For a long time, I didn’t write much about my church. I needed, for a long time, to talk and write about other things, to make a way and a voice for myself that wasn’t only defined by the pastor’s-daughter part of my life.
But this church of mine, this sister: It’s not only the church of my childhood. It’s the place where I pray, sing, confess, take communion now. It’s the community that shapes me, walks with me, instructs me, holds me now.
I’m not little anymore, and neither is she. But she’s still my sister.
You learn all sorts of things growing up the way I did. And one of them is this: The labels never suffice. The articles and blogs and books and outside opinions never will capture the real thing. They’ll reduce it to policy, numbers, data.
They fail to capture what a church actually is: real live actual humans, showing up day after day, year after year, building something durable and lovely over time, together, with prayer and forgiveness and love.
They forget that it isn’t an institution. It’s a family. She’s my sister.
