You're Welcome Here | 104 Houston St. Pt2 | Part 1 (Megan Lawton)

TRANSCRIPT: YOU’RE WELCOME HERE

If you ask my husband, he’ll confirm I don’t tend to stick with things if I’m not sure I’ll master them. My mom goes back to a story from my childhood to illustrate this point. When I was three years old, I got so frustrated my art skills didn’t match my dad’s, I gave up. I didn’t want to color, fingerpaint, or draw. I was done. It didn’t matter that my motor skills were barely developed, or that my dad is a professional graphic designer. I wasn’t immediately great – not just good, but the best – at being an artist, so I gave up.

“But I’m not great yet” was my first thought when Rob asked Courtney and me to co-lead Collective Church. I felt overwhelmed and underqualified. We didn’t go to seminary. Neither of us has 22 years of preaching experience. We were both raised in traditions where women were welcome to lead Sunday school or facilitate a women’s Bible study, but certainly weren’t “called by God” to pastor a church.

There’s no way I’m going to be as good at being a preacher, let alone a pastor, as Rob. My pride and my insecurity both said, “absolutely not.” And then God reminded me of a few things.

Moses first rejected God’s call to lead the Israelites out of Egypt because of a speech impediment (Exodus 4:10). Jonah hopped on a boat to Tarshish to avoid God’s call to preach to the city of Ninevah (Jonah 1:3). Gideon questioned God’s call to rescue his people from the Midianites because he was the weakest member of the weakest clan in Manasseh (Judges 6:15). But God told each of these prophets the same thing. “It’s not your power that matters. It’s mine.”

So, maybe there’s room for two women who have consistently been told there’s no place in “Biblical” Christian leadership for them. Maybe, in this specific season, God isn’t looking for deep theological knowledge or extensive public speaking experience. Maybe this church can be sustained by two people (and their husbands and lots of helpful members) who love God and want to love His people well.

So I set aside my pride and insecurity for a minute and I asked God, “What does it mean for Courtney and I to help Collective Church continue to exist? What’s the point of being here?”

I went back through Rob’s sermons, old blog posts, and the stories he wrote about the first few years of Collective Church’s existence. I listened to his series “104 Houston St.” on Collective Church’s founding principles.

I read and reread our vision statement.

“Collective Church seeks to be a community of Christ-followers who live by faith, are known for love, and are a voice of hope in this world. We submit to the Bible as God’s written word and our authority in this world.”

I read and reread our six core values. The first is love.

“Love. Above all else, we seek to embody Jesus’ greatest commandment, which was to love. We believe that, when in doubt, we should love.”

Love. So much of what Rob has taught over the past eight years has gone back to love. Loving God and loving one another. It’s what Courtney and I found in this church that we had a hard time finding in any other church we’ve attended. It’s what Jesus said is the greatest commandment. Love God and love His people.

So that’s what today’s sermon will be about. For the next three weeks, Courtney and I will be going through a part 2 of Rob’s original series “104 Houston St.” We’ll be answering the question, “Where do we go from here?” For my part, I think the best thing we can do moving forward is continue this tradition of loving God and loving His people well. And that starts by remembering God first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Growing up, I didn’t feel very loved by God. I knew it was important to show love and to be a source of love, but the god I was taught about in church had a lot of conditions to meet before his love was earned. And I was far from a perfect Christian. And like I said before, if I can’t do something perfectly on the first try, I’d rather not do it at all.

While I never felt good enough for God, I did feel like I was faking it well… for while. I was pretty good at being a “good” Christian. I grew up going to church. I was in Sunday school every week. I sat quietly in the back of the room, listening to my parents’ small group discussions. I colored in the pictures of Peter walking on water and bread broken by Jesus to feed thousands. I knew all the words to “Jesus Loves Me” by age 4 and had John 3:16 memorized by age 6.

