Things You Never See,
in the contemporary church but I got to see these past few days…and to me they were beautiful.
1) 75 or so people gathered to worship on a Friday morning on a non-holiday.
2) A couple of hundred people sitting and talking at a potluck on a Thursday night until well after 9pm – kids included. Even as I watched people leave, the exits were at a cost. You could see that people enjoyed time together and really could just sit and keep enjoying this space together.
3) An older pastor/priest (in his 70′s I guess) given space to participate in leading the worship gathering. His steps to the lectern were slower than they probably once were. His hands were a bit shaky. You could see that keeping his place in delivering the text took effort, again much more than it once did and at times as he sang the scriptures his voice wavered and cracked. BUT, as he chanted the gospels, no one thought any less of him. I would argue they thought more. It was beautiful to see this aged man walk with measured steps but with peace and purpose. Though I don’t know his whole story, he obviously has a rich one. His gifts of service and love have one him respect and honor in this community of believers. It is apparent that he has given much for them and the the community loves him. He was honored by the unwavering attention of the audience and we were honored to have such a beautiful servant of God be part of leading us in the liturgy.
4) A father teaching his son how to sing/chant in the liturgy. They stood at the front left of the worship gathering and every time that the father played a part in leading us through the liturgy he pointed or signaled to his son…teaching him what was going on. Mentoring at it’s best – brilliant. This father and son are both learning amazing lessons here as are we for getting to witness this.
5) Older women speaking into younger ones. In this community of believers I have now on three separate occasions in the past week seen older women take the time to stop or sit and talk to my daughter, Aubrey. They’ve answered questions or explained things to her. This paired with #4 has shown me how much I miss being part of a multigenerational community of believers. Many of our pop churches are missing out on these mentoring opportunities because we either a) don’t have older generations in our churches or b) have the generations segregated the vast majority of the time.
Thank you Lord for these treasures!
