16 Mar 2010, Posted by steph in bay area, community, writing, 0 Comments

commit magazine – bay area twentysomething christians on faith, life and culture.

Central Peninsula Church 20's magazine, issue 2

I really love how my church, Central Peninsula Church in Foster City, CA, loves, supports and engages the Bay Area. Our upcoming churchwide service project, Love Works, will use one Sunday this month to send the entire congregation out to local homeless shelters, soup kitchens, elementary schools, community centers and public recreation areas to serve our community. I’m so excited for the opportunity to do real good among our neighbors (think about it, what if this were one Sunday a month?!).

Another project that specifically my 20s group is involved with is the brainchild of our pastor, Justin Buzzard – a quarterly magazine where Bay Area twentysomethings can write and reflect on current events, stories of heartbreak and redemption, and faithful living in a place where few voices are regularly heard worshipping God even as we interact with the world.

Guess who got to reflect on the importance of community in this next issue, debuting Thursday?

I’m pretty excited. I love to write (mostly because I like to talk ) but have been going through a season of relative ’silence’ as I learn to better hear, interpret and meditate God and other people. This is my first longform piece of writing since summer and I’m so grateful to be able to contribute somehow. Part of the core of this article, on the relationship between a missional community and spiritual growth, came from reflections by UC Davis Epic staff member Mike Aalseth, and the rest a growing conviction for some time the words of John in 1 John 4: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” and the prayer of Jesus just before he went to the cross that we would be one, just as he and the Father are one, so that the world would know for certain that Jesus was sent by God to love us till death.

I’ll put up a paragraph now and then post the rest of the article on Thursday. You can preview (and order) the issue here!

Let’s face it, real relationships from all walks of life are crucial to our growth, wholeness and joy. This is by no small part a function of my friendships being as different as my friends are. We’ll always have the kinds of friends who are better listeners, some who are better in times of crisis, and others who will drop everything to adventure with us on little advance notice. In fact, many of the relationships in my life have drawn out unique and better parts of me I hadn’t previously known existed. I’m much more accepting of my own weaknesses and of the doubt that so closely clings now because I’ve seen my college roommate Annette wrestle openly and humbly with a God beyond children’s storybook fables, and I’m slower to anger and quicker to love because my coworker Nich models what he believes before it ever comes out of his mouth. In short, God loves us each and all perfectly and he has designed a world suited for our every taste, but even when life was paradise it was “not good” for us to be alone. And now that we’re one family – now that we are literally blood-related – rescued and redeemed from ourselves, life is sweeter and more purposeful together.