Knowledge of God

As I posted yesterday, God showed me a bit of how he likes to work when I visited Minnesota with my fiance last weekend. Specifically, he helped me to understand the power of reunion and testimony.

Throughout college, seminary, and post-seminary internships, I tried to visit my Midwestern hometown at least a couple of times a year. In the summers I'd go camping with my friends in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and in the winters I'd try to make it back for the usual family events.

 Whenever I'd return, with some trepidation I'd visit my home church: would I be welcomed back? How different would the people and/or places be? How different might I be? The trips, though, would always be great and I usually came back feeling refreshed after reuniting with old friends.

This time around, however, when my pastor found out that I was returning, he asked me immediately if I would be available to preach at our church, Church of All Nations. First of all, in some ways I'm really not on par with those who have been invited to the pulpit at CAN: Greg Boyd, Darrell Guder, Allan Boesak have all preached there. Second, Sundays are pretty tough for a pastor to be away from his calling (in my case Seattle), so I was tempted to say no. 

Good thing I didn't. 

What my pastor, Rev. Jin S. Kim, saw was that, while a prophet is not always welcome in his hometown, it's with one's home community that a testimony often has its greatest impact. It's one's home that knows most thoroughly where you've come from, understands the history that you carry with you, and has the advantage of seeing the work of Christ in you against that backdrop. In other words, they know when you're just talking smoothly, and when Christ has really messed you up. 

And so I shared this past Sunday with my home, and I got to see how God likes to use the tools of reunion and testimony together. Truth be told, it was quite difficult to prepare for this. There was so much I wanted to say, and there were so many I wanted to impress. But, thankfully, I was able to focus on one thing: what has God been doing in my life, and how can I express it to those he gathered, and that was all that needed to be said: after I spoke, Pastor Jin shared how, even though we didn't plan it, my testimony lined up precisely with the previous week's message, and with a challenge that's been becoming more and more prominent at CAN.

So let me turn this back to you: are you at home or abroad? If you're abroad, what would you say to your home community if given the chance? What has God been doing in you in the time you've been gone? If you're at home, when was the last time you asked a visitor to share their testimony with you? Would you be ready to hear it if they did?