The
church was decorated for the season. Garlands
Liz let her eyes wander. It was a bit emptier than it had been on her
first visit, and most of the people there looked to be in late high school or
college. None of the older members were
present. Apparently, this was actually a
youth meeting.
“Where’s Pastor Simon?” she asked
suddenly, turning to Jackie.
Jackie didn’t appear concerned. “He’ll be here.”
“So there’s a different activity
each night this week?” Liz asked no one in particular. “What’s tonight’s?”
This time Delia spoke up. “We can’t be sure. The schedule changes from year to year. But it’s bound to be something fun. We really just meet in here; we’ll probably
move somewhere else. It’ll be some sort
of teambuilding activity, though. Pastor
Simon loves that kind of stuff. He says
we can’t truly deliver God’s word to the world if we’re not able to trust each
other.”
Liz smiled. “That doesn’t sound bad. Most Christmas-related services I’ve ever
gone to are insanely boring and make me want to fall asleep.”
“That’s one of the theories Pastor
Simon has,” Sandra said. “If we’re
having fun and enjoying coming to services, we’re more likely to pay attention
to the lessons and to take something away from them. He says that’s what the problem is with
traditional churches—while the lessons are explained, the congregation doesn’t
necessarily tune into what’s being said.
It’s more important to everyone here that we actually learn the
information and understand the choices we’re making by coming here. If we get to have fun in the process, then
it’s worth it.”
Morgan and Liz exchanged a
look. “It certainly sounds a lot better
than my other church,” Morgan agreed.
By this time, a familiar silence
began spreading over the congregation.
Liz and Morgan turned in their pew and looked back toward the
doors. Sure enough, Pastor Simon was
making his way to the front of the church.
Every eye in the sanctuary followed him as he approached the front. Unlike the first time Liz had seen him, when
he had been wearing a white robe, he was simply wearing street clothes. Except for the white and red rose stole
around his shoulders, he looked like everyone else sitting in the
sanctuary. He looked much more
approachable this way, much more like he’d be someone that teenagers could talk
to. Liz could feel the excitement
building in the large room.
“Good evening, Children and
visitors,” he began.
“Good evening, Pastor Simon!” the
congregation responded.
Pastor Simon gave a warm smile and
opened his arms. “I’m so glad to see all
of you on this first night of our Christmas week celebrations. I see many new faces in our group tonight,
and I want to welcome all of our visitors to this very special week.”
Morgan squirmed in her seat. “Is it just me, or does it always feel like
Pastor Simon is talking directly to us?” she whispered.
“It’s great, isn’t it?” Liz
whispered back. Morgan hesitated for a
moment, then nodded her agreement.
“Before we begin our celebrations,
will you please all join me in prayer?” Pastor Simon continued, bowing his
head. The congregation followed
suit. “Lord, guide us this week as we
continue to follow your Word. While we
are having our fun, help us to understand the deeper significances. Place your love on our visitors this week,
that they may better believe in all you have taught us and help them to make
the best decisions as they go forward in their lives. In your name, amen.”
A collective “amen” sounded around
the sanctuary, and everyone lifted their heads to return their gazes to the
Pastor.
Again, Pastor Simon spread his arms
open to his congregation, sharing the same warm smile. “If you’d please all stand now, and follow me
out to the atrium, we’ll begin tonight’s activity.” With another warm smile, he made his way back
down the center aisle. Everyone in the
sanctuary stood and filed out into the atrium.
In the atrium, the group talked idly
while they waited for Pastor Simon to give instructions. Liz, standing next to Morgan, looked around
at the other people standing in the room.
Most of the others were clearly members of the church, wearing brightly
colored scarves or stoles. Some shades
of green, others shades of yellow.
However, there were many people wearing black ones, like Liz. All these other visitors seemed to be
clustering together in groups of two or three—safety in numbers, Liz supposed,
even though she was doing the same by staying close to Morgan—and they all were
looking anxiously around at the other faces in the congregation. There were also some people, though, wearing
black scarves that had small white flowers printed on them. These people, Liz figured, were clearly not
just visitors. The people wearing these
scarves were talking comfortably to the members around them and did not seem at
all anxious as to what was going on.
“Those people, the ones in the black
and white scarves, who are they?” Liz asked Jackie.
“They’re new members to the church,”
Jackie answered. “They’ve just been baptized within the last few months.”
“But you’re not wearing one of
them,” Liz pointed out.
“I was baptized three months
ago. I’m not new anymore. I’ve already been promoted.”
