So the other day we kind of got in the middle of someone else’s domestic, the details of which aren’t important.  But talking about it later, we reflected that our experiences at Northern Community have changed us a bit.  We didn’t hesitate to get involved in an intense situation where once we might have.  And standing in front of a shirtless guy covered in tattoos bleeding from his hand (where he had punched a wall) while Phil tried to calm down a heavily pregnant woman having a panic attack, it occurred to me that what we consider ”normal” in our lives has changed quite a bit.

I mentioned this to Phil and he responded that at our Blended congregation yesterday he watched a group of older ladies calmly sitting around the morning tea table with young guy who was virtually inhaling his food on account of the fact that he had been chroming all morning.  He (Phil) thought that it was a picture of the kingdom.  I think that the other people at Northern Community have changed as well.  In our first couple of years, church members sharing meals with drug affected people would have been pretty weird.

Which goes to show what sterile environments we church people create for ourselves.  And not just church people.  This domestic altercation took place as we were driving to the house of some friends to watch the football.  After the football we drove to my mum and dad’s place and joked whether we would come across another couple in crisis running towards us on the way to their place.  But of course such a thing happening would be unthinkable.  My mum and dad live in the sort of upper middle class suburb which is considered “safe”.  Part of that safeness arises from the fact that people who live there indulge in more socially acceptable crises (BTW, I actually love that my mum and dad live in such a nice area).

But as regards churches, there are many in the Northern Suburbs which contain exclusively people just like us.  The demographic is a little different from where we have ministered in the past, but it is still largely true.  There might be one or two token oddballs or misfits, but generally speaking church is not a place that you go to meet people who are vastly different to you.  And yet somehow over the last couple of years, our lives have butted up against enough people who are different enough to me that it no longer seems weird.  And this is true even though I am not around the building when most of our non-church contacts are.

I love that about Northern Community.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 25th, 2006 at 12:45 pm by dan and is filed under notes from northern. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.