Posted on by Renee Meyer · 2 Comments

Small Church {Finding Meaning & Connection on Sundays}

I go to a big church.

And I love it. I love what a large church provides for me: Great teaching. Large and well organized children’s programs, vibrant worship with great production values, a wide variety of people making it easy to find kindred spirits and friends in my life stage.

Church is more than a building or a service, church is people. Community. Connection. And church should be a place where we learn to love those who are different from us, and find connection across life stage and natural affinity. That can be a lot harder to provide than good teaching, organized programs and exciting worship.

My church works hard to create welcoming community and connection (and I’m part of that work and welcoming), but in a bigger church, it is easy to go wide rather than deep.

I have the great privilege to be part of a team that puts on a college worship service a few blocks from our university campus. My involvement in college ministry and this service allows me to have the best of both worlds: I am part of a larger church with amazing resources and strong teaching. And my Sunday experience is close and connected, one I’ve had a voice in creating. I get to go to a big church and also have a small church experience.

College students are headed into finals next week, so this Sunday will be our last College Worship Hour until September. I am very much looking forward to a different schedule, and more family time while the kids are out of school and I work fewer hours. And during the summer, Sundays are truly “weekend”, as opposed to work days.

But I am going to greatly miss our little college worship service.

I will miss having a Sunday experience where I know nearly everyone’s name, can spot newcomers on sight and welcome them, where I can hug and be hugged.

I will miss having a more participatory, discussion oriented teaching time. A smaller group (we have between 100-150 each Sunday) allows us the freedom to include discussion times with those around, as well as large group. Most of us learn less by hearing and more by participating. I am grateful for a small space where there is more than one expert voice teaching about God, where we can learn from the Body of Christ, where a variety of voices discuss truth (with a pastor/teacher to guide us and keep us on track, of course. The discussion happens in the context of a traditional sermon.)

But most of all, I will miss communion. I don’t know at what point protestant churches dropped the Lord’s Supper as a weekly and regular part of their worship. But I wish we could pick it back up again. I wish we could pick it up as a weekly practice, and I wish we could make it communal and connected. Every Evangelical Church I’ve gone to practices communion every 6 weeks or so, and it is very individual. Small cups of juice, tiny cracker, passed around. You take your small portion of Jesus and you serve yourself.

Though it would be next to impossible in a big church, I LOVE the way we practice the Eucharist at College Worship Hour.

It is the centerpiece of our time together, and it is an invitation to come and receive Jesus. We use real bread. We have communion stations and servers. There is an extended time of silence or quiet music to think and pray, and when I am ready, I go to one of several places in the room. I step forward and cup my hands, telling the servers my name. And rather than taking, I receive. Someone (someone I know by name as well) hands me a chunk of bread and says, “Renee, the body of Christ was broken for you.” And then I dip my bread in the cup of juice and hear, “Renee, the blood of Christ was shed for you.”

Every Sunday I receive Christ.

And it is always meaningful, my eyes often pricking with tears. It is meaningful, and it helps me feel connected with Jesus. Some weeks I sit and pray and think for a while before moving toward the nearest communion servers. And some weeks I practically run to receive Jesus as soon as possible.

Maybe anything we do regularly, week after week, looses meaning and becomes routine. Maybe if enough years go by, I won’t feel such a deep hunger to receive Christ in the bread and cup. Maybe I won’t feel a weekly need to “remember Him.” (Luke 22:19)

But I don’t think so.

And though I love you, still we’re strangers
Prisoners in these lonely hearts
And though our blindness separates us
Still His light shines in the dark
And His outstretched arms are still strong enough to reach
Behind these prison bars to set us free
So may peace rain down from Heaven
Like little pieces of the sky
Little keepers of the promise
Falling on these souls the drought has dried
In His Blood and in His Body
In this Bread and in this Wine
Peace to you
Peace of Christ to you

“Peace”, Rich Mullins

What helps you find meaning and connection at church?