Liz opened her mouth to ask what
Jackie meant by promoted, but Pastor
Simon had stood up on a chair on the other side of the room and was beginning
to talk. “Okay, I’d like us all to split
into three groups. Let’s see…how about
everyone on this side of the room,” he gestured toward his right, “all the way
over to where Tina and Kyle are standing,” he pointed to two church members,
“you’ll all be one group.” The group he
had gestured toward broke away from the rest and stood near one wall. “Now, let’s have everyone here in the middle,
all the way over to Derek—why are you standing so apart from everyone?” A boy
in a visitor’s stole scooted closer to the group in the middle. “That’s better. Don’t be afraid of them, they’ll watch out
for you,” Pastor Simon smiled again and the boy seemed to relax. “Okay, so this group in the middle will be
another group. Everyone else will be our
third group. I’d now like each group to
form a tight circle. The tighter your
circle is, the easier this activity will be to set up.”
Jackie grabbed Liz and Morgan’s
hands and pulled them into the circle.
Liz found herself standing next to Derek and she gave him a comforting
smile. How does he know all the visitors’ names? Liz wondered.
Once all the groups were standing
shoulder-to-shoulder within their circles, Pastor Simon continued, “Good. Now, everyone reach both of your arms into
the middle of your circle and clasp hands with a couple of people standing on
the other side. No one should be holding
hands with the same person. Share the
wealth. And you can’t hold hands with
the people directly next to you.”
This was a little difficult to
manage, as each of the circles had anywhere around fifteen or twenty
people. Regardless of this, though,
there was success, and everyone bent at awkward angles to be able to continue
holding hands with the people standing on the other side. Giggles and nervous laughter began breaking
out amongst the three groups—it was an awkward position to be in.
“Now, untangle yourselves,” Pastor
Simon instructed, “but you can’t release hands.
Work together to reform your circles.”
The circle Liz was in struggled at
first—individual people trying to twist themselves free, mostly. After a few minutes of making very little
progress, a girl in a yellow scarf took control.
“Jacqueline, you have to limbo under
Sandra’s arm…yeah, there you go, that’s a little better. Now, you—Derek, is that your name?—okay,
Derek, turn the other way around, your arms are crossed. Ericka, Emily, you two need to kneel down,
get your arms as close to the ground as possible, so Alexander can step over
and lead this group around. Great, guys,
look how much better this is. Now…sorry,
what’s your name?”
“Liz.”
“Nice to meet you, Elizabeth. Can you kind of go under Delia’s arm, and
then you’ll have to step over Ericka’s and Emily’s arms. Yeah, like that. Good.”
This continued for another half
hour, the group sometimes becoming more tangled than it had been at the
beginning of the activity, but, finally, the group found itself in a full
circle again, each person holding hands with the people on either side of
them. When all three groups had finally
broken themselves free, Pastor Simon clapped his hands in congratulations.
“Well done, Children and visitors,
well done. You may release hands now, if
you’d like.” Each circle unclasped their
hands and gathered around closer to where the pastor was standing. “It looked like you were all having a good
time with this activity.”
As a whole, the group nodded.
“Good. But, in all this fun, take this message with
you. You may sometimes find yourself in
a challenge, and you must trust each other to get through it. Some of you will step up and be leaders, some
of you will be followers, but you would not have made it through this
challenge—these human knots—without all of you working together. Anything can be achieved if you work
together. As says in Ecclesiastes,
chapter four, verses nine and ten, ‘Two are better than one; because they have
a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow:
but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help
him up.’ Remember this always.”
He paused here, looking around at the
young adults staring at him in awe. Liz
felt as though Pastor Simon was looking directly at her, into her, as though he
knew everything she had ever done wrong.
Liz dropped her gaze then, wishing she had been a better person, that
she was less focused on just herself.
Jackie was concerned about so much more—she cared about the animals’
well-being, she didn’t let what other people said about her beliefs get to her.
“Well, Children and visitors, this
brings us to the end of our first night of Christmas week. Remember, we have activities every evening
this week and I hope to see all of you.
With that, I leave you with these words from Second Corinthians, chapter
thirteen, verse eleven: ‘Finally,
brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of
good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace
shall be with you.’ Have safe trips
home, and remember tonight’s lesson as you go out into the world.”
The group scattered, but many
remained standing in the atrium, visiting.
Liz found herself standing near Derek, who was still looking rather
nervous. Now that she got the chance to
study him closer, and outside of a group activity, she noticed he had kind eyes—but
he was constantly shifting his weight, like he was getting ready to run. She smiled at him again.
“Hi, I’m Liz,” she said, holding out
her hand.
Derek twitched almost unnoticeably
at the movement, but then took her hand and shook it. “Derek,” he answered quietly.
“Is this your first time visiting?”
Liz asked.
Derek shook his head, his brown hair
falling into his eyes for a moment before he brushed it away. “Nah, I’ve been to a couple services. One of the guys from my school is a member
here and knows the hard time I’ve been having and thought it might be a good
place for me.”
