20/50: Testimony – Twenty something
This album is one I listened to over and over in Europe. I can picture myself back in my dreamy one room apartment when I listen to it. And it contains a lifelong prayer: May the truth remain close enough to change me.
“All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I’ve been
And how I got to where I am”
In 1994, I moved to Central Europe to work with a Christian mission organization a year after graduation. In language classes, I made my first real honestly non-Christian friends. I had all sorts of ideas about needing to convert them, but they converted me with their reasonable questions of faith and their global perspective on the world. They were concerned about nuclear stockpiles and the environment while I wanted them to say a short prayer to save their souls. More cracks formed in the worldview I had been given.
I loved living in Europe and felt at home there. My work training other missionaries gave me a chance to travel extensively in post-communist south central Europe. My mentor encouraged me to research the role of women in the church and I had become theologically egalitarian (having no idea how that would later define my life!). But after two years, it was hard for me to continue to justify the money spent on my missionary support by good-hearted friends at home. My livelihood as a missionary was predicated on maintaining strict boundaries between believers (defined by evangelical Christians) and unbelievers. While I didn’t have words for it at the time, I wasn’t buying those boundaries anymore.
Also, I had fallen in love.
I moved back to the Bay Area and married Chris, a Methodist missionary and pastor’s kid who had been involved in a house church for over a decade. This community had focused on stripping away all the trappings of the church. They met in homes to talk about the Bible and sought to be a non-threatening place for people not interested in the church to discover Jesus. My time with them helped me lose any attachment to specific church forms, but I missed the beauty of music and liturgy, the rub of tradition, and longed for a more diverse theological conversation.
Chris and I discovered a new church plant through the Evangelical Covenant Church. I worked as the first administrator of this church and became an integral part of its initial growth. I found myself in the pastor’s office talking theology and church often, and after I left the job to stay at home with my first daughter, I continued at the church, leading Alpha groups and women’s Bible studies. Eventually, the pastor asked if I wanted to preach since I seemed to have strong opinions on Scripture. So, I started preaching occasionally and enjoyed the challenge. This is where the call to be a pastor began and I’m grateful that it came from within community. It surprised me as much as anyone else.
When a new author, Brian McLaren, headlined a local church conference, all my questions and struggles found voice in his words. I began to follow the Emergent movement in the early 2000's and started graduate studies in theology and spiritual direction to explore my unfolding theological and spiritual shifts.
(Into my 30’s tomorrow…)