In middle school, it all seems pretty straightforward. Avoid the “unforgivable” sins of underage-drinking, drugs, and premarital sex. Ask forgiveness as soon as a curse word slips through your lips. Don’t gossip, unless it’s your Sunday school teacher talking to your mom about one of the other kids’ parents (then it’s just ‘reporting the facts’).

Whenever given the opportunity, I sang God’s praises and worked to convert as many lost sheep as possible. I avoided the “unforgiveable” sins. I marked every box on the checklist. I was a “good” Christian, until I wasn’t.

As I’ve said before, I live with mental illness that wasn’t diagnosed until a few years ago. One of the worst (and longest) depressive episodes I’ve experienced began my last two years of high school and went into my first year of college. And this was in the early 2000s when there was still a lot of stigma around mental illness.

Any time someone discussed depression in the Church, it was quickly followed with the disclaimer that depression is a sign you’re living far from God because God is joy and peace. Depression is grown from doubt and sadness, which are not of God. If your depression lasts for more than a few days, it’s because you’re living in sin and/or not praying hard enough to be healed. And of course, if you gave into your depression and committed suicide, it was a selfish act and a one-way ticket to hell. I also have mentioned before, I didn’t tell anyone in my life about my sadness, what I now know was depression. This was a secret I couldn’t let anyone in on. No one could know how selfish I was. No one could know what a bad Christian I was for doubting God and living in sadness. So I put on a fake smile, and my secret grew into shame.

In her 2012 TED Talk, Brené Brown calls shame the ‘gremlin’ that says, “Never good enough.” And, “Who do you think you are?”

She continues, “Shame is highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders… Shame, for women, is this web of unattainable, conflicting, competing expectations about who we’re supposed to be.” She says shame, “needs three things to grow exponentially. Secrecy, silence, and judgment.”

Unfortunately, the church culture of my childhood and adolescence lent themselves to exactly those three things.

And that’s when things became a little more complicated. I ran out of verses to memorize. The answer to every question seemed to be, “Just have faith.” The more my anxiety and depression grew, the farther I felt from God.

I tried. I really did. I fought harder. “Sinned” less. Talked about Jesus more.

I put on the mask of a “good” Christian girl. Always smiling, never in serious pain. I sat with my youth group friends and made fun of the “bad” kids partying on the weekends or making out just a little too long in the hallways. I never opened the door for condemnation. Never allowed anyone to see the “truth” – that I hadn’t earned the love of God. And my shame grew.

It became harder and harder to keep the mask on. The more I felt like a “bad” Christian wearing a mask, the more I felt unloved by God, and the less I loved myself. So, I started looking for love other places.

By the time I graduated high school, I had committed one of the “unforgivable” sins. I wasn’t a virgin anymore. Hiding my depression was exhausting, but surprisingly easy. Hiding this information – not so much. My friends and, awkwardly, my family, knew this detail. My mom gave me a book on “Godly” relationships which called pre-marital sex a ‘detestable’ sin that essentially guaranteed the sinner would live a life of shame and singleness. I was destined to die alone, unloved, unless I did some serious repenting.

But I was a teenager dealing with a lot of shame in a lot of different areas of my life, feeling unloved by my friends, family, and God. And, at the time, I was willing to do whatever it took for a chance to be loved – or honestly, even just liked, by the guys in my life. I’ve been called horrible names and a “lost cause.” I was told it’s hypocritical for me to read my Bible or go to church when I was so clearly living a lifestyle God hated. These things weren’t said by cruel unbelievers. They were said by my loving Christian friends. And the worst part is, I believed every one of these things about myself.

By the time I got to college, I fully believed God did not – could not – love me. I was filled with shame and honestly hated myself. Combine this with undiagnosed depression, easy access to alcohol, and a campus full of guys seemingly interested in me, and it’s a recipe for some pretty dark nights. Which became a few very dark years.

It turns out, I’m not the only one who had a tough time going to church after high school.

