Learning Grace

We'll have homeless people sleeping in our building on Easter Eve. It happens to be our regular day to host. I never doubted that we should, but did anticipate at least some discussion on it. The full discussion, "If we tell homeless people they can't sleep here because it's Easter, we've missed something." And they're welcome to stay for worship, breakfast, or any combination of those things.

The churching renting space from us hadn't paid any building usage fees in several months. That came up because of additional building usage requests. We have a building that is mortgaged, and plenty mortgaged because it was completed months before the real estate bubble burst. If the denominational organization that holds our loan had not been incredibly gracious to us, who knows if we'd be in our building. From that experience came the response, "Yes, but can you ask them to catch up some?" We decided on catching up the fees to within 3 months of the additional building usage. That's right, still 3 months behind was just fine.

Back in November, we had an offering stolen. It might have been the largest offering my congregation has ever received. "Thank you for handling this," is the only distinct feedback I remember from that time. Even now, that sounds crazy, because in most churches, that would have caused an explosion like no other.

Get a group of pastors together and we can all tell stories of how people expected us to be the professional Christian. We can all tell stories of people assuming we had answers to things we don't have answers to. We can all tell stories of churches being absolutely terrible in other ways, that have little to do with expectations of pastors.

It's strange to speak of this, because, you see, I'm a rules girl (though I prefer making the rules to following them). I like everyone to abide by the agreed upon social contracts of laws and schedules and the like. You might prefer to avoid me if I have recently been annoyed by someone breaking one of the rules. And so I confess that I am grateful for a community that teaches me grace--wonderfully, faithfully, often unpredictably.

It's almost like Jesus had that in mind when calling us out.