Since I have returned from the Gay Christian Network Conference I have been spending time both thinking/writing about my own experiences there and reading those of my fellow attendees. Today I want you to hear from Sonja Faith Lund, a beautiful soul and precious follower of Jesus. I pray her message will inspire us to be mindful of the secret burdens that those sitting next to us in our church pews may be carrying...May the church, one day, be a place where ALL are truly welcome to Come as You Are! Read On...
On David Crowder's song; Come As You Are...Listen To 'Come As You Are'
"Okay so let me talk about this song for a minute. It's gorgeous.
It's one of the first songs we sang in a general session at the GCN Conference, and I was tearing up (pretty sure everyone was) and for me, it wasn't just because it's a stunning song that had words which seemed to reach out to me personally and grab my attention:
"Oh wanderer, come home/you're not too far/so lay down your hurt/lay down your heart/come as you are”
No, the reason I'm still thinking about this song over a week later is related to a phrase that pops up in American Christian circles a fair bit:
"Church (or Christianity) should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
Essentially, if your life is relatively stable, things are going good, church should encourage you to go outside of yourself and help others. If you're unstable, suffering, mourning, etc., church should be where you get respite from your pain and encouragement to keep going.
My whole time in Washington, so most of my life, my family attended a church in a wealthy part of the city. Because it could be safely assumed that most of us in the congregation were privileged and doing alright for ourselves, the sermons and such skewed much more toward the "afflicting the comfortable" approach. Which is fine, I suppose, until there's folks like me who quietly slide from "comfortable" to "afflicted". Folks like me who realize one day that their own church, and hundreds of millions of fellow Christians, don't want them just as they are, and have to deal with that exhausting emotional mess.
I'm finding myself surrounded--not just by the church where I grew up, but a lot of places--by the message that I should be Going Out There and Doing the Lord's Work when all I want is a community which will stand by me and assure me that everything is going to be okay. I don't need a push out the door, I need welcoming arms beckoning me inside.So then here's this conference, and here's this song. This song which says nothing about preparing you to go be a missionary or join the Peace Corps or whatever, but instead just gently assures you that there is a home for you and you can go there and find rest. I needed this so much. So very, very much.”
-Sonja Faith Lund
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