a challenge, a cross, a mission-field

I've asked you countless times to pray about church.

I had in my mind that it was going to be what we needed, and I'm realizing today that I was right.

But not like I thought. 

I thought one Sunday we would walk in a church and everything would just click.

Yes, these are my people.

Yes, this looks like home.

Yes, in a world of feeling out of place, here, we FIT. 

done.

almost a year later....NOT. done.  

We have visited SO MANY CHURCHES.  We have been to some great ones...on point, Biblical, doing it right. We've had a few bad experiences, tears in the parking lot. Gone in and out of a few without ever being spoken to and others where the pastor took us out to lunch. We have done our share of fog machines (almost lost Ben) and strobe lights (didn't help). Also our share of trendy churches, long-standing churches, transitioning churches, traditional churches of every denomination, rocking churches, beard and tattoo churches, good coffee churches, above and beyond children's ministry churches, all the hymns and organ churches, completely packed churches and eerily empty ones. We've heard a lot of different preachers and a lot of different music and after Haiti, some have been short and the rest, crazy short. 

Anywhere anyone asked us to go, we have gone. Places we heard of, we went to. Places we found online, been there too. A few we walked to, and a few we really hauled to. We even went to a few churches in this Bible-belt that people told us they went to and then when we got there, we realized they don't actually GO go there, just, call that church their church, culturally.

And while we really should have found what I thought we were looking for--solid Biblical preaching, community-church-culture, friendly people--we just kept feeling like the Lord wasn't settling us, leading us to ANY of them. I kept asking for a Word, a sign, a confirmation, a heart, something, and all we kept feeling was that we hadn't found a church.

I'm sharing this because the perfect church isn't out there. It's not about finding the perfect church, not even about finding the perfect church for YOU.

It's about being the church at the church where He has clearly led you.  

We're missionaries. We're stuck on that "God's leading" idea. And I wasn't going to stop at "a church where we fit" until the Lord made it clear we were home.

And yet I still wasn't ready when it came.

We'd been there a few months ago and it was a disaster. 

It wasn't that the kid's program was struggling...it's that there WEREN'T any kids....well, at least not the ages of our kids. Instead, the entire church was a group of trendy, chess-playing, chillll 20 year olds. 

I've never felt so old and out of place in my life, and when we painfully stood around after so that the church could see what old people with children look like, we hobbled out to our car in our over-dressed-ness and both said: "That sermon was the Gospel. Love it. So glad that demographic is getting it, and that they are at this church.  And We are never coming back here again."

A few months later, having never thought of it again, came our friends from Haiti, one of Matt's students for dinner, the pizza man locked in the rehab center. (You remember that night).

The complicated story is that "Matt's student" is from Matt's home church in Jersey, came to Haiti as a teenager on a missions trip, we know his family, etc. He was looking to start seminary, he and Matt got talking, he moved here to Mississippi in January and is full-time at Wesley, and he joins us for dinner when we're all homesick :).  

So that night, Matt gone and teaching, Mason and Nick and I are talking about the church hunt, America, how it's all going...all the challenges.  Nick gets it--we're on the same page--having spend a lifetime in church in Haiti. To include Mason in the conversation, I mentioned to Nick that Mason goes to the aforementioned hipster church, which is awesome for 20 year-old trendy, mustached Mason, but totally the wrong fit for our family.

Obviously.

Mason fingered his coffee mug and listened for a bit as Nick and I joked, and finally he gently interrupted with, "Stacey? Do you think it's possible that a church of 20 year-old women might be desperate for someone like you? That maybe they are hungry for discipleship, but no one older is willing to DO that because they don't fit in? Because they're not comfortable?"

I choked a bit on his totally unexpected words, and with five kids and two orders of pizza, we quickly moved into the next conversation. 

A few days later the awkward question still hung there in my kitchen, almost as heavy as the awkwardness we'd felt that day we'd visited.

Lord, I tried, shooting myself in the spiritual foot as usual, Surely you wouldn't want US to be in a place where we didn't fit in at all.

Do you really want me to answer that? the Lord cut me off, as I quickly remembered that the Lord isn't concerned whatsoever with how we fit in, EVER.

But Lord, what do WE have to offer in a church like THAT?

Stacey, when did it become about what YOU have to offer?

I shut up before I felt like a bigger traitor to ALL the Lord has EVER taught me, and when Emily came to visit a few weeks ago and Matt was away, I took her to see Mason, her son's dear friend. 

This time we visited, instead of looking at me and my family, I looked at the church. I looked at all the trendy people, looking for Jesus, and my heart was suddenly heavy with all the faces of the 20-year-old men and women I love in Haiti.

I made those youngin's speak to me this time, and one of them mentioned that there IS another "older" family who just weren't there that week. 

I started praying about letting go of my idea that we were looking for a church for US, and prayed that the Lord would make it clear where He wanted our new missionfield to be. 

The next week, Matt returned with us, and I was determined to find "that old family" while Lily quickly picked up conversations with men and women she'd chatted with the week before. 

I finally found that dear woman, pushing us long over Ben's nap time (apparently, young people do not like early church) and my heart just rejoiced to talk to this homeschooling mama of five with gray highlights like mine who helped plant the church three years ago.

"I'm not telling you this is Jesus," she said at the end of our conversation. "But every week, my kids are here alone. And for three years, we have prayed that the Lord would send us just ONE family, kids for our kids, another family to serve with."

Then a happy hipster with a chubby baby came for the afternoon. Then several beardy young men, unbeknownst to each other, ended up at Wesley this week, looking to talk to Matt for some advice on spiritual warfare. 

By the time Mason came for dinner again tonight, the Lord has made it clear that He has given us what we have needed in a church : a challenge, a cross, a mission-field. 

Most, I love how when we give up our own ideas to follow His, He truly changes our hearts. 

How far He has brought us from, "ain't never doing that again" to genuine excitement and passion for the people He seems to be hemming in our family. 

When I look around and see young men and women who are living their one life hungry for the Lord and desperate for transformed, genuine Christian community...

I cannot be young. I cannot be trendy. It is far too late now to start being cool.

But I can be that.