I'm sitting at my desk, drinking a dangerously good cup of coffee (by dangerous I mean so good I could be addicted) and thinking of the whirlwind that has been the last few weeks/months at ENCM. Every corner I turn at the co-op leads me to another adventure in either relationships or responsibility, making my life at the very least exciting, and most often deeply rewarding. I've said it about a million times, but I'm always amazed at how revealing the simplest moments are. How a trade of smiles or a handshake can make you feel like you just crossed a border of what is allowed or expected into the territory of dangerous, scary, exciting and amazing shared life.

Several months ago I had a crazy idea pop into my head. What if we planned a huge benefit concert? What if we threw a big artistic party with performers and musicians and artists and food and ferris wheels and clowns and okay, maybe not the clowns, but what if we told one amazing story in an event and people came and they were moved and donated a million dollars? Wouldn't that be AMAZING! These are the times that my ideas become brightly colored helium balloons soaring in sky to heights unmanageable and inside the balloon is a super hero that saves the world.

The problem with sharing my enormous ideas with Ryan, director of a non-profit, is that those ideas inspire him and excite him and then he says YES, go do it! Usually, I throw my ideas out so that someone else will be inspired to take them and run with it. I'm always content to own the idea, but a lot more leery of trying to make it happen. I get away with that by calling myself the idea person and surrounding myself with the movers and shakers that make the ideas happen. Unfortunately, Ryan is so overworked that he shines the mirror of my ideas right back at me and then does something terrible.... expects me to make them happen.

So, with the feeling that maybe I should have kept my idea to myself, I started doing what all people with great ideas do at first... organize meetings with smart people. This allows you to share your idea and get feedback that may inform your next step. And for me, this big idea was going to have to be a step by step sort of thing. I transformed my big picture superhero idea into something slightly more manageable. And then I really did surround myself with smart people like Jeremy Lee and Jonathan Moore to help me get one step further, then one more step further. Than I did the unthinkable, I asked my best friend to be the main performer the night of the event... deplorable, I know. I'm realizing that the longer you work at a non-profit, the more comfortable you become calling in favors and asking for help.

So, fast forward to a few months later (longer than a few months because I procrastinate when I don't know what to do) and here we are, a week away from an event that somehow, with the help of my friends, is planned and happening and I'm about as nervous about it as one person can get. Standing By: A Benefit For East Nashville Cooperative Ministry will be at Nashville's historic Belcourt Theatre on October 28th at 8pm. The event is being sponsored by all kinds of local organizations and we have 3 local acts playing and even a local taco truck serving tacos for dinner before hand. And I've even had a bunch of people say that they are coming. I have no idea what to expect. I just hope that we get a lot of people in one room so we can accurately tell the story of the crazy things that God does with a bunch of slightly incapable but willing people.

The lessons are still piling up faster than I can share them. This time I learn that if your courageous enough to follow through with a crazy idea, and ask for help in the process, one step turns into ten steps then fifty and somehow things get done and then you feel courageous and like God somehow did an amazing thing with your small hands and your tiny brain. He turned a few fish and a loaf of bread into a benefit concert. How does he do that? I don't know, but being caught in the middle of those kinds of miracles is like stepping out of your house on the first cold day of fall without a jacket on. You're taken by surprise by the way the cold feels on your skin, the way you can see your breathe, somehow acknowledging that you are in fact breathing in and out, that you are in fact alive, awake.

The Shared Life

When I was a kid, my parents had both sides of our family over for Christmas dinner. It was somewhat chaotic to have all those people under one roof. Between my brother and me and all my cousins and kids of my parents friends that would gather to celebrate with us, we would have about 10 or 12 kids, all playing together under one roof. I quickly learned that to give my Christmas toys the fighting chance to survive the year until next Christmas, I had to hide them away from my cousins. I was quick to take my most favorite Christmas presents to my room, stash them away in my dresser, under my bed, in the closet so that they wouldn't be destroyed in their shiny newness. I was always so torn between wanting to share with them all the new stuff I got, and wanting all the new stuff to stay in tact for the times I was playing with them by myself.

Sharing is such a child's lesson. A lot of my friends are parents and it's not uncommon to hear them pull their kids aside and tell them to share what they have, split their treat with their sibling, give one of their quarters to the offering plate. It's so contrary to human nature. I've heard my friends have to tell their kids to share, several times in one outing, but I've never heard a parent tell their child that they share too much.

