The View from Here
So, just about a year ago, through a seemingly divine set of circumstances, we were offered office space on main street in downtown Peoria.
Now I know that Peoria isn’t the hustle and bustle of a large city, but I love the vibe here just the same. When weather allows, food vendors set up shop on the sidewalks, high school bands & choirs perform, lines of people stand outside our door waiting to get into the little candy & nut shop shop and there just an energy in the air.
When the day comes for us to move out of this office, I will be sad. Church work often seems removed from the life of the city — and I don’t know if I can go back.
May 7th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I think you may be on to something Charley. Perhaps “Church work” is suppose to happen in the city, where the people are, where lives are being lived, in all the pain, the mystery, the diversity, the confrontation, and the confusion of life—especially life in the city. Perhaps to be detached from that makes the work of churches rather lifeless. We can no longer, as Peter suggested in the transfiguration, stay and hoard the “mountain top” of what Cornel West calls the vanilla suburbs. We must come down from the mountain with Jesus, and like the disciples, we must continue to discuss and wrestle with what it means to rise from the dead (Mark 9:10).
In Solidarity,
Ross
May 7th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
I’ll put an amen on that Ross
May 13th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Having visited the new site the week before you started moving in, I remember thinking this would be about connecting with the people who matter to Christ; unlike a church building where people have to purposely come to be connected.