Deja Vu (all over again)

I was feeling nostalgic this week. I was ‘looking back’ at my time caring for Up Town Church. We had planted a café style church peopled by a wonderful collection of neighbourhood characters. We came to describe ourselves (at our best) as: “An honest accepting community of broken people, who were experiencing the Father’s love, finding wholeness in Christ Jesus, and performing acts of kindness in the power of the Holy Spirit.” I would not have traded that church for the biggest mega church in Christendom. I felt that it could not get better than Up Town! I did not envy anyone their religious gig! There is a saying “All good things must come to an end.” And after over a decade of enjoyment Up Town ceased to be. I have grieved the loss of that wonderful experience and I came to believe such would never again be mine.

This week as I was revelling in the exciting growth of community at Threshold House it dawned on me, “This was that same kind of community.” It is quite different in many respects, but it seems to me that God is developing us as: An honest accepting community of broken people, who are experiencing the Father’s love, finding wholeness in Christ Jesus, and performing acts of kindness in the power of the Holy Spirit. It was a ‘deja vu’ moment for me. Here I was finding the very kind of community I had given up seeking.

God knows my heart and is giving me the desire of my heart. God birthed this desire in me long ago when I got a taste for this variety of community and now by God’s hand this  God-given desire is coming to fruition. I am amazed! I am gob smacked!

I don’t mean to idealize either the Up Town Community or the Threshold House Community, both are exceedingly messy! They are very raw and real. Our ‘brokenness’ leaves us messy indeed. We deal with real life issues. We apply, imperfectly, new skills to old besetting problems. Yet there is beauty in the raw honest reliance on God. For us there is no hope aside from that of God’s love, healing and empowering.

As admitted ‘broken people’ we are given access to speak into the lives of other broken people, sharing the hope we are discovering. As a community we reach out helping with food based ministries in the Uptown of Saint John and in our neighbourhood of Saint John East. C.H. Spurgeon talked about evangelism as “One beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.” I believe Mr. Spurgeon would be pleased with the ministry in deed and in word of our ‘band of the broken.’