According to Lifeway Research in 2019, 66% of Americans who attended a Protestant church regularly dropped out for at least a year between the ages of 18 and 22. Of the five most common reasons given, two were “church members who seemed judgmental or hypocritical” and “no longer feeling connected to people in their church.”

For specific demographics, the church can be an unwelcoming, or even unsafe place.

In 2013, Pew Research showed 29% of LGBTQ+ Americans have been made to feel unwelcome in a place of worship. Unsurprisingly, the survey found LGBTQ+ adults tend to be less religious than the general population with almost half claiming no religious affiliation. Those surveyed found most religious groups to be unfriendly towards the LGBTQ+ community, including Evangelical and non-evangelical Protestant churches. Another Pew Research survey of the general public found, among those who attend religious services at least weekly, two-thirds say homosexuality conflicts with their religious beliefs.

What’s the point of church? If it’s about building community, this isn’t a community I want to be a part of. If it’s about growing in relationship with God, forcing people to hide and lie about their experiences is pretty counterintuitive. What kind of relationship is it if you have to hide your thoughts, feelings, and mistakes? I certainly don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who believes my very existence is wrong or evil or sinful. Especially if they’re responsible for that existence.

It's not just our relationship with God that suffers.

In a 2014 journal article, authors Patricia Ehrkamp and Caroline Nagel examine what they call, ‘the limits of welcome’ among Southern Christian communities of faith and recent immigrants. The authors “argue that churches are political spaces” where “as Christian ethics of hospitality come up against worldly social boundaries of race and legal status, the actual practice of hospitality in these churches falls short of biblical ideals.”

In other words, when the choice is between showing love and grace to immigrants arriving in the US from south of the border, or supporting immigration policies which serve to make life hard for these immigrant communities, Christian church members tend to choose their politics, leaving us with churches that are largely unwelcome and unloving for Hispanic immigrants.

And sometimes, choosing perfection and the appearance of a membership made up of “good” Christians can be downright dangerous.

Despite a 2019 Institute for Family Studies report finding 1-in-4 couples report interpersonal violence in their current relationship, whether they were highly religious or not, a Lifeway Research study on domestic abuse in the Christian church found, when asked how they would handle a church member filing for divorce and citing domestic violence as a cause, only 56% of pastors would believe domestic violence really happened.

Because of the staunch anti-divorce stance, for any reason, held by most churches, I’ve seen attitudes echoing what I recently read in a meme which said, “Marriage is Hard. Divorce is Hard. Choose Your Hard.” Because of unwelcome, unloving attitudes like this, Lifeway Research found that at least one person stops attending the church in 73% of churches where members know a divorce has occurred. 

It seems a lack of love in church is a more common experience than I thought at 18.

Growing up, I perceived a clear message, “Pray hard enough and God will heal you.” You’ll no longer have physical or mental illness. No longer be gay. No longer feel the impact of living with an abusive spouse.

Many of us come to believe Christianity is a “fix” for all the ailments of being someone who doesn’t fit the picture-perfect version of who God – or really, the American Christian Church – has said you were meant to be. Pray hard enough. Then, you’ll no longer be poor. No longer be an addict. No longer be an outcast. And if you are still living outside of grace, peace, happiness, or love, it must be your fault.

And the result of this dangerous theology, a theology that gives a list of prerequisites to be loved, isn’t just the majority of people being left to feel like they don’t, can’t, never will live up to the expectation of what it means to be a “good” Christian. (Though that would be harmful enough.)

The result is generations of people, entire demographics, anyone who can’t meet this standard of “normal” Christianity, being left to feel unwelcomed, unimportant, and unloved. There is a shame associated with imperfection. With being a woman. With experiences that make you feel the need to apologize and “repent” because they’re so sinful. Or to accept your fate and know you’ll never be forgiven because of your choices. Because these choices make it so God can never love you.

I want to put this on the church I went to as a kid. Or the one I attended as a teenager. But it wasn’t them, it was me. Accurate or not, these were the messages I believed I was given, and the theology I accepted for myself. A theology that meant there was no room for God to love me.

