Way More Than a Blip

Last week, I noticed a verse I underlined 25 years ago – Psalm 139:10. Next to it, I had written “FCC membership 9/97.” 

I paused for a few minutes and sat in that memory.

It was my senior year at college, my second year away from home, and Faith Community Church (FCC) quickly became my community. The Sunday night college group at Lance and Suzanne’s became my second home, and I spent my Wednesday nights as an Awana leader for 5th grade girls. 

It was Awana that led to my “crisis.” About a year after I started attending FCC, the elders decided that anyone who volunteered in the children’s ministry needed to be a member of the church. This made sense, of course – goodness knows, children’s workers need to be kept accountable, and FCC was ahead of its time. 

I couldn’t imagine my life without children’s ministry, especially Awana, as I had been a leader since 8th grade. But in my 20-year-old mind, becoming a member of FCC was out of the question. I felt an unswerving loyalty to the church I had grown up in in San Jose, and I planned to move back there as soon as I had my teaching credential the following year. Attending FCC was just a blip in the history of my life, so how could I take the weighty step of becoming a member?

This felt like a huge dilemma, so much so that I resonated with a Scripture passage about God’s presence in making my bed in the depths. So much of a quandary that I did the very scary and intimidating thing of scheduling a meeting with the children’s pastor. Pastor Jeff was the complete opposite of scary and intimidating, but still – doing a grown-up thing is terrifying when you are 20. 

Pastor Jeff solemnly listened to my conundrum without so much as a chuckle, which I commend him for. He assured me that I could become a temporary member and that as soon as I left FCC, I wouldn’t need to worry about competing loyalty with my home church. I felt like I had conquered a mountain. Won a marathon. And God’s hand had guided me! He had worked it out!

Yes, 46-year-old Amy is face-palming my young adult drama. 

The irony is that when I wrote that note in my Bible, I didn’t know that the story wasn’t over – and the next chapter was even better.

A year later I changed my mind; I didn’t leave my college town when I graduated. I stayed – and the primary reason I stayed was Faith Community Church. I got my first teaching job in that city. I met Gil at that church, and we stayed while he was in seminary. When Gil and I left for Tanzania, FCC commissioned us right alongside the church I grew up in from San Jose. They supported us through 16 years on the mission field. 

Our family now lives an hour and a half away from FCC, so we’re not close enough to regularly attend, but they still support my current ministry, and we visit a couple of times a year. In September, I was the speaker there at a teen girls’ retreat, and many of the girls who attended were the daughters of my FCC friends from 25 years ago.

Faith Community Church turned out to be way more than a blip in the history of my life. 

So when I see that note in my Bible, I remember that crisis, and I roll my eyes. Yet, 25 years from now, how many current crises in my life will look as small? 

And how many of those crises will turn out to be part of a much larger, much better story in my life that I could never imagine?

*header picture taken by Gil Medina in Dar es Salaam