I wish that, for as much as it was drilled into my brain as a kid, sharing was a more natural thing for me as an adult. It's still hard work to even remember to share what I have, and an even harder task to surrender when I remember that sharing is good, and right. Thanks to my parents, sharing my stuff isn't as big of a deal, although still hard at times. Sharing my life, now that's another story.

The shared life is one thing in the Gospel that is the most captivating and the most convicting all at the same time. To forfeit your life, your comfort, your things, your emotions, your safety is a confounding, ridiculous notion. Isn't there something that's just mine? Can't I have one thing all to myself? If I share my life, how will it last the year without breaking?

It's hard to open my life to the possibility of depletion. Sharing in someone's need without having the answer on how to fix or fill the need is like walking backwards blindfolded. If I can't fix it, how can I bare the brokenness? I can give a smile, but can I bare to love enough to shed a tear? I can give a meal, but can I be so bold as to share my fears? I can give a ride, but do I have the strength to walk with you? I can sit next to you in church on Sunday, but can I have coffee with you on Tuesday night?

This is where I'm at. I'm all too often convinced in my own ability to fill myself up with the courage, the strength, the benevolence to give. And when I run dry, I want to run away. I want to run away from the problems of others. I want to run away because I don't have any more to give and I am terrified of the responsibility of making this all work out right. Because if it doesn't work, people go hungry, they stay alone, they stay broken.

The story of the Gospel is the story of a God who shared His very life with His own creation. When I think of meeting a need, I tend to wonder what I can do to fix it while staying comfortable in my own day to day existence. How can I help without really getting involved... Not God though. He actually wore the skin of the broken humanity, confined himself, by his love, to our bodies, to our world, to our emotions, our pain, our suffering.

The shared life is, at times a needy life. It seems to always be a life that is poured out, that's given. It's full of compassion, which means to suffer with. It means whether or not I have an answer, I will climb into your suffering and join you there. This scares me. But this compels me. I pray that this changes me and makes me move and see the world differently.

Friend, Neighbor, Chef

Osborne "Bugz" Waters

He brings together every commitment we have at the Co-op, someone from whom I am learning so much. Osborne will be our one of our teaching chefs when we formally provide cooking classes to the community, both because he pleases the Southern palate and because he creatively uses fresh ingredients from the garden, donated ingredients from neighbors, and non-perishables from the food bank. So he's capable of teaching delicious-cooking-on-a-budget; He's equally capable of teaching us how to give of our lives for our neighbors. Osborne heals with his presence--with good food and extending genuine affirmation. Oh how I hope that one mark of Christians is that we heal people with our presence. Oh how I pray this is East Nashville's experience of the Co-op. Osborne is helping us learn how to do this better.

Saving Lives

I had a friend say the other day: "Pastor, you know, you're doin' a good thing here, givin' people food and all, you know, feedin' people and all, but y'all might be saving peoples' lives too." Interpret it as you will--that lives are being saved from hunger, lives are being changed through the experience of acknowledgement and friendship, lives are being eternally saved through preaching of the gospel and the reading of scripture--but sometimes words are our verbally clumsy way of expressing a more articulate body language. To avoid tripping over myself, then, I'll quickly say what I saw him telling me. He looked at me confidently, though his shoulders were slouched, as one might be just before a confession--courageous but defeated. When we engaged each other, my hand touching his hand, and made eye contact, he stood a bit taller, as though this connection validated his feelings. His face lit up, and he said (as I interpret): "The food was good, but this whole experience has given me new life." Food as fuel that sustains life, keeps our engine going? No. Food and table as a medium by which we give and receive life together, tell truth into each others lives, be mutual, be friends, be the gospel? Yes. We're saving lives because God is present in us at the table. And the food just so happens to be good.
Ryan

I got friends in low places

Being 31 and single presents me with all kinds of challenges. Friendships become harder to maintain as those your close to get married, start families. There are times when it seems like you've made permanent residence in no-mans-land. I'm always so tempted to re-evaluate and compartmentalize my relationships. I wonder if I should make more single friends. Shouldn't I spend time with the people in life that are where I'm at? It's so much easier to maintain friendships with people that have the same schedule, lifestyle, finances as me. I don't have to work as hard when I can surround myself with people that can just do what I want to do...