So what did I do? Well, I believed there was a list of conditions to meet before God could possibly love me, so I didn’t see a lot of options. I could change everything about myself, I could lie, or I could leave.

I tried to change, and I could never reach that level of perfection needed to earn God’s love. I tried to lie. I put on the mask of being a “good” Christian for as long as I could before I was found out. And then, I left.

I believed God had rejected me, so in turn, I rejected God. I didn’t want anything to do with church or anyone who claimed to be a Christian. Since I didn’t have God, I turned to people.

People manage shame in different ways. Some overcompensate with arrogance. Others hide in addiction. I became the ultimate people-pleaser. I didn’t believe I was worthy of love. I certainly didn’t love myself. But maybe I could at least get people to like me.

But the funny thing about making choices based on shame and insecurity is it tends to result in the opposite of what you want. Or at least, it did for me. I was so clingy. So needy. So emotionally dependent on other people for my sense of worth, I drove everyone away. I lost my friends. The guys I’d spent two years in college begging to like me finally wanted nothing to do with me. My family was five hours away. And I was alone. Trapped in the desert of Lubbock, Texas. I didn’t know what to do. For the first time since I got to college, I didn’t think going to a party would make me feel any better. So instead, I went to church.

I’m not sure what I was looking for. I think I was just finally out of options. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and this was the one place where I at least knew I wasn’t going to be running into a bunch of people I’d drunkenly embarrassed myself in front of the weekend before.

I sat in the back row, of course. While waiting for everyone to file in and find their seats, I sat on Facebook (Instagram wasn’t a thing yet) and looked at all the pictures from the party I’d chosen not to attend the night before. I was seriously questioning my choice to skip a night of drinking in favor of sitting alone at a place where I didn’t know anyone, where I surely wasn’t welcome, when a girl put her hand in my face and said, “Hi! I’m Michelle!”

Michelle asked a little about me, and when I said it was my first time being back at church for a while, she asked if I wanted to get coffee together. One coffee date became more, and soon she invited me to her small group. I told her I wasn’t sure anyone would want me there, and she assured me that wouldn’t be the case. Through Michelle, I met several women who helped me get to know God in a new way.

For the first time, I began to read the Bible on my own. Not simply memorizing the verses I was told were the most important, but really trying to understand what God was saying in every chapter.

The more I read, the more I realized the Jesus I’d been brought up to believe in – the one whose love is conditional, who gives a list of rules to follow and boxes to check before you’re welcome inside a church – isn’t the Jesus of the Bible.

In fact, I learned the gospel wasn’t written to be the weapon that had been wielded against me. It was written to be an invitation to know and love this God who created me with love and kindness and grace. The God who says I’m not defined by the worst mistakes I’ve made, or created broken and given a small chance at finding healing. I was created whole, and loved exactly as I was. Exactly as I am.

The more I grew in relationship with God, the more time I spend in the Word and in prayer, the more I realized God does see my emotions as valid. He loves me because of who I am – not in spite of it. God says, “Cast all your cares on Him (1 Peter 5:7),” not as a trick, but so He can help us process and manage the parts of our minds and experiences that no longer serve us so we can become more of who we were always meant to be.

I was in shock. I was so relieved, and thankful, and honestly, a little pissed off. Where was this God of forgiveness when I was crying alone in my room, told no one would ever love me? Where was this God of grace and peace when I was being called names and made to believe my Creator hated my very existence?

I ran away from God because I was told He didn’t love me. I came back to God because I realized He’s so much bigger and better than the God I was raised to believe in – the small, sad god made to resemble the people teaching me about him. The god who, funny enough, hated all the same people our church members hated. The god who, conveniently, didn’t want anyone to do or be the things that tend to make middle-class suburbanites uncomfortable. The god who would look at the child he created and say, “You are not good enough.”

