While working on a mosaic tabletop one summer, I found myself reflecting theologically on the church as a living mosaic: people with broken edges, with different stories, backgrounds, shapes, and colors, artfully placed into a beautifully arranged whole.
My congregation is a mosaic in that it is made up of diverse people with broken edges, all pieced together into one whole by the work of the Spirit. A mosaic, however, is permanently stuck into one design, which is where the image breaks down when applied to the church.
I’ve spent much of my ministry trying to help diverse people form one whole community. This is an exceedingly difficult process. Along the way I’ve seen heart-breaking failures and beautiful successes. In this two-part blog (today and next Sunday), I’ll reflect on what we have learned by trial and error, from reading, and through an incredible opportunity to travel to East Africa and look up the home villages and loved ones of church members left behind while fleeing genocide.
One September day in 2008, our small Seattle church changed forever. That day, a newly-arrived family from Burundi had come to church: two parents and nine children, fresh from a refugee camp in Tanzania. This family had fled genocide on foot—running, paddling, and walking from Burundi to the Congo to Rwanda to safety in a Tanzanian refugee camp.
There were fourteen children in all, but the oldest five were left behind with families of their own. During the Children’s Opportunity that fateful Sunday, nine new children sat on the steps of the church’s chancel in ragged and torn clothes. I can still picture two of the boys wearing girls’ pink shirts and glittery shoes, donated to them in the refugee camp.
Over the next few years, that family would attract another large Burundian family, and then another. Much of our ministry centered around helping newly-arrived families settle in. Some of the adults had no schooling and could not read or write in their native Kirundi. They couldn’t help their children with homework, write down phone numbers, or fill out kids’ school forms.
These were some extremely busy years with steep learning curves for me and some of our church members as we helped these families navigate a complex new life. Within one year, two of the mothers had called the police on their husbands. Both husbands went to jail. Then followed court cases, domestic violence workers, jail visits, moving the families into seclusion, one reunion, and one divorce.
I attended dowry negotiations as children were married off, and a seemingly infinite number of soccer games. There were water shut-offs, electricity shut-offs, innumerable school troubles and teacher conferences, constant lack of money, constant attempts to find and keep jobs, and a constant need for new clothes, underwear, soap, shampoo, sanitary napkins, shoes, etc.
Those years were the busiest, most challenging, and most rewarding of my career as pastor. But for the congregation, it was far from easy. Because the congregation is so small, changing so suddenly was shocking. So many more children, so much Kirundi being spoken, and so much need really changed the fabric of our community. We sang new songs. We spent way more time and money on children’s programs. My time was diverted in unplanned ways.
Some parishioners probably felt displaced. Many didn’t know how to relate to people who were so different from them and didn’t speak the same language. Some knew nothing about the difference between refugees, immigrants, and those seeking asylum, and didn’t know what to think of the new people. And yes, racism raised its ugly head. Entitled “this-is-the- way-we’ve-always-done-it-before” thinking ascended to new heights.
It was a messy, painful, and sometimes exhilarating time. Exhausted and depleted, in 2011 I received the gift of a lifetime: a much-needed sabbatical.
I took an extended period of time to reflect and pray about my church. Could we overcome our disunity? Would we ever become a beautiful, unified mosaic? The sabbatical brought my husband, Jack, and me to the Mosaic Mecca of the world, Ravenna, Italy, where I took an intensive class in ancient mosaic-making. Then we headed to East Africa to learn about the mosaic pieces of our church that originated there.
How would this sabbatical affect our church? What adventures would arise?
Tune in next Sunday to hear the rest of the story!