This morning I went to a breakfast honoring Mrs. Juanita McCoy. She's devoted so much of her life working at ENCM, helping the community of East Nashville. I haven't gotten to know her as well as some of the other volunteers, but the times that I have met her have been blessed and the things I hear of her service are noble, to say the least. Her footsteps seem more than worthy to be followed. And now she's retiring. So... a bunch of us all got together to cook, eat and fellowship and to say, as humble as possible, thank you. There were all kinds of people in the room. Many were older than me, some where younger, some were married, some were single, some had kids, some did not. Some where white and some where black and some were from California and some where from right here in Nashville. All this diversity, in one meagre room, celebrating a life spilled out.

This got me thinking about my thoughts on the kinds of relationships I peruse. I think I'm asking the wrong questions. Do I need a community with more single friends, more friends my age, more friends that are like me... wrong questions. It's important to have a community that you have stuff in common with, but if I've learned anything in my time so far at ENCM, if there's one common theme that threads itself through my stories so far, it's that God is very pleased to take what I think I need, place it on it's head and redefine it all together, especially in regards to community and relationships. The lessons I've learned over and over again have been that when you open yourself up to the other, to the different, you see God work in ways you've never seen before.

So maybe the question is how do I open myself to all kinds of relationships, and how do I see the ones that have so much potential but are framed by the differences that most people allow to keep them from deep relationships? How do I let God direct my path in such a way that my friends, and my community exist of so many different kinds of people that I'm constantly learning and teaching new things? And most of all, how can I be an active participant in that kind of community?

Mrs. Juanita influenced all kinds of people, not just the ones that looked like her and had the same life experience as her. That doesn't happen by compartmentalizing and categorizing people. It's done by being open to some pretty amazing, diverse relationships, given by an amazingly creative God. And what I'm learning is that it starts in giving. It starts in being poured out. That is so hard. I don't want to be poured out because I'm afraid of being empty. That's the truth. I'm afraid of being empty. Me of little faith... Thank God for saints that go before us, living a life wide open for us to learn from. And thank God for his faithfulness.

Every Sunday evening I get to church a little early to help set up for Emmaus fellowship. To the casual passer-by it looks nothing like a church service. There's no choir, no pews, no hymnals. There isn't really a pulpit, no one is wearing a suit. The smell of body odor replaces the typical newly bathed and perfumed congregants in a typical church service. There isn't one person standing in the front while everyone sits watching him wax religious.

That's not to say that Emmaus Fellowship isn't a church service. It is church.

You know how Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed? I wonder why he chose something so small. If you threw that mustard seed into a jar full of other seeds, you would have to look really hard, and really close to find it. At Emmaus I'm learning to look past all the things I used to think classified God's work or His moving and I'm realizing that He moves in small ways and seemingly insignificant ways and he turns a meal with homeless and working poor people into a church service.

So last night after we ate, we sang a few songs, some were impromptu, then Ryan got up to read Scripture and start our time of prayer. Our friend TomKat was leaving, probably because he was done eating. He hadn't yet realize that we were offering more than a full stomach at Emmaus...so Ryan reminded him we were going to read Scripture and pray and invited him to come and sit. He did and sat right in front of Ryan. Ryan read the scripture about how Jesus says he's the bread of life and if you feast on him you will never go hungry. Then we started to pray...

At Emmaus we start by praying for our service and ministry, then we move onto praying for our communities, then we pray for ourselves. After that we take and offering and then have dessert. During the second stanza of prayer, TomKat prayed out loud. Then he ended his prayer with the most sincere "I love you, Jesus" that I've heard in a while. He then began to cry and confessed to all of us that that was the first time he's ever prayed. He's probably in his 60s.

WOW. I've been to a lot of church services with amazing music and dynamic preaching. I've heard the most eloquent and beautiful prayers. I've seen the sun shine through the most beautiful stained glass windows. And all of those things are wonderful, but they are easily turned into the seeds in the jar that I expect, the big ones I notice, and sometimes the ones that are hiding the mustard seeds. In some way, last night I felt like I was all wrapped up in a mustard seed kingdom.

Grace and Peace,

Melis

God is good all the time...

