On Belay: Church

I am incredibly excited to add a new Blogger to my rotation. I met Shelby Mathis while our husbands were stationed together in the Azores, and she has also come and worked on our farm! She will be posting on Mondays!

Last week I got home from a leadership conference in Dallas with IF:Gathering, a Christian organization that exists to disciple a generation by equipping women to lead in their local places.

I went to the airport exhausted, drained, and wondering what I missed because it didn't feel over, and it didn't feel that big. It didn't change my life. It didn't transform my theology or provide break through or lead me to new life-long friendships.

You know, the way IF used to do.

The early IF:Gatherings caught my attention and then my allegiance. I devoured the words and books and studies of the women who spoke from the stage the first couple of years. Jennie Allen was my mentor. Jen Hatmaker and Ann Voskamp discipled me. In a season of my life as a new believer at an overseas military base with an unstable church community, IF was my church.

IF is no longer "my church" but it is still my favorite conference of the year. And now that's only because of the way God uses it to minister to the women of my local church, The Embassy.

After I got home from the conference, I saw Instagram photos from the event. Women used words like "refreshed" and "filled up" and even "speechless" to describe their experience that week.

I get that. I was there. I saw women crumble during worship and break down during talks seemingly meant specifically for them. I truly saw the Spirit move all around me. I listened as the founder of IF interrupted a worship song to pray for women in the room unseen, unheard, going days unnoticed at a conference full of Christian women and in light of the crazy world swirling outside our walls and we all cried and begged Jesus to come.

All that, but I couldn't relate to "refreshed", "filled up" and "speechless."

The conference ended with us marking a token -- a reminder -- of our time together. It was a little packet of malleable, damp clay wrapped in kraft paper, tied with a twine bow. A pretty package, but the contents oddly squishy and cold. I thought it was strange the clay was still wet and days from drying, but I've also planned an event and know some details are better left ideas.

Or maybe the story just wasn't half baked yet.

As I stood on the platform of the underground train at DIA saying goodbye to other leaders who had also attended the conference, I was at a loss for an answer to "how was it for you?"

Different.
Underwhelming.
Not disappointing, but also not I can't believe it's over.

The next morning I rolled out of bed and beelined for the french press, as I do. My brain was still catching up to my activity when I realized it was Sunday.

It's my favorite day of the week.

This week was no different, and the worship left me refreshed.
Fulfilled.
Maybe even speechless.

And there wasn't even a full band. No music or traditional service at all, in fact.

This week was a celebration we call Sacred Space where we, not in lieu of worship but as an act of worship, serve our local community as a church body. This Sunday we could be found:

Walking around the neighborhood praying for our Hispanic neighbors by name and in general. In English and in Spanish. For refugees and immigrants. For them and with them. For the end of violence and the beginning of reconciliation.

Praying for the new direction of our small groups, a focus on mission and connection to one another that will surely make God famous to the world.

Praying over my co-leader and I, our reentry from the conference, and the vision for the upcoming year of events and focus on women.

Swapping stories with girlfriends about time spent in the Med and Middle East over Lebanese pies with zaatar and Arabic tea.

Pure joy and anticipation in starting new missional community tables, leading people into a space of understanding and peacemaking.

_____________

Back when a church community was elusive, and I understood little about the value of roots, IF was church. It was the good stuff.

Yet now I’m refreshed. Fulfilled. Speechless.

I know now, this is the good stuff.

A praying church.
A missional community.
A vibrant womens ministry.
A church with a heart for the nations.
A tangible connection to the Church.
A church of ambassadors who don’t simply consume but own the mission.

I didn’t comprehend that twinge of hope in DIA -- hope that it wasn't over -- on the platform while giving that reentry elevator speech I wasn't ready to give.

I get it now. That meaning I was still working out while the clay was slowly drying to solid. Where there was time and room for this all to take shape as something else, some new work of art.

This is the point of the IF leadership conference. And I see it clearly now: the work of being the church is at home, not at IF. And the work is the good stuff.

Thankfully, the Spirit of God isn't limited to moving at packed out conferences or through smoke machines on stage during full-band worship. God moves in the ordinary. He moves in the every day. The simple. The acapella and the backing tracks. The tiny acts of faith and obedience no one sees.

We be the Church, He moves, and that’s the good stuff.

I wear lenses and borrow lenses because I do life with people very unlike me. IF wasn't a waste. It was a lens cloth. My time at IF – I see now -- was spent scrubbing the accumulated fingerprints and flecks of debris. 

It reveals: in His Church -- at The Embassy – I am home.

Can you you believe we get to do this?!

Climb on,

Shelby

P.S. To find out how to bring IF to your church (it's the most fun thing!), check out IF:Local HERE.