Our Stories

Russ and Emily

“...let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith...
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.
Let us not give up meeting together, but let us encourage one another...”
Hebrews 10:22, 24-25

What does the Village mean to us?

It means that we are not alone.  It means that we are surrounded by this cloud of people who love us and who are always ready with a shoulder to cry on, a wise word, a late-night visit from a friend, or an intense encounter with God.

The Village is a place where we are deeply known in all of our passions and sins and aspirations and hidden longings.  More than just being known, we are accepted and loved.  This is not the acceptance that says, "I believe you're OK, please don't tell me the ugly details."  It is the acceptance that says, "I want to see the worst in you so that I can offer God's grace."  This is not the acceptance that says, "You aren't to blame for your choices," but the acceptance that says, "I have made sinful choices a lot like yours."  Emily and I both grew up in the church, and have known Christ since early childhood.  We grew up in happy, loving families and in good, healthy churches, and we felt no lack.  But when we came to the Village, we found a place full of something that we had only tasted before: deep, gracious acceptance which is not shaken when sin is revealed.

Villagers want to see your life and your struggle, and join you in the midst of it.  Villagers don't want to sit on the surface and talk about the easy things of life; they want to delve deeply into your soul and see how and who you really are.  But Villagers don't just want to expose you in your sin; they want to uncover the beauty of who you truly are, and unlock you from the bondage that has haunted you all your life.  They believe that God has made you wondrous, and they want to help you uncover that.

It's easy to offer grace to a new convert, and it's easy for them to accept it.  There is an assumption that they are new to God, and that there will be a process while they become what they ought to be.  But it's harder to offer grace to a mature Christian, and it's even harder for them to accept it.  We have been taught that, after a few years, you ought to more or less have your life under control.  You should have the big sins taken care of, and your remaining sins should be the smaller, lingering ones.  You should be able to say, "Here is the list of sins I still struggle with, and here's my plan on how I manage them."  If you have something big to confess, you should be able to say, "Six months ago I used to struggle with this, but now I have victory."

The Village doesn't believe this.  They believe that a healthy, honest Christian says, "I am in the throes of things that I hardly understand, much less have under control.  But God has been walking with me in the midst of it, and I want my friends to walk with me as well."  Walking with someone means listening to them, weeping with them, seeing beyond the surface to the deeper motivations and more profound hurts, offering truth to subtle lies, and then holding them gently but firmly to a path of repentance.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the Village is the expectation that we can, should, and MUST walk with each other in the midst of the most broken and sinful parts of our lives.  At the Village, you will regularly hear someone say something like, "That thing you believe is a lie from the pit of Hell, and you need to repent of it."  And they will say it without the slightest hint of judgment. 

They say it with tears in their eyes.

The Village believes that all of this is not just for those "inside;" it is the way that God is reaching out to all the world.  As the Village offers a home to us, we are to open our homes to our neighbors, friends, and coworkers.  We are to think about their hearts they way that others think of our hearts.  We are to, in the words of Hebrews 10:24, "consider how to spur one another on" towards God.  For the pagan down the street, that means having him over to dinner and being interested in his hobbies.  For the cripple who was promised healing for many years by many Christians, it means showing him faith and hope in the midst of ordinary life.  For the widow, it means leaning over the fence when she needs a friend, and eating the food she cooks for you.  (There's a lot of it!)  For each and every person, it means offering each day a little bit of God and waiting to see what He does.

For us, the Village means that we take the Christianity of our childhood and infuse it with an imperative of grace.  In the past, grace was a word that from time to time came to life in the words of an old Saint or the prayers of a long-suffering widow.  At the Village, it is the air we breathe.

That's what the Village means to us.