A few weeks ago, the Singles Ministry held a worship night. I’ve always loved hosting events like these because worship is something that is near and dear to my heart and I find that there are few things that can compare in beauty and value than to bringing the community to worship and pray together.

The team’s sense for the upcoming night, however, was different somehow, especially in light of our church’s recent Justice Matters sermon series. We felt convicted that we needed to address the topic of being a worshipful community – more specifically, what does it mean to be worshipful in this community? Those who would claim they do not enjoy the multi-ethnic/multi-generational community that we have at Metro are few and far between, however, what are we doing as a community to fight for the diversity at our church? What does God say about diversity? How are we battling the idea of “the other”? What are we doing to restore the image of God in those whom culture and society have hurt? Are we heeding God’s word to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn? The list of questions was long and intimidating – but we tackled it as best as we could.

During the night, I had the opportunity and pleasure to share my own journey with our community. It’s been eight years since I’ve first decided to attend Metro regularly and I’ve learned a great deal along the way. If you had asked me back then what I thought about the Justice Matters series, I would’ve wondered why the church was talking about it. Today, I find it shocking that people don’t see extremely obvious Biblical meta-narrative of God’s heart for social justice written throughout Scripture; and to be very honest, there is much learning I myself must do. Without going into too much detail to what I’ve shared, God’s challenge to me has been this:

Do I value my comfort more than my community? Am I willing to leave the comfort zone of being with those who share my culture, life stage, and views?

I haven’t always been open to the challenge myself, but every time I have opened my life to someone – someone who society tells me should be “the other”, my eyes are opened to new and beautiful perspectives on not only life, but God.

Now I know that one night isn’t going to change everything; but we are all image bearers - that is very clear in Scripture - and if we affirm this then we must acknowledge that we have something to learn about God from every single person regardless if they are younger, older, single, married, or a different shade of color.

My Metro family – let’s be intentional in fighting ourselves and our comfort to affirm the image of God in all those in our community. We have enough lines dividing us as it is. Let’s offer up worship as a family of image bearers united.