Church: Chile in the Borscht [Jim Kast-Keat]

I grew up in the church. Literally. My earliest memories are being pushed up and down the long hallway in the church basement in my dad’s office chair. It’s rare for me to recall a Sunday when I wasn’t in church, first sitting beside my mom, later my friends, and eventually working in a church as a pastor.

It’s in my blood. It’s on my skin. And as I continue to grow, evolve, and develop, so do the church communities I find myself in. Me and the church; we’ve grown up together. And I don’t see us stopping any time soon.

Only too often it seems that you have to meet a certain dress code to set foot in the door, your membership dues are ten percent of your annual income, and everyone appears to look and talk and think exactly the same.

This Stepford church is a homogenous and broken mold that needs to be shattered. Instead of perpetuating Sunday morning as the national hour of segregation, the church must exist multi-vocally, speaking to more than just a self-affirming holy huddle and reaching out to those who continue to be pushed out.

The church should be a table with room for all, a rainbow of skin tones and a potluck with chile in the borscht.

(To hear this post read aloud, listen to this and this at Thirty Seconds or Less.)

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[Image by Juerg Vollmer, CC via Wikimedia Commons]