I’m beginning to gain a reputation as the youth minister who tells her tweens really weird stories.

And I’m okay with that.

This week in our Lenton series we told the story of Jesus taking the disciples to Decapolis and curing men there of demons by casting them into pigs that go flailing off the cliff.

I made all of our 5th-7th graders pinky promise me that we wouldn’t get caught up on the “demons” portion of the story, but that instead we would focus on why Jesus would take the disciples to Decapolis (which is the purpose of this particular series–why does Jesus take us these places?). Decapolis was a place Jews weren’t supposed to go, as evidenced by the pigs there. But why would Jesus take them to that place?

Jesus took them to that place because he wanted to show the disciples that they could leave a potential anywhere. That place was unfamilar, a place unlike any place they’ve ever experienced before. But faith with God takes us to those places that were unfamiliar so that on one hand our hearts can be softened for that environment and learn from it…but also so that we can impact those places in the same way that we’ve been impacted.

As I processed this with my small group, I thought about places in my life that were unfamiliar, places that I was unaware of the possibility of potential. I usually jump to when I began college–I was this poor city kid in an affluent rural school, trying to figure out friends who went “mudding” for fun. I put up a wall between myself and others because I didn’t think that we would understand each other. But I learned a lot about community with people who came from all kinds of different backgrounds as me.

But I think I forgot about this. Or at least, didn’t associate it to what I’m experiencing now: Moving my life to Indianapolis has been extremely difficult. It’s been difficult to find community. I thought that was because I was in an environment where I no one could possibly understand me. There’s a lot of affluency in this culture, and I thought that they wouldn’t get me. I thought they wouldn’t understand my background. Or my humor. Or my pain. Or me.

But in a sense, it’s like when I went to college and explored a new culture. The thing that excited me when I moved to Indianapolis was the possibility of doing faith in a brand new way. But I didn’t realize that I was going to have to do community in a brand new way.

I think the biggest hurdle isn’t finding people who are like me. It’s finding people who want to do messy community with me. I’ve always been in places where people lay their junk out in the open. We weren’t the same, just people who wanted to live openly. People who knew that diversity didn’t hinder community, but was a symptom of it.

I feel like today is almost a turning point for me. I had my “AHA” moment and realized that I can build community anywhere with anyone, as long as they are willing to build it back. I can continue being my messy, open self as long as others can be messy and open. And that’s difficult to find. But that’s what the Church does.