We came for the music. We
stayed for the community.
The western sun brilliant in
the cloudless sky. Thursday’s twilight approaching. A sample of a local brew safely perched in
the cup-holder in my blue fabric sling chair.
Some Gouda and Wheat Thins for in between sips. Live jazz like you hear in the big city,
right here in downtown small city. The
crowd was an eclectic mix of boomers and millennials, of X-ers and Z-ers, and
whatever today’s toddler generation will be named. No one asked who anyone loved, married, or
didn’t. I couldn’t tell the citizens from the guests as a thousand folks mixed
and mingled, danced and laughed.
I didn’t love the music. I
did love the food. A buffet of food trucks to feed every appetite: Asian, Mexican,
Greek, American. We found old friends
and we sat together, laughing about getting old, admiring how diverse our city
had become. Where did all of these people come from, we wondered? These were
the people our growing economy is bringing to town, giving them gatherings to
entice and retain, we surmised. The future and the past all together, sitting
in random rows, as dogs and babies entertained.
An unintentional intentional community had formed right around us.
A community drawn by the
light; by the bread; by the wine; by the friends of many languages and nations.
And by the music.
I asked my wife, only half in
jest, ‘I wonder where all of these people go to church?’ The answer is that
some 60% of them don’t attend. And for
the other 40%, they divide into churches of many tribes with many rules and
admission tests, lest ‘impurity’ stain each other’s tribe.
I can only begin to imagine
the joy on Jesus’ face as the community gathers on Thursday nights in the
public square…all God’s children. I can
only imagine the quizzical frown on Jesus’ face as the Sunday community
continues two centuries of failure to replicate that picture of Thursday’s
community.
When did we decide that the
people we party with on Thursday could not worship with us on Sunday? Talk
about fields ripe for harvest.
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