When we began looking for a church in Grand Rapids, we weren’t quite sure where to start. When we first got married, we attended the church Mike grew up in. Before we even moved to Slovakia, a pastor named Patrick had “somehow” come across our blog and invited us to the home church he and his wife were starting once we moved to Bratislava. We had a home church before we even arrived, and it was there we really experienced the community of a church body in a real, tangible way. We met on Sunday evening, shared a meal together each week, and those dear people walked me personally through the stirrings in my heart about human trafficking.
After that, we weren’t really sure how to go looking for a church. We’re not fans of “shopping” for churches, but we also weren’t really sure how else to find one. We visited one on someone’s recommendation, but it just wasn’t for us. I had grown up in a big church, which definitely had its advantages, but we were also recently spoiled by the tight-knit community of a home church.
Vineyard North was the second church we visited, and we found it via a Google search. We walked in the front door and were welcomed right away. Vineyard is famous for its friendliness. If you have been there only a few times, you will get welcomed by someone during the service. They have people seriously trained to spot newbies and make them feel welcome. That first morning, they were serving Kahlua coffee and the church’s monthly newsletter featured a picture of Obama and an essay from the (very Republican) lead pastor pleading for unity among believers post-election. Yes on both counts!
I think a lot of the details about why Vineyard was (and, we believe, still is) the right place for us is a plethora of spiritual moments and lessons that would be hard and maybe even inappropriate to explain on a blog. Do you ever meet new people or a new city or even new music and you think, “I didn’t realize it until now, but I think this is really what I need for this season in my life“? It was kind of like that.
God knew (when we didn’t) that we were only going to be in Grand Rapids for less than a year. He put us in a church that we felt a true part of in a matter of weeks. In no time at all, we were spending evenings with Vineyard’s pastors and their family. It was Pastor Matt that really got Vineyard as a whole excited about SOLD. Vineyard was beginning a series of (gasp!) sexuality and Matt asked me to speak in a service the issue of sex trafficking. That led into a fundraising event for SOLD, where we gained student sponsors and our first personal supporters for our work with SOLD. (Andy, you signed up right after shaking our hands and now we count you as a dear friend. You didn’t know what you were getting into, did you?!)
Pastors Mike and Lauren became good friends as well, inviting us into their home for many long conversations about God–and trafficking and travel and wine and writing and then some more about God. Mike and Lauren led us to a new friend named Susan, who was beginning to feel stirred to do something about sex trafficking. After a long coffee date at Panera Bread with us, she probably left knowing more than she wanted to! She held a fundraiser downtown that raised enough money to finish the Resource Center; she ended up traveling to Thailand with Lauren a year later. Susan now speaks to groups in Grand Rapids about the sex industry in Thailand.
When we returned to Vineyard last month, we were greeted at the door and someone handing us the new June newsletter. I glanced down at it and was greeted by two familiar faces: US! The poor greeter didn’t know what to do when I stopped the flow of front door traffic and turned to Mike, pointing. “Hey, look! It’s us!”
There we were, a little paragraph about how we had come to Vineyard, then moved to Thailand, and now we were welcomed back. There was even a note about us staying at Mike and Lauren’s house while we found a place to live.
Because we have moved so much, we haven’t really thought much about having a “home church.” Neither of the churches we had grown up played a part in our non-profit work. And we knew Bratislava was fleeting. In fact, for us, the whole idea of home in general has been fleeting.
The decision we made a few months ago to move back to GR was a difficult one. We were not interested in another move. But, like we wrote earlier, we were stirred by a visit back here in March, and it was a stirring that didn’t go away as we began to seek God’s will in the matter through prayer and conversation with friends.
Seeing the welcome in the newsletter and the sense of peace I felt during that first service back made Grand Rapids feel like what we never really expected it to. It feels like home.
Vineyard News: June 2011
Posted by: collettostories
Category: Uncategorized
Tags: church, community, God, Grand Rapids, home, news, updates, Vineyard
