"I would love to be your pastor."

I got to hear someone’s story yesterday. It was an honor. I was in awe of the twists and turns in her life and all the things that brought her to this moment sitting in my office. Her language for her spiritual journey left me with goose bumps for pretty much the whole hour. She wrapped up her story with a big breath and I could see the deep plea in her eyes for grace. Could this church be a place she would be welcome to figure out who she was in Christ if all the old ways weren’t working anymore?

It was silent for just a moment.

Then I said,

“I would love to be your pastor.”

A deep sigh, a couple tears and a big smile.

Friends, many of us are part of faith communities we might call progressive or open. Regardless of how we describe it, one of our values is that people can question, doubt and struggle and we don’t kick them out. In fact, we welcome the questions because that’s how a relationship with God works. That’s how we grow!

God can handle our questions. God wants our questions. They are not a threat to faith.

A black and white framework can’t handle uncertainty, wonder and struggle. It pushes them away, terrified of what might be underneath. We claim God is underneath and inside all of it. Asking the hardest, deepest, scariest question is how we get closer to God.

I asked God to give us language for how to help people in our community understand this. And God keeps sending us people who come from a faith experience with a lot of baggage and they can’t believe a place like this exists.

Thank you, God.