Secret Church: Welcome home…

Secret Church: Welcome home…

For more than fifteen years, I didn’t go to church.

I mean, I did — a lot, in fact — but that’s what I did for a living.

The sweet Episcopal church I attended my last year of college and for a while after fell victim to the acrimony that continues the haunt the Anglican Communion. It split. Factions formed, sides were taken, harsh words were spoken, a biblical/spiritual/communal tug of war ensued.

It was awful. It was hurtful, the worst that the church has to offer.

I had had enough of Christians shooting their own. So I left.

My hiatus was about 15 years longer than I had expected it to be.

But after the wounds of that split, and countless others that brothers and sisters in Christ had inflicted on me and on each other, I was gun-shy. I love God and Jesus and all that Jesus told us to do and be while he walked among us in the flesh. But I no longer trusted his alleged followers to not be appalling.

In hindsight, that was pretty unfair. We may be believers, of one flavor or another, but we are all human and we all make mistakes, stumble, fall, drag others down with us, relish our hypocrisy, compare ourselves to other Christians rather than the One we are supposed to be looking to as the perfect example of how to be human and faithful.

A few years back now, I tiptoed back into the fold. I found a home in a sweet Episcopal parish not too far away from the one that had shattered like a cheap wall mirror so many years before. I learned that this parish, too, has split some years before, but what remained were not sharp edges and bitterness. What I found there was love, acceptance, true community and abundant grace.

About 18 months ago, on a visit to Laguna Beach long before the thought of living here had ever crossed our minds as a remote possibility — “I can’t believe people are actually allowed to live in a place this staggeringly beautiful!” — I visited a church here where a few of my dearest friends worship.

Little Church by the Sea.

Really. That’s it’s formal name.

Whatever that conjures in your mind — a certain sweetness and humility, a laid-back-ness, a groovy loving kind of vibe, a welcoming place where the pastors wear flip-flops, perhaps — is spot on. Even though the denomination to which Little Church belongs is one that is, on paper at least, an uncomfortable, itchy, pinching fit for me, the love in this local church — a community of faith in the truest sense — won my heart.

My family moved from Chicago to Laguna last summer to live in community. With old friends, new friends and, in large part, with the folks at Little Church. It beckoned to my heart. It called me home.

We are blessed with a handful of marvelous pastors who share the shepherding duties, and although the pastorate of Little Church is still a boy’s club, my hope springs eternal that that may change, perhaps even sooner than later. (As an aside, when I was looking at the Little Church Web site earlier today and clicked on the link that read, “Women in Ministry,” it took me to an error page. “Page not found.” Once upon a time, I would have been livid. Today I just thought it was really funny. Ironic. Very us.)

I have to bracket stuff like that. But every church I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime has some things that every person must choose to bracket, put aside and stay, or not. And leave. And keep looking.

My family has found a loving, faithful home in this most unlikely of places (at least for me.) I even joined the prayer team. I KNOW! I’m all-in for this church. And no one is more surprised by that than yours truly. And no one is more grateful.

One of our lead pastors, Jeff, was my friend long before he was my pastor. Along with Clarke — the children’s pastor who led my son to the Lord a few weeks back — Jeff was one of the first new friends I made in Laguna, introduced to me by two of my dearest friends who I’ve known since we were college kids together. I immediately liked and trusted Jeff and he has never, not for a moment, given me cause to second-guess my first impressions of him.

He is an epic blessing to me and my family. He’s also one of the finest preachers I’ve ever heard.

Earlier this month, Little Church began a lengthy teaching series on the Book of Job. Yes, groan.

But each of the teachers who have taken us through a chapter or two each so far of what may be one of the most troubling books in Hebrew Scripture, have done a stellar job with their difficult assignment.

Last Sunday, it was Jeff’s turn. He was charged with the task of explicating the 4th Chapter of Job.

What Jeff gave us, a remarkable gift, is, simply, the best sermon I’ve ever heard. Yes. The best.

And I say that as someone who went to church for a living for more than a decade and has been “churched” from the day I was born.

Jeff’s sermon was magnificent. Humble, funny, literate, astute and deeply, deeply true. Quintessential Jeff, really.

I believe it transformed me in a powerful way, in a way that I hope will continue to reverberate through my spirit for the rest of my life.

I stand in a threshold, about to embark on a literal epic journey. There are so many unknowns and the accompanying temptation to be terrified and try to clutch the reins until my fingers bleed. But Jeff, well he recalibrated how I see my life, how I see my story — the one God is writing. I see only the daily rushes, if you will, and sometimes I wonder if the narrative is holding together. Is my story a comedy, a tragedy, a thriller? Science fiction? Cath-sploitation, David Lynchian in its weirdness, or B-movie lackluster?

What Jeff explained so beautifully is that we’re not the ones writing the screenplay or the story of our lives. That job is God’s alone. God knows the beginning and God knows the end and God knows intimately the vast middle, where we all dwell.

Jeff read a quote from the author Sue Monk Kidd toward the end of his sermon. As the words left his mouth, the tears rolled down my cheeks.

Ms. Kidd says:

“We seem to have focused so much on exuberant beginnings and victorious endings that we’ve forgotten about the slow, sometimes torturous unraveling of God’s grace that takes place in the ‘middle places.'”

Grace — like the bracing blast of a Pacific swell — crashed over me. It woke me up.

In my middle place.

Thank you, Jeff.

You are a gift and a beautiful vessel of grace to me.

I’m so glad you’re walking with me on this journey, quoting CS Lewis and Henri Nouwen and St. Freddie of Rupert and many other giants of the Communion of Saints, living and gone, along the way. Inviting me anew into truth, love, joy, grace. Into community. Into The Communion. You help to make it so dang attractive.

Thank you for your humble wisdom and your tender honesty.

Thank you for your overgrown cardigans, that hand-thrown pottery coffee cup in one hand and your floppy Bible in the other.

Thank you for your flippity-floppities, your humor and  kindness.

More than anything, thank you for your friendship.

Dear Reader, please take 47 minutes and listen to Jeff’s take on Job 4. It is glorious. And I promise you, you’ll be changed for the better. It’s a great story. And so is yours.

As for Little Church and all its beautiful souls, I am joyfully indebted to you. You have welcomed me back into the family, like the Father who sees his prodigal son coming and runs out to greet him, shouting for his staff to fire up the barbeques, bust out the good wine and get ready for an rocking homecoming party.

I didn’t think I’d find this place again. I didn’t think I’d find the secret church.

But I did.

Thank you, Jesus, for whispering to my heart, “It’s ok, Cath. You’re safe here. You’re loved here.”

Little Church is the kind of place I wish everyone who is afraid of getting hurt  by church could experience — even once.

Come be welcome … into so much more.

By David Wilcox

(Listen HERE)