“Hard time?” Liz realized suddenly that this may have been
an inappropriate question, because Derek looked at her with very wide
eyes. He looked as though he had never
been asked this question before, or that the last thing he wanted to do right
now was answer it. “I mean,” Liz
backtracked quickly, “you don’t have to…you know…say anything you don’t want
to. I was…just…wondering…”
Derek shook his head again. “It’s not a big deal. Most people don’t ask.” He sighed, getting up the courage to explain. “My parents are divorced and my dad has
custody, because she didn’t want either of us.
My dad’s…well, not a great dad.”
He shrugged. “I figure that if I
can spend my time at a church, then I don’t have to be home as much, you know?”
Liz nodded. Even though her parents were fine parents, it
was still the same excuse she was using to come here. She’d rather be here where she was actually someone rather than at home where she
was always lost in the litter of siblings.
“What about you, Liz?” Derek
continued. “Is this your first time
visiting?”
“No, I’ve been to a service and hung
out with a couple girls who are members here.
My sister is a member. She’s the
one who brought me.”
Sandra walked up at this moment and
snagged Liz’s arm kindly. “Sorry, I have
to steal Liz,” she said with a smile to Derek.
“We have to go, but we’ll see you later, right?”
Derek nodded, waved good-bye to Liz,
and then the two girls walked toward the front doors of the church, where the
rest of their group stood waiting.
“He seems nice,” Sandra said,
jerking her head back toward where Derek had been standing. “That’s the great thing about the Children,
you know. You get to meet some great
people, strike up lasting and important relationships with them. Who knows?
Maybe you and Derek will turn out to be more than friends.” She shot a knowing smile at Liz, who widened
her eyes in shock at the turn of the conversation.
Out in the parking lot of the
church, the girls crammed back into Sandra’s car, all of them talking excitedly
about that night’s activity. Liz found
herself sandwiched between her sister and Morgan.
“See?” said Sandra as they began
pulling away from the church. “Didn’t we
say that you two would have a blast?”
“I really did,” Liz said, adjusting
her scarf on her head, but not feeling compelled to remove it—she was growing
more comfortable with its presence.
“I’ve played that human knot game before, but this held so much more
meaning than the other times.”
“No kidding,” Morgan spoke up. “I never would have thought it could hold
more meaning than ‘hey, let’s all work together.’ Somehow, and I don’t entirely understand how,
but Pastor Simon made it make so much more sense.”
It wasn’t long before the car pulled
up in front of the McLancy home. The two
sisters climbed out of the car, bid their friends farewell, and made their way
into the house. They made it up to the
second floor before they encountered any of their siblings. Liz wasn’t sure if she counted herself lucky
that they didn’t run into their parents—she didn’t know how they would react to
her enjoying this church that confused them so much, and she was pretty sure
she didn’t have the same confidence as Jackie to express this.
It was Eva they encountered halfway
to their attic stairs. Inwardly, Liz
groaned—Eva was almost as bad as their parents.
“Well, well, if it isn’t our very
own religious pioneers back from worship,” she snickered as she walked past.
“You’re so—” Liz began, turning
around. The oldest stopped her, grabbing
her elbow and turning her back around to face the attic door as they continued
walking.
“Don’t let her get to you,” Jackie
whispered. “She doesn’t understand what
we do. She hasn’t experienced what we
have. She has no say and you shouldn’t
let her.”
Liz sighed, tugging off her black
scarf at last, bunching the silk in her hand, and pulling the elastic out of
her hair, letting the French braid slowly unravel. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough for
this. You’re so much surer about your
beliefs. Why would any of the people
from your church want to associate themselves with me?”
“You are, Liz. You are strong enough for this. The Children will make you stronger.”
“But—”
“Look, no one is forcing you to go
to the services. If you don’t want to
go, just tell me.”
“I do want to go.”
“Okay then,” said Jackie,
smiling. “Stop worrying about what the
rest of our family thinks, or what your friends will think, or any of
that. Just think about the rest of this
week, and try to remember how you felt tonight.”
Liz nodded her understanding,
shaking more of her braided hair free in the process. As she headed to her room, she released her
grip on the scarf. Looking at the
wrinkled fabric, she felt guilty for taking her frustrations out on it. She sat on her bed and kicked off her shoes,
smoothing out the scarf on her lap and gently folding it into a small
square. With a sigh, she picked up her
pen and opened her journal.
December 21
My
new friends are amazing and I can tell they really care about me. The fact that they think of me means a
lot—they cared enough to invite me to the mall and to their church stuff. I hate being lost in this family. I love them, but I always feel I’m in
competition. I think Jackie and all them
are right. What if this could be the
right place for me? Why would I give that
up just because I’m nervous?
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