Giving My Hope

“But you have giving my hope.”

A short phrase written on a @southscottsdalepres giving envelope with $1.05 in quarters and pennies inside and a list of prayer requests on the back. A gift given with tremendous generosity from one of our friends and a profound reminder that when God says, “Just go love recklessly. I’ll take care of the rest.” He really means it.

When I started sharing this idea about starting a church centered on Jesus and building beloved community among the marginalized and vulnerable in our neighborhood, most people responded with pragmatic realism. 

“That’s not how you start a church. No one will come. You will never be able to sustain it because those people don’t have enough to give. And that’s not the kind of community people want to be a part of. That may work in other places worldwide, but it won’t work in Scottsdale.”

Amid the vulnerability and anxiety of starting a new church, those kinds of critiques can be debilitating and the last thing you want to hear. I found myself constantly caught in the cognitive dissonance of the ways of the Kingdom and the ways of the American church - tossed back and forth between expectation and calling. So, each time I heard those responses, I would take them to Jesus. Pouring out my heart (which usually sounded something like, “I don’t know if I’m strong enough for this!!”) 

Just as my panicked, people-pleasing was about to take over and I was tempted to get caught up in the current of pragmatism, I would hear a voice saying, “I didn’t ask you to figure it all out. I asked you to love. Keep going. I’ve got this.”

So we’ve kept going - this unorthodox, messy, upside down, beautiful, and sometimes fragile life in the community following Jesus. It doesn’t always make sense to us, and the way isn’t easy, but isn’t that where God seems to do His best work? 

And while those pragmatic currents are still so strong, and the expectations of American church “success” are sometimes so loud it’s deafening, there are small reminders of God’s faithfulness and a constant invitation to watch Him do His best work in the places we least expect it. ❤️