Harvesting from a seed planted years ago

We had a special treat last Sunday at Church of the Reconciler...a visit from a founding member of the church. His visit had me remembering the early days of our church, when we were just planting a seed, a time when we were intent on hearing God's call for this unique church.

The Robert Cooke family was instrumental in the church in those early days. Robert helped prepare the storefront on 18th street, helped decide on our name, and served on several committees.

But even before those tasks, we met as a prayer-vision group to determine what kind of church we were being called to be. It was a critical time...you don't grow an oak tree from a marigold seed. We needed to be clear about God's call in order to set the tone for the future of our ministry.

Many people who know our ministry today may be surprised to hear that none of us foresaw a ministry to the homeless in our calling. At least, not in the way we serve the community today. Our calling was to be a social gospel church, a church that spoke truth to power. Our calling was to be a church that practiced radical hospitality. We were going to be a church that shared a faith in God, love for the city and hope for all the people. All of 'em...no footnotes or exclusionary riders. All the people.

We knew as a downtown church we would have homeless people walking by the storefront. Because we intended to practice radical hospitality, we were clear that we would invite those homeless folks into the church and welcome them with open arms. We shared the gospel with them. We shared the overwhelming, incomprehensible, unquestioning love of God with them. We shared our punch and cookies with them.

I'm embarrassed to admit to the depth of our ignorance about homelessness in Birmingham at that time. We had no idea what problems the homeless community faced. We simply wanted to be true to our call and welcome everyone to our church.

After we had been worshiping a few weeks, Beth Cooke commented that we were having more people join us from the homeless community, and she felt we should have more substantial food for them. So the Cooke family started bringing sandwiches with them to worship. The rest of us did too.

As the number of sandwiches increased, our Sunday morning attendance increased as well. When cooler weather arrived, cold sandwiches didn't seem to cut it, and we all began arriving with our crock pots. Since we were a one-room operation at that time, we had crock pots plugged in around the church during worship, bubbling away for the meal we would soon share together.

If you've ever visited us at Church of the Reconciler, you know the 'end' to this story. Now we serve nearly 300 hot, balanced meals every Sunday. Now we do understand the issues of the homeless community, and we are advocates with them. Who we are today is the harvest of a seed that was planted in 1991 by people--many of whom have moved away in the interim--to whom we owe a debt of gratitude.

We are still a social gospel church that practices radical hospitality. We continue to be responsive to God's call to respond to our world by following in the footsteps of the Prince of Peace.

And in that sense, we are not at the 'end' of the story. Our story continues to be written. We invite you to join us on this journey. We worship every Sunday morning at 9:30 a.m.