Why can’t I just do all of it?
One of my favorite Taylor Swift lines is, “When you are young they assume you know nothing. But I knew everything…”
Taylor’s right—at least in some part. The lyric resonates tremendously with me.
I grew up in a wonderful church. A wonderful church that had flaws like EVERY OTHER CHURCH in the world. One of the things that was always strange to me was the rigid roles everyone had to play. It was like characters on a TV show. There’s “the smart one,” “the funny one,” “the pretty one,” you get the picture. Except in church there’s “the firery one,” “the pray-er",” “the musical one,” “the one whose really good at explaining things,” “the one whose really good at getting you excited” and none of these EVER overlapped. EVER.
At least that’s how it felt to me.
It felt like in ministry there are uniforms you put on and they’re each distinct and clearly defined.
And none of them felt like me.
Oh sure, people tried to tell me which one I was made to wear. But something in me always kicked back. Now I’d say it was Holy Spirit kicking back.
I wasn’t born to wear a man-made costume of religion. I was born to reflect the image of the invisible God and who is ANYONE to say they know EXACTLY what that looks like?
How BOLD to say anyone can DEFINE what God’s plan looks like in someone’s life.
So stand firm if you’re made to do things differently and BE QUIET if you don’t understand someone’s path.
It’s not your job to understand and only one of you will stand before the judgment seat of Christ one day and give an account.
“Let’s start from the very beginning, a very good place to start.”
I sit here writing this first blog entry feeling somewhat hopeful, somewhat apprehensive and somewhat as if we’re on the precipice of something important. Not that important like, the 4th grade social studies fair you’ve been preparing for weeks for; but the kind of important like, “If we get this wrong we could totally screw up a lot of people in light of eternity.” And that’s heavy.
This is heavy. Venturing out, sharing our stories, our experience, our perspective is heavy.
But so is staying silent.
Pretending like everything is just “okay” begins to weigh on you. Questioning people and systems while still smiling through the procedures starts to eat away at you until you either decide, “It’s time for change or it’s time to walk away.” Well, MANY (and understandably so) have chosen the latter. But VIP is my ode to the former. It’s my attempt to change the system, expose the brokenness, let Christ in the cracks because after all, it’s about His body.
I still believe in the CHURCH.
I still believe it’s the PRIMARY way people will come to know the love of the Father and the sacrifice of the King and I believe it’s worth working through all the brokenness, pain and confusion.
So here we go…SEASON ONE.