Midwest Director Travis Bodden offered me the opportunity to travel around Indiana and Illinois to meet with Pastors, Church leaders, and other faithful in hopes of building bridges, gathering stories, and allowing myself to know and be known.
I accepted.
Nervous and under prepared I stepped into a car, whisked westward. Ushered on for three days I would speak and listen, shake the hands of strangers, embrace hugs from distant neighbors. Toward our Midwest Region, I traced a path from church to church. The days were rhythmic.
Out of the car, gear in hand, I stepped into foreign places with familiar atmospheres. I shook the hands of new faces and hospitality sprawled out before me. I didn’t know the people offering me warm food and hot coffee, but I knew people like them. The buildings and stained-glass windows were unfamiliar, but each reflected a latent memory in my mind. I found myself nostalgic for places I had never been.
Churches, like homes, have memories and history upon the walls, in stonework carved with tools, and on elderly faces carved with time. What’s new for me is almost ancient history for the church. I can’t gather a story in a half hour that spans 4 generations. The centuries old tomb stones behind the parish speak volumes despite their silence. The immensity and depth of that time, culture, and memory, is hard to wrap my mind around.
Before we meet with the church leaders, we walk. Down country roads, and through cemeteries, Travis reminisces, while I just try to keep up, our feet crunching on Oak and Sycamore leaves. “You have to breathe the air they breathe”, one church leader told us. So, I breathe in the air.
During the meeting, I give my little speech. I believe it and I hope it's meaningful, but I don’t always feel like I know what I’m doing, both before I speak and after I finish. No amount of affirmation has ever not made me feel like an imposter of some sort. Church leaders who’ve served longer than I’ve been alive warmly encourage me and tell me they appreciate what Travis and I are doing.
Finally, some of them get to talk and I get to listen. I prod with little questions, digging for wisdom and clarity. I heard of traditional congregations embracing radical forms of community, welcoming churches of multiple ethnic groups into their church family, offering space, and extending the same hospitality I was shown. It’s hard. It’s challenging. Not everyone gets along. But it’s what mission looks like, and scuffed walls are a small price to pay for mission, I think.
I heard of another ministry which lifts up those folks we often consider the “least of these,” giving them back their dignity, and they do it with grace and love. I asked, how do we continue to cultivate hope for those who are determined to be lost? I was told that we pray for “whatever it takes.” At the end of the conversation, I asked God for whatever it takes.
We meet with more people and I know I’ll forget their names, but I’m confident I won’t forget their faces. Travis packs up the gear and I’m still stuck in conversation. Eventually we are back on the road. We drive through tree canvased paths and small-town streets, across half harvested fields, and maybe by a glen or two. Travis and I are still trying to figure out what a glen is.
Our conversations take the rhythm of debriefing our experience, and figuring out what we can do better next time. There’s a genuine anxiety about whether or not we are delivering what churches need to hear and not wasting their time. It’s a hard thing to know. At some points, our conversations turn towards harder topics, and I wonder if I might benefit more from the car rides than from everything else. Talking to Travis feels like going to therapy and church, all while laughing hysterically.
At one point we stop to get the best burger I have ever had, and I realize that I may have never eaten outside with such perfect weather in November. Travis says its been 15 years since he's eaten here. I think it might not be 15 days before I'm back. Before long, we’re at a different church, but greeted with the same warmth and hospitality.
At the end, I fall into a bed, mind buzzing, thinking of family, replaying the days events, and sharpening my words for the next. I’m sure I’ll forget something; I know I didn’t take enough notes or record enough footage or capture every good story.
But I know that there is great beauty in meeting kind people.
I know that hope is still found in faith that holds tightly to the truth of Jesus Christ.
And I know that God still speaks through stoic men with tender hearts.
CGGC eNews—Vol. 16, No. 44
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