I have been wanting to write about Sojourn Bible Church for quite awhile, but it has felt too emotional and unformed as we’ve been living, and healing, in community again.
Learning from my brothers and sisters in Christ around the world has been the highlight of all my travels since my first adventure here in Australia 16 years ago. God gifted me with a couple lifelong friends, who I get to see again within the month! Woo-hoo!
The fellowship we experienced in Swansea and Tenby while we were in Wales for our honeymoon 15 years ago was incomparably richer than any experience as a tourist. We also learned much from God and others in Guatemala and Nicaragua in 2003 and 2006.
It’s fascinating learning about our brothers’ and sisters’ very different experiences, and their perceptions of our culture. And the love and hope we have in common is even sweeter. The loving hospitality we’ve experienced from Christians all around the world runs deeper than and across every culture.
Here in Brisbane we have gotten to share this joy with our children too. Sunday quickly became everyone’s favorite day of the week back in August. Each Sunday we get on the bus across the street at 8:45, then hike down the hill from the bus stop to Sojourn Bible Church, which meets on a primary school campus.
We help set up chairs, then Lewis and Stewart play handball or tiggy with the their friends before Sunday school. Wesley and Twill play outside in the dirt, climb trees, chase geckos. If it’s wet they read books, play catch with Chris, or look for abandoned balls behind the chair racks.
At 10:30 we come together for the service, all singing together, reading the Bible, praying. Then the younger kids go back to play in creche, and Lewis and Stewart sit with us during the message. Afterwards people bring out morning tea and the kids enjoy snacks and run free again, until we finally pull them away to the bus stop around 1pm.
It’s been so good to actually get to know people. When we’re there for nearly 4 hours every week, and it’s a small enough community that you can know everyone, it really feels like family. Lewis and Stewart have made such good friends at church that most weeks they count down the days until Sunday again. And Wesley and Twill never want to leave when it’s time to catch the bus home. One day, months ago, Twill ran up to me and said, “Mama, I talked to another kid!” He would never do that if I were standing right there. The freedom has been good for him.
It’s this safe freedom, I’m realizing, that we are all so thankful for. In 10 years of parenting we’ve never had a consistent, safe environment like this, besides family gatherings, where the kids can run free and we’re not on constant head-counting alert. It’s been very healing to experience the safety of such a loving community. And it has grown us all in big ways to get to have this freedom.
Healing has also come for me simply from real and tangible ways that we’ve been able to love and be loved. From people reaching out to me when I was upset to sharing meals and helping set up chairs. This is where I realize I was hitting a wall back home with church. I was buying into the consumer driven approach to church that simply evaluates the pastor and rates his preaching, as though church is a service I’m shopping around for, like everything else.
But here it’s somehow been very clear to me that church isn’t about the preaching. It’s not about rating the pastor’s performance. It’s not a place, either, or a building. Church is quite simply a community of people who take Jesus at His Word, and live it out, loving each other as best we can in our own sinfulness.
The preaching has been encouraging. In fact, I would highly recommend listening to the last four messages Wez gave this month, looking at who God is and what it actually means for day to day life. But I haven’t agreed with absolutely everything spoken from up front, or felt like I have to in order to be loved here. Jesus said that the world will know we are His by the love we have for each other in community. Sojourn is a place where God is glorified in the love of the family.
That said, there’s an even deeper way that God is healing me through the closer, smaller community. I am learning that church can be so good without being perfect. I have struggled a lot with unrealistic expectations, and it’s been so good to see that real love in community is still going to be messy. There have been times when I have felt judged or misunderstood, but I haven’t been able to run. In not running, I am learning that it can be my own insecurities, and imagination, that isolate me from people. And even if it’s not my imagination, love covers over a multitude of sins.
We are so thankful for the time here, and thankful that we have one more week left in January when we return from Sydney too. It’s not going to be easy to say good-bye. But I rest in incredible peace, because God is in control and knows what he is doing with us. I have been so thankful for the practical encouragement from this last series Wez preached.
Because God is gracious, I don’t have to prove myself.
Because God is good, I don’t have to look elsewhere.
Because God is great, I don’t have to be in control.
Because God is glorious, I don’t have to fear people.
I often look to community and other people instead of to God himself. But He is the vine. These simple truths have been the encouragement I really needed as we take another leap of faith into a new country again soon. Sojourn has been an incredible gift, but it is the Giver who I can count on, no matter where we go.