Living in Community

Suburbia was not my home, although it’s where I grew up: in the “Bible belt” in East Tennessee, with churches on every corner and sprawling housing developments filling the blocks in between where we didn’t know our neighbors. The churches were mostly large, and although they were able to create small pockets of community through small groups, Sunday school, youth group, etc., the reality of community was not organically present.

Bible College

When I was nineteen, I left for Bible college in Chicago. Shortly after, I began working with a ministry in the inner city, and there I experienced community in new and profound ways; depending together on Christ for His work in and through us with the ministry team; and reaching out to individuals in their community, in the city.

Visiting home one summer, my father, a family physician, served a short stint as the interim pastor in a “back-hills” church; a patient of his was the pastor, whose dying wish was that my dad would take over for him. So he did. And in that summer, in that sweet country church, there it was again: community – just outside of suburbia, and I hadn’t known it was there.

By the fall of my junior year, God had made it clear that he was calling me to serve in either an urban OR rural setting. Sounds kind of crazy, right? But it’s true! Both environments are centered in community, and I couldn’t wait to see where God was leading me.

At our fall missions conference, I attended a workshop with the Rural Home Missionary Association in an attempt to decipher God’s will for my future. I was one of three students there, and so was my future husband.

Rural Church Ministry

We were married a week after graduation and headed to seminary with the God-given intent of serving in a rural church long-term. My husband worked as a part-time youth pastor during seminary in a small town about 70 miles west of campus. It was a loving community, and although we didn’t live in the town, we gained wonderful training there.

During our time in seminary, God led us to Franklin, Vermont, a little dairy farming community five miles from the Canadian border. God placed in my heart the desire to live in community, and he placed us in the tightest-knit community I have ever seen.

He also provided a job for me teaching music in the elementary school in town (that was miraculous in itself!), which is the hub of the community, and where I get to know and invest in every single child who lives in town and their families by extension.

Incidentally, I have friends who disagree with my decision to work outside the home, but God called me to this work. Please hear this, if you are working inside OR outside the home, and God has called you to that occupation, do it with all your heart, and please don’t ever apologize. He calls each of us to different tasks, which is truly what makes the Body of Christ so intricately beautiful. Be who God has called you to be, and you will not regret it.

“For the body does not consist of one member but of many…
If all were a single member, where would the body be?
As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.”  -I Cor. 12:14, 19-20

 

In my role as pastor’s wife (if I had to delineate it, although I usually don’t), I serve as worship leader most Sundays and often through the gift of hospitality. I don’t lead women’s Bible studies, not because I don’t value them, but because I’m not good at it…dreadful actually. But Anne, Lynn, and Nancy are great at it, so I support them.

I am so grateful for the community God has led us to; I’m thankful that my four children are growing up living in community, and mostly, I’m thankful for the community of believers assembled every week, who are living and serving, however imperfectly, as the body of Christ in Franklin. My heart is here, and I am glad.