Best Practices

Like many, I am a Christian both in spite of the church and because of the church. I would like to suggest that there are eight ways that congregations can cultivate worship practices that embrace those who bear scars inflicted by Christians.

Overlooking the beauty that is Badlands National Park this summer, I remember feeling at peace. Our group of 50 spread across the breathtaking landscape and took about 15 minutes to just sit in silence, take in the sights, and reflect on our expectations for the week ahead.

Yet this time of reflection and awe came at a price—a price that I was not aware of until later that evening.

That night, our group listened as a Lakota Native American shared his people’s troubling story.

He said the conversation had been about our group and how it seemed like we thought highly of ourselves, standing on the outside of the circle looking in, and not talking to anyone.

“I’ll tell you why I wrote this article: because there’s a freshman in your English 101 class and there’s a guy on your sports team and there’s a 14-year-old kid in your church’s pew who is hiding a pretty big secret too.” Striving to cultivate a more open, inclusive community, Calvin College featured articles written by LGBT students in their student newspaper. We all have opinions on this issue and many are outspoken, on both sides.

While I was a student at Calvin College, one of the things I both enjoyed and struggled with was learning about different issues that related to international development. I loved being exposed to and being able to do meaningful research about issues such as global health, good partnerships, and environmental sustainability. However, what also made this one of the hardest parts of my academic time at Calvin was the recurring question: “What can I do about these issues?”

We pray; we lament; we give to relief agencies. But we also struggle to understand why this is happening and who’s to blame. And the TV news channels are quick to serve up all kinds of plausible-sounding answers.

How do you proclaim your faith, when that faith is culturally aligned with injustice?

“We always look for a Chick-fil-A when we’re traveling south. Their food is so good, and they’re a Christian company.” My friend said this last part almost as an aside. A definitive statement of absolute fact. It was more of a reminder, to herself and to the rest of us, both of the existence of these Christian companies in our midst and of our duty to patronize them as often as possible. Now I’m all for economic solidarity with my brothers and sisters in the business world, but her statement got me wondering, “How do we know they are Christians?

It’s a bit one-sided. They share their pain, and we listen (and hopefully are changed and respond). But are we willing to be vulnerable with them? Or with other marginalized people?

Last summer our high school youth group set out on a service trip. Nothing new, right? Hordes of students head out every summer to change another little piece of the world. But we were trying something a little different, and it wasn’t initially embraced by everyone in our group.