We Had To Be Sure Of Our Calling
“That seems like a nice group of people…” was what I thought after visiting a church near our home in East Orlando. I mused over a visit to another church as well, “I bet that’s a good place where you can grow in your faith and the community supports each other well…” But something was missing. My wife and I had been missionaries overseas for 18 years in a place where we had to be sure of why we were there if we wanted to make it.
We had to be sure of our calling to the mission that we were a part of. That mission was to join in raising a missionary force from a culture that had long rejected the gospel but was also in the throes of awakening to that same gospel. This work required long hours, days, weeks, seasons, and years of doing the same thing over and over. Growing in my own cultural awareness and understanding of how the culture of the kingdom speaks into every culture, having hard conversations with individuals from both my home culture and my host culture that would help us each order our own values after the kingdom culture. I wasn’t always good at it, I failed sometimes, and I was often failed by those around me.
But we stayed and did this arduous work until the Holy Spirit called us to change course, but not before that. Why? Why when people join you and leave you at the first sign of difficulty? Why when you love the people deeply but the authorities think you’re there to harm their country and they question you for it?
Revelation 7:9-10 gives us a glimpse of the reason why:
“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
God’s glory is magnified by a diversity of worshipers. The history of our planet is full of stories of cultures warring with, afflicting, enslaving, and sometimes annihilating other cultures, but then when someone who is worthy of commanding the adulation of members from all those tribes steps into their history and dwells among them and gives his life as a ransom for all of them, then that someone’s worth is made even more glorious to us.
Which brings me to Grace Alive. Why are we here? “Discover. Deepen. Display.” This is more than a place to find good community and grow in our faith. Churches that provide that are everywhere in this town. We were drawn here because Grace Alive is on a mission to show how glorious our savior is to as many different cultures and individuals as the Spirit leads us to, or leads to us.
Like most people, the story of our past is woven with our present. Doing church life with a diverse community and entering in as a minority by choice in this community feels similar to our calling to serve Christ overseas 21 years ago. It has all these wonderful elements of getting to know people that are different from you while also experiencing some of the challenges that come with growing in relationship with people that are, well...very different from you. There can be friction over current hot topics, some people you get close to may leave, and sometimes I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do in a given situation because I grew up in a different environment.
But we’re here because we believe God called us to a mission that is worth it. Because the mission is about him and showing how worthy he is in the midst of community, then all discomfort, awkwardness, and not knowing the rules are worth it. We don’t do church because it’s an environment that’s comfortable. We do it because we want to go where that church is going. We love the people at Grace Alive, and we’re called to go where Grace Alive is going, and that’s why we’re here.
Come with us!