Introduction
I don’t know how personal to get, because I don’t know who might be reading this website, but I welcome you, friend and stranger alike, to discover who I am as we journey towards Christ together. I’ve been encouraged by more than a few friends to keep sharing my life by expressing it through writing, so I’ll allow this blog to be my outlet. I hope you find my “vigorous heart” refreshing, and I hope perhaps to inspire you to see life--and the Christian faith--a little bit differently than you did before. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know all the answers; I’m nobody special, but I do know what I’ve seen and what I’ve learned, and I feel compelled to offer my experiences as a chronicle here.
All that aside, it’s been awhile since I last posted a blog, so let me fill in some of the blanks that have happened in the last 9 months or so.
1.) Leaving Chicago
First of all, and perhaps most importantly, I quit my job back in January. I’m not sure I ever officially announced it (not that the internet needs to be constantly updated on the juicy details of my life), but mostly it was because I had no idea how to break the news--and if I’m honest, I still don’t, but I’ll try to be as fair as I can.
I worked for a Chicago-based ministry that required me to raise my own support as a salary, so I tenuously tried to maintain contact with my friends and family to try to convince them to give me money. But somewhere along the way I felt dishonest, unfaithful, and disingenuous. My job wasn’t all I tried so desperately to make it out to be; instead of the team-oriented, adventure-based youth discipleship ministry I wanted it to be, I found myself working in a lifeless office job for 10 months out of the year, isolated and depressed, with no real role or responsibility and no one who was advocating for me.
I started to notice huge discrepancies between what I said I believed and the way my job was making me live it out. I felt as if I had regressed; as if my experiences, ideas, and education didn’t matter; as if those parts of myself were erased from my harddrive and rewritten with a new and less holistic way of showing others how to follow Jesus. I was a robot, a clone, and I longed for a way to be a fully functioning and healthy human again.
So I sat down with my supervisors and tried to explain what was happening (I don’t think they heard me or understood what I was saying, but to their credit, I don’t know how coherent I was being at the time; I was very confused and incredibly angry). We eventually agreed that it would be best for both me and the organization if I left, and it was with some parts happiness and many other parts bittersweet-ness that I packed my bags and said goodbye to the people who shone like beacons in the dark. Despite the somewhat hellish nature of my time in that place, there are still many things I would rather not have been forced to give up. (Here’s looking at you, Life Church, friends, host family, and of course Portillo’s...holy cakeshakes, Batman!)
2.) Summer Internship
After an extended time at home with my family, in which one of my relatives called me lazy directly to my face in the presence of others, I found a job working at a church in Richmond. I spent the summer building organic relationships not only with the youth group students, but also my supervisors and fellow “summer missionaries.” It was an incredibly helpful time for me, I think, because I’ve found it so easy in the past to be cynical and dismissive of the church system, yet it was never something that I’ve ever gotten the opportunity to really see or be a part of so intimately before; I'd never been behind the scenes.
It was refreshing to find people whom I respected who shared a lot of my own beliefs and frustrations with being a part of this thing we call “church” that all too often looks distressingly unlike the entity Christ calls His Church. I’m still convinced there’s an alternative way to do ministry out there that bypasses a lot of the constraints that “church” faces, but that’s not to say there can’t be a lot of good things that come out of this process. I’m incredibly thankful to have worked alongside the people of Mount Vernon Baptist Church this summer!
3.) Moving South
Now I am in Shreveport, Louisiana participating in what I expect will be the last semi-short-term growth/learning experience of my young adult life. After spending the past 20 years in an educational environment of some sort, I’m finally ready to take root somewhere and return the favor to a new generation of radical Jesus-followers. (Maybe I’ll share more on my dream job of what that may look like one day, but that’s a story for another time.)
The Yellow House is essentially an experiment in living like the early Church. Following the traditions of the New Monastic movement (which follows in the footsteps of the old monastics and saints and church fathers, who were themselves modeling their lives after Christ), we participate in intentional community as we study what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus through the 12 Marks of New Monasticism.
The five of us have entered into a weekly rhythm of life together through morning prayer, family meals, house meetings, neighbor visits, book discussions, and practical vocational application, followed by volunteering at after-school programs every afternoon. We develop relationships with the broken, outcast, and forgotten--not in the hopes of “saving” them, but in the knowledge that rather it is they who are every day teaching us more and more what it means to be saved. Together with Community Renewal International, we are trying to make this city into a better, safer community where people can flourish in the way that God intended.
If you’re interested in learning more about us or what we’re trying to accomplish, here are some links for you to check out. (And I hope you will, because this is one fascinating and inspiring internet rabbit trail to follow.)
I think that’s about all I have to say in terms of this introduction; I feel like I’ve already made this longer than I intended it to be. But now that I’ve started, I should have a more regular flow from here on out. Thanks again for reading!
Your friend/stranger,
--Joel Davis
Comments
Post a Comment