I sobbed through church this morning

today i sat in church and cried. i cried hard. my friend allyson, who was sitting next to me, obviously noticed but said and did nothing. for this i am incredibly grateful because, at the time, i was really struggling with why the service was affecting me so much. but now i really know why. today during church, the interim pastor presented an opportunity for people to make themselves vulnerable. he asked any family dealing with job loss to come forward to the altar so that the church could gather around them a pray over them.

and i saw people come forward, letting themselves be honest to their church that they were struggling and were in need of prayer, i started to cry. it moved my soul. i sat on the third row of a church with which i have fairly profound disagreement doctrinally and felt the holy spirit move. i saw the church as it should be. i saw members of a christian community hurting, and i saw their sisters and brothers surround them.

from that point on i just couldn't keep it together. i sat there and thought about the crossroads before green valley. i wanted to stand up and give an impassioned speech about how green valley has all the potential in the world, but it is not using it. i wanted to tell them that the holy spirit wants so badly to work through their church. but then their interim pastor got up and said it all for me. dr. bobby dubois tells it like it is. he'll knock you flat on your ass, but he'll be the first person to extend a hand to help you up. he delivered such a challenge to green valley. it was beautiful.

but as i sat there and sobbed through most of the service, i was struck by how much i have changed over the last few years. a year ago there was no way i could sit in a service of green valley (or any southern baptist church for that matter) and expect or even anticipate that i would feel the spirit of god move because my doctrinal beliefs are so blatantly different. today i was able to see past my doctrinal differences to the core of why we were all there.

we all long for community. for each of us, it expresses itself in a different way. denominations exist because people disagree on how that community should be expressed. different churches in the same denominations exists for the exact same reason. but they exist and function because we long for community. while the message of christ is, from one perspective, predominantly about salvation, to me it is a message of relationship. they message of the christian new testament is community. ubuntu, if you will. as archbishop desmond tutu said:

"ubuntu is very difficult to render into a western language. it speaks of the very essence of being human. when we want to give high praise to someone we say, 'yu, u nobuntu'; 'hey so-and-so has ubuntu.' then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. you share what you have. it is to say, 'my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.' we belong in a bundle of life. we say, 'a person is a person through other persons.'"

that last part stands out to me most in this instance. "a person is a person through other persons." we can take that further. "a christian is a christian through other christians." that is the essence of community. that is the essence of what church should be. that is what brought me to tears this morning. i saw christians, vulnerable and hurting, being christians through other christians who surrounded them with love and comfort. they were saying, "my christianity is inextricably bound up in yours." it was beautiful. it gave me hope.