Building the Ark

I just returned from our monthly "Reel Faith" where we show movies at the church. We watched "Evan Almighty" a movie that was better than I expected it to be. Even though it was corny, I still found myself laughing at parts of it and somehow identified with God calling Evan and the changes in Evan because he was supposed to build the ark.

Today I had lunch with Yvonne Gilmer Essig who has been hired by our region and the UCC to develop a church in our neighborhood. It was presented to us almost 2 years ago as a new church start that was designed to be African American. We were a little put out because the plan seemed to be literally within a mile of our church. But at this point, I realize that this is going to be very different from our church vision of a diverse service. Yvonne is in her late twenties and my guess is that her emphasis will be on young (emergent) worship and diverse.

As we talked about the neighborhood that we both seek to serve, it seems like it is so hard! It is hard to reach out to the community from an established church like Karl Road and certainly it is hard to start from scratch as she is doing. And somehow, this movie about building the ark resonated for me tonight. Yvonne told me that during her process of discerning this call to come here to Columbus (she was living in Maryland - and her family is still there until June) she couldn't sleep at night. And sometimes that is how God calls us.

I sure don't know much at this point about the ark that we are supposed to be building except that our church is being called to become more diverse and intergenerational and I don't know how to do it. But I believe that step by step God will show me (us) the way. And in the movie Noah's hair turned white - will that happen to me?

I like the idea of "build it and they will come" but - really - how do you build it?