WANTED: adventure in faith for THE BRIDGE

My husband and I first came upon The Bridge on New Year's Day, 2006. Within a few months we knew it was a faith community we were meant to sink our hearts into.

At that time The Bridge was meeting at the Missisissippi Ballroom in north Portland. The space was basically one big room, like a dance hall, and it was rented for a few hours each Sunday. Chairs had to be hauled in every week. Everything had to be tidied up, and there was absolutely no creative space for kids.

But it worked, The Bridge, a community filled with creative, can-do people, made it work.

Alas, we were soon told that we worshipped Jesus too loud and would have to move on. We were given two weeks notice. When Deborah Loyd, one of the founding pastors, made this announcement, there was a resounding chorus of whooping and yelping. Apparently, creative can-do types like challenges.

A small church on the north/northeast boundary of the city were willing to rent to us. They had outgrown their building and were meeting elsewhere. And so, since the summer of 2007 we have been making do in a rented church for four hours each Sunday. We have been so grateful for the Sunday school space where our kids have been able to have Bridge Kids. We are especially thankful for the kitchen space which has allowed Food Church to flourish and be a weekly blessing to many households in the area. Each week there are dozens of people who do not attend The Bridge, but who happily line up at 1pm to get free groceries. It really has been a great space that allows us to do this.

But four hours a week is kind of stifling. We need a place to spread our wings a bit and fly a bit higher in serving each other and especially the community around us.

It is an interesting dilemma, a small church with small pockets but a big heart. And, I must remind myself, a Big God.

The Bridge has provided spiritual shelter for many displaced people for over eleven years. It has been a true post-modern faith community that set aside beliefism and scripturizing in favor of radical acceptance and scandalous grace. Indeed, The Bridge is so much the church of "come as you really are" that there are rumors around the city that we are too loose. Too rowdy. Too unstructured.

These rumors are somewhat deserved. But in all of that we are also known for a transparency and honesty that is both startling as it is refreshing. There is no such thing as putting on a Sunday face at The Bridge. Who you are on Monday is who we want to know on Sunday, and every other day of the week. This insistence with authenticity is sometimes misinterpreted as being loose with the gospel. I would say it's the opposite. Jesus caused more than one uproar with his determination to connect to people right where they were. No expectations...

Paul Young of The Shack fame, said this:

When you live without expectations everything becomes a gift and every moment an adventure.

Totally. I wonder if part of the Put-on-your-Sunday-face thing is the tyranny of expectations within ourselves (and others?) to be a certain way...I don't know...but what I do know is that The Bridge is the first faith community in my entire life where I can be my broken, effed-up messed up self and still be loved without an expectation that I must change.

So we need a home, a place where we can experience the collective beauty of acceptance and celebration of one another amidst the Spirit of Jesus, and also where we can Be the Love of Jesus for others around the city. For a church with a small bank account, this is a big dream. I have no expectations of how it will happen. Or when. I'll leave that to God. We'll do the possible - looking around, advertising, save up every little bit of money that we can, fundraise, etc... and trust our Father in heaven to do for us what we can't do for ourselves. It is for sure an adventure of the best kind: Shared.