Poker.....Anyone?

This is an article I wrote last summer though I never did anything with it. It is about my church and the college and carear group that I love and sometimes frusterates me....

It’s funny how we become so accustomed to people or things in our lives. Over the past couple years I have been working on a cruise ship, so my relationship with many of the people in the college and career had become distant at best. I think I had forgotten how good it was to talk with Christian on a regular basis. This really hit me really hard at a retreat I was on with the C+C this past fall. I was walking around with a bunch of the regulars, when we started talking about one of our friends who had been killed over the summer in a car accident.

As I listened everyone shared about the pain that they experienced because of the passing of their friend. I took a second and realized that the people I was surrounded by were full of love and shared the pain of our friend’s death with her family and husband. It had been sometime since I had been around people who embraced community so well.

To begin with my church is not the most vibrant, especially the C+C. Just under two years ago our current youth pastor, due to other commitments, decided not to have a C+C Sunday school. But a couple of women at the church persisted and persuaded him to let them take over this responsibility. The result has been an amazing strengthening of the group, where many beautiful friendships have blossomed.

In spite of this growth and bonding that has occurred the group sadly enough is only a glorified social gathering. So I guess maybe I was not expecting the authenticity that I was met with as we come together for our gathering at the lake. In spite of the lack of deepness of the group and the bible studies always playing second fiddle to a poker game, I always come away thinking that I am the lucky one to be exposed to this real authentic community.

This past year I was a resident assistant at a Christian college. During our training week we were told in a nutshell that we were to go out and build community. While we definitely did that, it pales in comparison to the community that the C+C group has, which always brings a smile to my face.

The smile is wide across my face, ear to ear. I guess I just take joy out of learning things in an unconventional way and that what has happened to me this year. After being told of things that were meant to help me along the way to connect with the new guys in dorm. But the truth was I had a living example of an authentic example of community at my home church.

Who would of thought that the way to start an authentic community of believers was to get everyone hooked on poker and simply go through the hardship of life together.