Samantha Speaks: Episode 2.0

0 CommentsTuesday • May 10, 2011 • by Pernell

My twelve year old daughter, Samantha, joins me here on the blog occasionally in a feature I am calling: “Samantha Speaks.” For episode 2.0 I thought I’d feature some of her writing. At last year’s Eighth Letter Conference in Toronto, Samantha spoke alongside people like Peter Rollins, Leonard Sweet, and Shane Claiborne. Enjoy Samantha’s letter to the church in North America:

Dear Church in North America,

Jesus loves you.

I realize that I am only 12 years old. I don’t have much experience, I don’t have many answers, and I still have so many questions. But I want to share with you something that is important… and also very close to my heart.

I think one of the most important aspects of being the Church is the community we have with each other and with the world. The Church is people, not buildings and programs. It is a network of relationships. We exist within these relationships to worship God and to love one another.

Jesus says in the Bible that we are supposed to love our neighbour. I think about that a lot. So who is our neighbour? Who is my neighbour? I probably ask this question daily.

My neighbour is not just the person that lives in the house next door, or down the street (although, they are all very nice folks), but also people living across the world. It’s children suffering in Africa, children in my own city that don’t have enough to eat, people who are sick in the hospital. My neighbours are the poor. But they are also the rich, the famous; people living in big houses with important jobs. Basically, it seems, everyone is my neighbour. They are all people who God loves.

These are my neighbours. And I am supposed to love them.

Well, today for the purpose of this letter, I want you to consider your neighbour to be the people that we are in relationship with day-to-day. Those who are in our local community.

Here’s where I am coming from: In my church experience – for as long as I can remember – community has been such a major part of church. Ours is in a neighbourhood where many people are in need. Some need food, some need shelter, and some need love.

Our church worship gatherings are in the evening on Sundays. But at least an hour before the gathering officially begins people show up to hang out, catch up on each others weeks, and help set up for the gathering. At the end of the gathering people stay around for what seems like hours connecting, talking, laughing, and supporting each other. Every week after the gathering a bunch of people from church come over to our house to eat, laugh (and, when it’s on, watch ‘The Amazing Race’).

Also, we host Christmas baking parties, Thanksgiving parties, BBQs, and dinners at our house all the time. In fact, my whole life, every time I turn around, there are people over for dinner or we’ve planned a fun night out with friends.

We also have a lot of camping trips, spiritual retreats, and other expeditions with people from our community. Every day is an adventure! It seems as though our lives as a family revolve around being in community. And all of this is Church to me.

Now, according to my dad, this type of community is not necessarily normal for churches these days. That seems weird to me. But shouldn’t it be normal? Isn’t that what Jesus wants? We should care about each other. We should hang out together. We should have people in our homes often and eat with them. It just seems like that is a major ingredient to being the Church.

Why is this so important? Well, community is an important part of being a follower of Jesus, in my perspective.

Jesus was constantly in community. He was always eating and drinking with his friends, followers, and other people too. He did miracles with food and he asked us to remember him when we eat together. Jesus seemed to be about community before a lot of other things… including following all the religious rules.

Jesus was constantly healing people. He healed the sick and the crippled, those with leprosy, the blind, the mute, and plenty more. He didn’t just heal them physically, but he went way beyond that by accepting them, loving them, and forgiving them. And he asked us to do the same thing on his behalf. Acceptance and love can be such powerful things, and are a big part in showing people that God loves and cares for them.

Jesus said that the most important commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and to love your neighbour as yourself.”

“Love your neighbour as yourself.” I think that what he is really saying is that we need to be in deep community with others.

How do we do that?

An important aspect of community is hospitality… which to me is about sharing. To be hospitable means to share ourselves and our resources with others… even complete strangers, warmly, lovingly, and generously. Being hospitable is doing things like: giving someone a place to stay when they need one, having someone over for dinner to get to know them better, cooking a meal for someone who is sick, or even just offering advice to a friend. But it’s also sharing what others offer us, and making a way for their offering to be more important than ours.

There’s a woman that has been part of our church community for a while. She has significant mental health issues. This woman’s hobby is making crafts. She turns everything into a craft! She makes her crafts from other people’s trash. She stitches badges on her clothes, makes buttons, and cards, and scrapbooks. Her favourite thing to do is take photos, though. She takes pictures of the most random places and people, but they turn out amazing. When this woman hands someone a homemade craft or a picture, it makes their day. I love her creativity, even though other people don’t always see its beauty. Sometimes we have to look for the beauty in other people’s offerings.

Community and hospitality should not only be about showing love to people within your church or home, although that is important, but to also reach out to those in your neighbourhood, people who really need it.

If you show hospitality to people, you are showing them that you love them and by doing that, you are showing them that God loves them too. In John 3:18, it talks about how we should love with actions instead of just words. That sounds nice. Hospitality is love. Let’s do that.