For the first time, I met the God of the gospel. The God who created me, who knew and loved me before He formed the earth’s foundation (Psalm 139:13-14). Who knew I’d make mistakes and forgave me anyway. Past tense. He chose to forgive me before I was even born. Not in the way we tend to think of forgiveness – the kind of forgiveness that requires a sincere apology and still holds a grudge. But real, true forgiveness based in Christ’s salvation and God’s eternal, unimaginable, bigger than we can comprehend, love.

I learned to love a God who loved me first. It was a slow process, but it changed everything.

From then on, I had no patience for Christians who claimed Christ’s name while making His children believe they were unloved. And yet, that’s what I continued to find. Churches refusing to admit attendees who are gay or divorced or unmarried with children. Christians who knew they couldn’t go to anyone at the church for help with their addiction, abusive relationships, or mental illness. I’ve spoken with so many people who are in the exact place I was. Running from a god they were told to believe in. A god who hates and condemns them for who they are or what they’ve done.

But that’s not my God. And it’s not the God of Collective Church.

Courtney and I are not Rob. We don’t have seminary degrees or decades of preaching experience. There are absolutely limitations on our ability to lead this church effectively. It’s part of why we’re SO grateful for Rob and Chris Gibson, and why we’re keeping such a strong emphasis on guest speakers.

What Courtney and I can do is love people well. We can create a safe, loving place where it’s okay to show up exactly as you are. Where it’s okay to be messy and imperfect. (And if you’re looking for polished perfection, you are not going to like me very much.)

When Rob told us he was stepping away from Collective Church, Courtney and I felt overwhelmed and underqualified. We’re still those things, honestly.

But we know what this church means to ourselves and our families, and we know it’s a space worth fighting for. We’ve been loved and welcomed at our low points. We’ve been celebrated and supported at our high points. We know families can be complicated and church trauma is real, and we do not take lightly the privilege of facilitating this community.

For many of our members, this is the family they’ve chosen because their biological families or former churches were no longer safe. There are many churches where doubting, questioning, making mistakes – sometimes even just being honest about who you are as a person – makes you unwelcome or means there will forever be an asterisk by your name. But that’s not the kind of community I want to be a part of.

There are days when I don’t like God. When I’m mad about how things are going. When I doubt His love. And there are days when I doubt God exists at all. But since attending Collective Church, I’ve never felt those thoughts or feelings precluded me from showing up Sunday morning. I’ve never had to worry about letting the wrong thought slip within these walls because Rob built a community where questions and doubts are welcome. Where it’s okay to have big feelings. God can handle our confusion, doubt, and anger. And so can Collective Church.

And that is the commitment Courtney and I make to you all. We will continue to foster that safe space. We will continue to be a refuge for the brokenhearted. To be a source of healing and love for everyone who chooses to walk through our doors or engage with us online.

Whether you’re single, married, in a long-term unmarried relationship, divorced, widowed, in an open or polyamorous relationship. You’re welcome here.

If you’ve been an alcoholic the last forty years or done every drug under the sun. If you had children outside of marriage, or even had an abortion. You’re welcome here.

If you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community – whatever that looks like. Gay, trans, nonbinary, intersex, or you love someone who’s queer. You’re welcome here.

If you’re a survivor of sexual assault or abuse. If you’re an ex-offender. Regardless of documentation status or political affiliation.

Whether you were raised Catholic, Protestant, in another religion or without religion.

Even if you’re currently an atheist, agnostic, or have no idea what category you fit into. You’re welcome here.

And you are loved. God loves you. We love you. Whoever you are. Whatever your experience. You are welcome here.

May you know this, deep in your soul. You are loved. You were created in the image of perfection. God knew exactly who you would be and what you would do in this life. And He loves you.

May you show others the love God has given you. May you see the image of God in every person you encounter. May you see the image of God in yourself.

May you find grace and peace and love and acceptance here. May you find a community of believers who love you as God loves you.

“And may you, being rooted and established in love, have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! (Ephesians 3:17-21).”