I chided myself for attempting to \u201cfry\u201d the chicken.\u00a0 No self-respecting Southern woman oven-fries her chicken, and yet there I was coating drumsticks and thighs in flour and then arranging them on foil-lined baking sheets.\u00a0 I had no other choice, though since morning sickness was most acute around fried foods and I so wanted to avoid throwing up\u2014at least just for that night and as long as those boys were over.<\/p>\n
This was the first \u201cbusiness meeting\u201d of TCC\u2019s T\u2019shirts, an entrepreneurial venture of the teens of Hollygrove, a dangerous and under-resourced neighborhood of New Orleans. My husband worked at the community center in the middle of Hollygrove and for months he wondered how to combine their natural charisma, interest in the arts, and well\u2026salesmanship on the corner, to channel their abilities into something positive. \u00a0Having seen that programs only address the surface needs of people in the urban core, he wanted to avoid the allure of starting a new project by inviting the boys over to dream up the possibility of this company and the ways it could fund the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
That evening they were coming over for Sunday dinner: fried chicken, fluffy mashed potatoes with melted butter peaks, and Jiffy cornbread with golden nuggets of sweet corn mixed in, all served with tall plastic cups of sweet tea. \u00a0This was my staple Sunday dinner menu until baby number two and his aversion to all things fried came along. Knowing my condition, my husband suggested ordering a pizza, but I wouldn\u2019t hear of it.\u00a0 No, I\u00a0wanted<\/i>\u00a0to make Sunday dinner. \u00a0I wanted to busy my hands for hours and be \u201cmama\u201d to those boys for an evening. \u00a0I wanted to love on those boys with calories and chicken and good conversation.<\/p>\n
As they shuffled up to our second floor apartment, some in Hornets jerseys, some dressed in red from head to toe, a few wearing blue rags, and all sporting gleaming white sneakers, I whispered a little prayer that Jesus would help me show his character to these kids.\u00a0 When one of the teens played \u201ccars\u201d on the living room floor with my two year old while I set the table, I thought \u2018this is what the Body should look like, young and old doing having fun together\u2019. Later on, we sat around my table passing cornbread, pouring sweet tea, and dreaming of a better future for Hollygrove.<\/p>\n
This is how my husband and I did church in the wild of Hollygrove. One conversation, one relationship, one meal, one breakthrough at a time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
This is what I thought we\u2019d be doing when we took up the call to plant a church in the wild of Boston. \u00a0This wild is rife with systemic injustice, food insecurity, and inadequate education and we want to set up camp. But for a few years now, I\u2019ve been overwhelmed with the business of church planting.\u00a0 Many nights I worried about numbers and budgets and expectations.\u00a0 When we missed the deadlines and benchmarks for a \u201csuccessful church plant\u201d,\u00a0 I questioned God\u2019s call on our lives.\u00a0 \u201cDid God really?\u201d became my go-to accusation.<\/p>\n
Spun out in anxiety and ready to give church planting all together, \u201cNo Church in the Wild\u201d by Kanye West and Jay-Z\u00a0 \u201crandomly\u201d played in my Spotify radio.\u00a0 From the guttural, grimy guitar intro, to the vivid lyrics,\u00a0 I was arrested by the truth that in the urban core, there\u2019s so much need. There\u2019s so much brokenness, so much poverty, so much desperation, and my husband and I love the city far too much to let it stay that way. When Frank Ocean sang the bridge, \u201cYour love is my scripture,\u201d \u00a0the desire I felt nine years ago to love on some teen boys with calories and chicken flooded back to me. I knew how I wanted to brave this wild: one conversation, one relationship, one meal, one breakthrough at a time.<\/p>\n
The Holy Spirit used Kanye and Jay-Z to renew my passion for urban church planting by reminding me of my loves for the church and the wild.<\/strong><\/p>\n I love the church.\u00a0 I love the gathering of Jesus followers to transform a community by just being.\u00a0 Not throwing huge events necessarily, but just meeting, loving, and Kingdom dreaming together. \u00a0I desire to see the church holistically care for people, by combing both spiritual and physical needs, I love it when people meet Jesus when Christians do the unglamorous job of helping an immigrant apply for a job or a failing student pass a big test.\u00a0 I\u2019m brought to tears every time I think of\u00a0 Jesus and his ministry and I wonder what are the \u201cgreater things on earth\u201d we could do here in Boston.<\/p>\n I love the wild of the city.\u00a0 I love the hard sounds of bass from the corner and the movement at every hour of the day. I love the strategy required to find a parking space near the Public Gardens, and I love Fenway in the summer. I love taking the \u201cT\u201d and people watching.\u00a0 Diversity\u00a0 is the red line at 5pm, janitors, scientists, students, doctors, tourists, and the homeless all share space on that crowded car. \u00a0 I love intrusive big mamas and the challenge of earning a single mother\u2019s trust.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t abandon the wild, though. I see the beauty in braving the danger of making ourselves available to gang-affiliated teens and single mamas. I also know that unless God goes before me like the Israelites in the wilderness, this church plant won\u2019t take off, but I want that journey.\u00a0 I want that challenge.\u00a0 I want to be a church in the wild.<\/p>\n So planting in Boston\u2019s urban core just makes sense, it\u2019s simply merging my two loves under the banner of my Ultimate Love.<\/p>\n For a while, this dream felt secondary in light of the necessary measurements of church success: people, money, marketing, influence. I\u2019m not cut out for that wilderness.\u00a0 I cannot brave another day of expectations and metrics.<\/p>\n Going forward, I have to be true to myself.\u00a0 I just have to.\u00a0 It\u2019s true, at times, I don\u2019t understand the complexities of church planting strategy, but I do understand the necessity of community building. I know Jesus came to seek and save the lost, heal the sick, and touch the outcast.\u00a0 He came to reveal the Father and invite us to the table as beloved children.\u00a0 He came fierce and determined to plant His church on this wild, broken earth.<\/p>\n So, I\u2019ll do my part to continue that work and plant a church in Boston.\u00a0 Not with spreadsheets and programs but with mounds of mashed potatoes and sweet tea and yes, maybe even oven-fried chicken.<\/p>\n After all, this is the only way my husband and I know how to do church: one conversation, \u00a0one relationship, \u00a0one meal, one breakthrough, one day at a time.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I chided myself for attempting to \u201cfry\u201d the chicken.\u00a0 No self-respecting Southern woman oven-fries her chicken, and yet there I was coating drumsticks and thighs in flour and then arranging them on foil-lined baking sheets.\u00a0 I had no other choice, though since morning sickness was most acute around fried foods and I so wanted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3037,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,537,495],"tags":[448],"class_list":["post-3500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-ministry","category-the-city","tag-deeper-story"],"yoast_head":"\n