Linking my Story

"Rockharbor is a community being transformed by Christ to be a catalyst for changing lives in and beyond Orange County." - Rockharbor mission statement

This week in class we've been working in groups on a presentation that will be hypothetically used in my church, Rockharbor. We are supposed to present a pitch for a multifaceted curriculum to a hypothetical church education committee (the rest of the class will be the real audience). The curriculum is supposed to touch one or more groups of a church and we have freedom in what we will teach and how we will go about teaching it, as long as we use a variety of learning styles and engage multiple intelligences.

I'm excited for this project and one of the things that it has brought to mind is story-linking, which we're reading about in Anne Wimberly's African-American Christian Education, and how much of my Christian story is linked with the story of Rockharbor.

I began attending Rockharbor in the fall of 2001, but I had been recently wounded by an experience with a ministry leader, so I mostly sat in the back of the church and chose not to interact with anyone, especially those people who appeared to be in charge. I was in the middle of a four year healing process at the time, so I just simply attended for that first year. After the following summer, I heard clearly from God that while I might remain in my healing season a bit longer ( I had a lot of work to do), I needed to step out and find some community beyond that. So a friend and I joined a Life Group on Balboa Island. And the rest is history. Four years leading Life Group. Hours and hours setting up, tearing down and loading the trailer. Counting the offering. Filling in for the receptionist. Stuffing envelopes. Ushering on Sunday. Driving to the printer. Praying at the crosses around the room. Defining moments and defining seasons.

It's been interesting to tell my group about Rockharbor from a perspective that is as objective as I can be. For me, it is family and I feel so many conflicting things about it. I love it more than anything, but I hate a lot of things about it too. It is so closely woven together with my own narrative, it's interesting to step back and look at it as a church from someone else's perspective. I find it easier than I thought I would to admit its faults and blind spots and yet, I want to make sure my group knows how lovable it is, in all its faulty flawedness. A church really is the people and when it comes to Rockharbor, so many people think it's this thing or that thing (usually so hip and young, or so alterna-church and emergent, or such a mega-church with 7,000 people every weekend) but I want them to know the inside, my friends and my staff people there who are flawed and lovely, trying their best to follow Jesus missionally, reflecting on God's goodness personally, doing a lot of things rightly and some things wrongly.

My personal story with Jesus can't be told without Rockharbor. It is in my story and I am in its story. I'm not the poster-child for it (I'm much too much of a misfit) but I still want people to see it and know it and love it as much as I do, and be able to see past the 7,000 people and the nightclub services, to a ragtag group of volunteers that love Jesus and are trying to do church in a real way.