard or understood who Jesus was, nor have I ever read the Bible. Yet, I feel compelled to come back next week just so I can see what happened to him and what it all means.”
My heart skips a beat when people say things like that to me. It’s such an honor and privilege to tell Christ’s redemptive story to someone who has never heard it. At the same time, there is something overwhelming about that too. However, I am BEYOND grateful that we’ve had experiences and people like this at The Journey, let’s pray for more!
As for the DEchurched, by God’s grace, we’ve seen so many of these people able to reconnect to a body of Christ. Reaching out to the dechurched can be interesting. Depending on their past experiences they’re prone to project all kinds of negativity on you and your church. Like a Vietnam veteran who struggles with PTSD, their heightened combat-ready defense is still looking and ready for danger around every corner, they’re anticipating it before it happens (that’s what you do when you’re in a war zone). It’s not that they don’t trust me, they don’t trust “pastors.” It’s not that they don’t trust our church, they don’t trust “churches.” Yet at the same time the dechurched yearn for Christian community and fellowship. The believing dechurched know they were created for that community and understand that concept from Scripture as well, it can be a real dilemma to be in.
Even though coming back to church can be much more difficult than coming initially, we have many dechurched starting to call The Journey their home even joining in partnership with us. To be fair, I’ve also seen several people try to give church another chance with us unsuccessfully. Ultimately our only hope in reaching this people group is not by rehashing every negative church circumstance to justify one’s frustration but focusing on the story that trumps all of our shortcomings, the story of Jesus Christ. We Christians have a lot of reasons to give up on each other but Jesus is the reason we don’t.
"We Christians have a lot of reasons to give up on each other but Jesus is the reason we don’t."
May we continue to stay true to the redemptive story of Jesus Christ, a story that heals and makes new. May we faithfully proclaim His truth to those who don’t know Him and who do know Him, and all to the glory of God alone.
Thankful for His grace & mercies,
Cody Parman
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