Church feels like an impossibility. All the forms, I’ve tried. All attempts at community, the Jesus-kind, failed. I know what I care about. I know I love to hold people. I know I love to speak the Word of God. I know I love to be charged up in the Holy Ghost, with people, for people. And now I see that this fire – the kind that knocked me down to the floor, got me drunk – opened my eyes to a heaven I barely believed in. And now I believe in it. And I’m glad those communities fell apart, never picked up. And the gospel I know – so much deeper, so much fuller – wasn’t for those bourgeois whites. It wasn’t for those who weren’t willing to be shocked by the implications of Christ’s good news. And I won’t settle for a “church” until I know it is that – a people who are willing to be laid down for their friend, their neighbor, those poor and oppressed. And, honestly, I find this church among revolutionaries. Among those who would never dare to say Jesus is Lord. But they hold a fire that’s changed me, and it’s a fire I met in Christ. Outrageous mercy, empathy. That seed of the Gospel was in me for so long, healing me, challenging me, little by little, but not until I marched, shouted, smashed, fed, housed, did it really come to life. And maybe I’ll just have to be Church in the streets, and if it’s till Kin-dom come, it’s till Kin-dom come. I’m just glad I tasted this love, and it’s driven me this far – of that, I am confident.

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