*Editorial Note: Awakenings 2025, our biennial National Gathering, is 3 months away! Join us the in the greater DC area on March 6th–8th. Your voice is needed as we wrestle with wholeness and beauty in the life the Church. In light of this, we asked our 2024 Writing Fellows for a short reflection on the integration of these two disparate themes in their own local contexts. What follows is the second of three co-authored reflections, a beautifully holistic integration indeed! ~CK

Wholeness and Beauty in Homemaking

What might be possible if the Church leaned into the art of homemaking? What might emerge if we set as our primary intention the making of a home with God and for God, right here and now? Theologians Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, in their masterpiece The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything, posit that home requires four important components: (1) attachment, (2) resonance, (3) belonging, and (4) mutuality. 

Recently my church received an influx of college students eager for a place to be fully themselves while also drawing near to God. In our conversations I said they’d find plenty of “Mother and Father” energy in our church, which is largely composed of older folks. Almost in unison, they each affirmed that this is what they need. I was surprised by their response.  

The eagerness of the college students in our midst to be in communion with mothers and fathers speaks to their deeply felt desire for attachment, resonance, belonging, and mutuality. They aren’t looking for a dynamic service, relevant preaching, or hip atmosphere. They’re longing for something which echoes through all our hearts – home. And the gospel says that they’ve come to the right place. God the Homemaker is creating a context of beauty and wholeness right here and now, where we can wholeheartedly attach ourselves to one another, where ‘Deep calls to Deep’ in resonance like no other, where we finally belong just as we are, and where we can receive and give of ourselves in mutuality that reminds us of the weight of glory in every single soul. 

There’s truly no place like Home. 

~ Amanda Hogan Jones, 2024 Writing Fellow

God the Homemaker is creating a context of beauty and wholeness right here and now, where we can wholeheartedly attach ourselves to one another, where ‘Deep calls to Deep’ in resonance like no other. (1/2) Share on X

It is in God the Homemaker where we finally belong just as we are, and where we can receive and give of ourselves in mutuality that reminds us of the weight of glory in every single soul. (2/2) Share on X

Seeing the Beauty of the Broken Church

A few months ago, I told someone I stopped believing in the church. I did not mean the Church of God or the global church, but rather the local body of Christ-followers that I am a part of. 

A long season of frustration, loss, anger, betrayal, and hurt had created layers of scar tissue within me. I felt broken and empty of any healthy emotion. Anger rose to the surface quickly, and I ran to protect those whom the church had hurt badly. Caught between feeling like a lioness protecting her cub and a desperate need for someone to hold me tight, I railed against the church.

It did not stop me from attending every week, but I stood in silence, not able to feel anything, or perhaps unable to give myself permission to express what I actually wanted to feel. I needed to run away. I did it for several periods, away from those who called after me and checked in on me. I did not want to be seen or known. Healing needed to happen.

But something shifted as the seasons changed. Amidst the freeze of the dark winter, I started to feel a thaw. I do believe it was supernatural. I needed the winter wilderness before I could feel my heart begin to blossom again.

I found myself sitting in a circle with others who had been similarly wounded. Familiar and unfamiliar together as one, we sat and shared, shed tears, told true stories, and opened our hearts. 

Did every heart share its innermost secrets? Perhaps not, but for the moment, it was enough. It was enough to melt my frozen heart. It was enough for my heart to feel the tendrils of hope. It was what my heart needed to heal. I saw the brokenness of the church, but I also saw the beautifully nail-scarred hands of Christ caring for the broken – and caring for me. It was Jesus who reminded me of what I needed and what I still believed in. Even in the wilderness, there was beauty, and I simply needed to see it.

~ E.L. Sherene Joseph, 2024 Writing Fellow

I saw the brokenness of the church, but I also saw the beautifully nail-scarred hands of Christ caring for the broken – and caring for me. Even in the wilderness, there was beauty, and I simply needed to see it. Share on X

The Body of Christ is Beautifully Diverse

I almost missed the wholeness and beauty in the life of the Church. I became a Christian in college through a university missions group, and mostly stuck with that particular denomination. I was distrustful of anyone that didn’t belong to this denomination, and since we were right about everything, what was the point in seeking out or listening to Christians from other corners of the Church? But as it turns out, the actual body of Christ is international, diverse, and untamable. To show His love for us, God threw out His arms so wide, so long, so high, and so deep, that we will never be able to grasp it. And in the same way, God spread His church out as well. 

In embracing the differences, the weaknesses, and the creativity of the whole Church, we discover a boundless beauty and complete wholeness that can never be present in just one corner of a single denomination. We discover commonality in areas where we have always felt like misfits. We are challenged by the biblically-supported theological differences in others. We are introduced to facets of God that have existed behind the blinders of repetition. The danger in sequestering ourselves within a single denomination is limiting ourselves to a small corner of who God is: like staring at a single dot in a Georges Seurat painting, never realizing that we are actually looking at an entire landscape filled to the brim with detail and wonder.

The Church is whole, and the Church is beautiful, but we must zoom out to see it.

~ Bethany Becker, 2024 Writing Fellow

In embracing the creativity of the whole Church, we discover a boundless beauty and complete wholeness that is never be present in one corner of a single denomination. We discover commonality where we have always felt like misfits. Share on X