My Church

Why is it that I feel more at home at Artisan than any other church I have attended in my life? The quickest answer is because it the closest thing to real church that I have ever known. For most of my school-aged years I attended a small private school associated with our church. We breathed church every waking minute. My mom worked at the school and we often would stay after school until the night church meeting or special event started. We knew every inch of both the church and school buildings from playing hide and seek or because of lock-ins with youth group. Yet, even with all that time in "church" I still didn't feel like I understood what it was all about. I saw more back-biting than compassion, more prayer meetings than outreach, and more preaching than relationships. Since then I have seen different versions of the same, sometimes with a little more good or bad mixed in.

Building a new church is hard emotional and physical work. The best part is seeing your own dream of God's church realized. Different churches are better suited for different people. I see Artisan as a community for people like me: striving to be real, genuine, compassionate and truth-seeking artists. Artists in the sense that we are all creating our journey together, utilizing our abilities and minds to work through faith, not just letting someone else translate it for us.

I don't see people painting on a good face for church like I have in the past. I see friends who have valleys just like everyone else and who have hearts as big as bass drums. Also, I have never heard the Bible preached in a more effective and relevant way. When I read Acts I see a similar group of people. People that don't have it all figured out but are true to their feelings and also realize the responsibility of committing to God. And, never before have I felt the awe for God as I have in the atmosphere our church creates in music, confessional time and art.

Before Abel was born, that is all I treasured about my church. Now, I see him growing up and being a part of church. Not secluded, but loved. Last night as the sermon was finishing Abel kept asking me if we could "go sing?" I think that although he is still very young he realizes the beauty of God through music. He knows that pictures of a man on a cross means "Jesus" and that his friends at church care about him and his soul.

I think we still have a lot of work to do and more sacrifices to make. I pray we continue in this for a long while....

This post is a part of a linking project which will be posted here.