What Have I learned about PCCC?

Hospitable, agile, curious, and fun.

Plymouth Creekers,

These are some of the more quirky ways I would describe Plymouth Creek Christian Church and its members, and characteristics I have come to appreciate as important for a church to have during my time here. Of course, they are not traits that apply to everyone all of the time, but they are nevertheless present and, in my opinion, worth continuing to aspire to.

I find them especially significant because of the little bit that I have discovered along the way about this church’s past. Based on the conversations I have had with a few of you, it would be easy for you all to focus on the time between the initial break some of you made with First Christian Church in Minneapolis and the construction of the building you all now call home. I could understand this focus on the past. A number of charter members of PCCC are still in attendance. And yet it seems that this focus on the past at this time, for most, would lead either to sadness and weariness or to too quick a sense of accomplishment and completion. So I admire that you all have chosen instead to “let your gaze be straight before you,” as Proverbs would advise. For otherwise it would be easy to be stiff in your ways, hostile to more change, and therefore skeptical of new things and people as well as altogether too serious. But instead through Shane’s and others’ leadership, a mutual faithfulness towards one another, and a willingness to be honest and vulnerable before God and each other, I have seen what appears to me to be the fruit of your ongoing decision to be agile rather than stiff, curious rather than hostile, hospitable rather than skeptical, and fun rather than altogether too serious.

I have seen this, for instance, on Holy Hilarity Sunday. We laughed and celebrated with joy even through hard times of uncertainty in, for instance, Pat Farr’s condition (praise God for her return home). I have seen this having coffee with a number of you. You asked me questions about my life and chose to invest in my short time here. I have seen this from the pulpit as I began my sermon. I received not harsh, blank stares but smiling, interested faces. And I have seen this at Servant Leader and Board meetings, where people have been honest and unafraid about trying new things and caring deeply for one another.

None of this is to say that there are not still wounds from the past and present waiting to be healed, voids of hurt or even resentment that haven’t experienced full reconciliation, and questions about where you all are going and how you are going to get there. But I think it is to say that there is reason to celebrate. There is reason to celebrate the community that exists here and the values that community (you all) are going after together. Bravo. I, for one, am excited to be a part of it. Thanks for letting me. May God continue to guide you this week and for a long time after.



Your grateful intern,

Hayden