It's Monday morning. I almost always need a little more time to wake up, a little more coffee in my cup and few seconds to get my brain around the start of a new work week. This morning was no different as far as the time and the coffee go, but my brain can not be swayed from it's current trail of thought. I went to bed thinking about God's goodness and I woke up in the same thought, as if I'd laid it on my pillow when I drifted off to sleep and picked it up as soon as my eyes opened. 

It's not that I ever consciously doubt God's goodness. I'm not that bold. But I'm sure I doubt it when I worry about something, or when I hold tight, stifling those things in life that are meant to grow and move and change. In those moments of held control, I doubt that God can handle my fears or that there could be more for me around the corner of the place I sit so comfortably. That kind of doubt seems to be a constant struggle for me. And here's the thing, whenever I get there, my purchased plot at the bottom of despair, God shines a light of goodness so bright, I have very little choice but to follow it, leaving behind my sorrow and moving into the promise that is His love. And the funny part is that His goodness never quite shows up the way I think it would, and never the way I plot that it should in my limited imagination.

Such was the case this weekend. Friday night, I couldn't shake a feeling of unrest. Something just felt off or sad and I couldn't seem to find the contentment I was seeking. I prayed myself to sleep and in that subconscious state of prayer that mingles with sleep and has you saying all kinds of crazy things to God, Wesley Sanders popped into my brain. And for some reason I figured that I had to go visit Wesley and that thought seemed almost like a solution, an answer to my sleepy prayers.

Wesley is the man that Ryan blogged about a few weeks ago, the man on our video. Wesley is one of the few folks I've met at ENCM that I've developed a true friendship with. Wesley has been in a rehab program for alcoholism for the last 2 months. I haven't visited him. I've had every intention of doing it. I've even printed out a picture to bring to him for his room. But what is that saying about good intentions?

Saturday morning I woke up with no memory of my prayer the night before (these are the downfalls of praying yourself to sleep). I didn't go to see Wesley. That night, the same kind of restlessness, sadness in my prayers and the same kind of solution. Wesley popped into my brain again and I thought I had to go see him. I knew Sunday would prove impossible, but I made a point to be awake enough in my brain to make a promise to myself or maybe to God to go see Wesley on Monday. 

I had a full day planned on Sunday. Aside from the normal church service I attend at 9, and the 1pm Emmaus service, I had a baby shower to help host and the new Emmaus service/meal at 5:30. After morning church, I  went to lunch with a friend I hadn't seen in so long and headed back for the last 1pm Emmaus service.

I was late and in a rush. When I got to the church, I walked in and was stopped, mid-stride. I blinked. The man standing with Ryan looked a lot like Wesley Sanders, but so different too. The man standing next to Ryan was clean shaven with tightly cropped hair. He had glasses. His clothes were clean, almost crisp on his slimmer body. He looked clean and bright-eyed. This was Wesley, but the truest version of the man I know. This was the real Wesley that I caught redemptive glances of on a random sober encounter with him. This was the Wesley I knew, yet the Wesley I had yet to meet. 

He hugged me. I was so genuinely excited to see him. I looked him over once, twice. I almost made him turn for me to really see him. I told him I was so proud of him, standing in front of me. I told him I was sorry for not visiting him. He told me that he had come by various places a time or two, trying to find me, to see me, to show me that he was gone but not for good, and that he was getting better. I hugged him. 

We walked together into the service and sat next to each other. I couldn't believe he was there. In my prayers last night, right next to me today. At Emmaus Fellowship we are diligent about our prayer time. We make sure that we take time to allow the congregation to pray aloud for our ministry, for our communities, for our families and for ourselves. When we got to the part where we pray for our communities, for each other, Wesley grabbed my hand in both of his hands and he prayed for me. Wesley Sanders prayed for me. He prayed that God would be with "his little friend." The trail of tears started to pour from my face. In that moment I realized something. Going to see Wesley wasn't the answer to my prayer, my restlessness, my sadness. My seeing him, bringing him encouragement wasn't something I had to do. I needed Wesley Sanders to pray for me. This time, he was there to offer hope, redemption and grace to me. 

In that moment, being prayed over by a man that under other circumstances may not even have been my friend I knew God's goodness in an all new way. The give and TAKE of a relationship made me realize that I am receiving as much as I am giving in all of this. 

Wesley Sanders is praying for me. God is good all the time, all the time God is good.