SmallChurch (1)

Posted on by Renee Meyer

A Forgiveness Crossroads {Good Friday}

As I sat in the quiet at a Good Friday service today, I was distracted by hurt, a recent injury, an ongoing “discussion” (fight) I am having with someone in my head.

I worked hard to focus in on the story, the great drama of Good Friday. But my injured feelings kept intruding.

And then I read Jesus’ words,

Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.”

I guess I have always skipped over those words before, “Jesus forgives. Check.”

But today they are new. Today they are for me.

“They do not know what they are doing.” But those who betrayed, tortured, murder Jesus did know what they were doing, right? It seems pretty intentional.

And those who hurt me also knew what they were doing. It isn’t betrayal, torture or murder, but it is a deliberate choice. It seems pretty intentional.

But do they know? Perhaps those who betrayed, tortured, murdered Jesus lost sight of His humanity. And had they known they were turning over and slaughtering the Messiah, the Son of God, surely they would have made a different decision?

And perhaps the wrongs I struggle to forgive also come from those who “do not know what they are doing.”

One way or another, I am faced this Good Friday with a choice. A forgiveness crossroads. Can I read Jesus’ words and not apply them to my own situation?

Posted on by Renee Meyer

When it is hard, and feels like the death of something

I am in a hard season. Some hard things you see coming, but this one took me by surprise. After months and years of daily ups and downs in a relatively safe and happy routine, we woke up to a different world. There is pain here, and loss and change and a whole bevy of unknowns, all those things we spend our lives trying to avoid. I am having to die to some things right now, especially the illusion of my own control and security.

I am not alone in this season, not the only one facing a sort of death. I am here with a neighbor facing a biopsy. A dear friend dealing with chronic pain and illness, and another facing the loss of her job and calling. I am here with friends in life long mental health battles and more than one friend walking through mental illness and the resultant questions and behavior with their children. And I am here with friends who uncovered abuse in their children’s lives.

That is an awful lot of hard, a lot of pain, a lot of death. Meanwhile we come to the end of the Lenten season, as the worldwide church prepares to relive and reenact the great story of the Christian faith, life out of death. Read more

Posted on by Renee Meyer · 2 Comments

6 Spiritual Practices Giving Me Life Right Now

In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.

But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action. (James 1:21-25, The Message)

In my early years as a Jesus follower, I tended to focus mostly on what I thought or believed about God. After all, “ What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” (A. W. Tozer)

I had so many false beliefs about God, lies that infected my God view, there was plenty to keep me busy just learning about God.

But before too long, I found myself in great danger of being merely a hearer of God’s Word, rather than actually living differently because of Him. It is a danger I face to this day. In American Christian culture it is so easy, if not encouraged, to let the whole of our lives with God be defined by where we are on Sunday mornings and what we say we believe about God, rather than actually living out of truth.

I want to run far away from “letting the Word go in one ear and out the other.” I want to live this call in James 1 to let God landscape me with truth like a good gardener. I want to act on what I hear, stick with the truth until it bears the fruit of delight and affirmation. Read more

Posted on by Renee Meyer

When you are just hoping to escape notice {Devotional}

In Bible study this week, we talked about how important it is that we live in the belief that Jesus is the answer to the question “Who is God”, Jesus is the exact representation of God’s nature. I wrote the following meditation for us to do together as a conclusion to that discussion.

Think of times when you’ve struggled – either with sin, or discouragement, or even disbelief. Maybe you’re in one of those times of struggle right now. Do you see God responding to you the way Jesus responded to people in similar struggles when He was walking this earth?

To help us get our minds around Jesus as a picture of God’s character, we’re going to look at one of my favorite stories, in which I think we see many aspects of God’s character. We see that He is a healer. He is almighty. We see His loving Father-ness. We see Him bring peace, wholeness, shalom in every sense of the word. Read more