Church Family Update - July 8, 2020

A note about coffee tomorrow:

We’re scheduled for our patio coffee time tomorrow but it looks like the weather may not be conducive to our meeting. So let’s defer our meeting for a week and we’ll try again next week Thursday, July 16th at 10:00 AM. 

A devotional thought:

“And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts.” Acts 2:46 

What I love about the verse above is that it has the feeling of family. Members of the early church weren’t just attending a service on Sunday morning and then going their separate ways. They were living life together. They attended worship services together at the temple but they were also sharing meals and fellowship together throughout the week. They were family.

You’ve probably heard me use the phrase “faith family” to refer to our church family here at Ebenezer. I thought maybe I could explain to you why that phrase is so meaningful to me. It might take a couple of installments because it’s kind of a long story. But we have time, right? Here goes.

After seminary Marco and I were attending a large suburban church and they asked me if I would like to give pastoral leadership to a church plant. At the time I was interested in urban ministry so I said, “Yes, as long as I can plant the new church in the city of Milwaukee.” They said that sounded good and so the adventure began. 

Marco and I moved to Milwaukee with our two young daughters and I began wandering around the city looking for a place where a new church might meet. Milwaukee is known for being one of the most segregated cities in America. The neighbourhood just north of the downtown area is mostly black. White people either live in the suburbs or on the trendy Eastside which borders Lake Michigan. And the Southside is where the large Latino population lives. That’s just how it is in Milwaukee.

For whatever reason, I felt drawn to plant our new church on the Southside in the heart of the Latino population. So we arranged for our church to rent a high school building from 8:00-12:00 every Sunday morning in a neighbourhood that was about 85% Mexican. And then we rented the back half of a dentist’s office to use as our church office during the week. I can still vividly recall trying to write sermons and have pastoral meetings in my little office without windows in the back of this dentist’s office while children screamed and dental drills whined in the background. 

I was a brand new pastor with a young family and a tiny church. I had no idea if the church was going to make it or not. I had pretty much no idea what I was doing. I felt totally out of place both as a pastor and as a white guy in a mostly Mexican neighbourhood. 

One day I walked into my office and looked at the mail on my desk and saw a letter addressed to me and written from a prison. I opened the letter and saw that it was from a young man named José. He was serving a sentence for gang-related crimes and had found out that I was the pastor of a new church in the neighbourhood where he had grown up and committed his crimes and was asking if I would come and visit him in prison. 

I wrote back immediately and told him I would visit as soon as possible. Getting approved to make pastoral prison visits involved a lot of red tape and hoop-jumping but I finally got approved and got a meeting scheduled. 

On the appointed day I made the 45-minute drive to the correctional facility. Went through the initial security check. Locked up all my valuables and went through a second security check. Was escorted across the prison yard and then entered the prison itself where I went through another security check. And then I was brought into a large room with circular tables. I sat down and looked around and immediately found myself having to fight back tears (you know I’m a softy when it comes to this sort of thing. But I really didn’t think this was the best place for me to start bawling like a baby so I bit my lip and controlled the waterworks). 

It was absolutely heartbreaking to see men my age and younger in orange prison jumpsuits sitting at tables with their loved ones. Especially poignant was a scene where a father was speaking tenderly to his young daughter who had come to visit him. The whole scene was a picture of brokenness and I had to look away as I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. 

After about a half-hour of waiting José was led out to my table. I was in my early 30’s at the time (how is that possible?) and he was about 10 years younger than me. I looked at him. He was shorter than me and probably about four times stronger than me with brown skin, brown eyes and brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. I didn’t really know what to do so I stood up because it’s awkward to greet someone while you’re sitting down.

We stood there looking at each other and then he reached out to me and we hugged each other. And that was the beginning of our friendship. Our visit that day lasted for about 45 minutes and we had no problem filling the time with conversation. José is intelligent and articulate and I was full of questions. 

What does any of this have to with Acts 2:46 and my use of the term “faith family” to describe our church family at Ebenezer? Maybe I can answer those questions in part two of this devotional thought. Thanks for reading. I promise this is headed somewhere.

May you enjoy the peace, security and comfort that comes from knowing that you are a beloved member of our “faith family” here at Ebenezer. 

With love and prayers,

Pastor Jason