over the course of my journey i have worn a lot of different hats: a card carrying member of the ACLU (high school and early college), one of the only democrats at a very conservative christian school, a newly registered republican who organized focus on the family letter writing campaigns to our congressmen, a beth moore bible study groupie, a put-together-good-christian-woman-trying-to-do-all-the-right-things-that-supposedly-good-christian-women-especially-mothers-do, a small group “coach”, just to name a few.
all of these roles helped shape me personally and spiritually; and as much as i have changed over the years, i have to say that without some of these experiences i wouldn’t be who i am today. about 15 years ago some things significantly began to shift in my spiritual journey; i began to talk about my real experiences with God (not just the ones that sound good) and get in touch with my real story and what real forgiveness and redemption looked and felt like. “real” seemed to be the word of the day. much of my journey up until then had been about pretending, saying the right things, staying disconnected from myself, from God, from others even though on the outside it didn’t look like it and i most certainly was in church every sunday!
and as i started to get “real”, i also started to become more of an “outsider” in the churches that i was in. in many ways i sort of became the banner waver for “healing”, for “authenticity”, for “safety” in the communities that i was in. and to be honest, it was usually met with resistance. i think there is a general fear among many church leaders of actually creating real community. i think it’s easy to plant a “church”(as in a service, building, program, website, pastor-in-charge, etc.) but much harder to cultivate a true “community” that functions as an organic, messy, beautiful, ugly group of people on the journey together.
one of my weaknesses is that i can be overly optimistic, a consummate dreamer. i believed that i could “change the church” and worked my tail off, standing on tables advocating for change, for the marginalized, for authentic community and a diffusion of power structures that limit true life-in-the-trenches together. the culmination was my last institutional church job on a mega-church staff as a care pastor and adult ministry pastor. i gave it all i had and honestl y almost lost my faith completely fighting for some of what i believe is possible for the Body of Christ. i left feeling stupid, beat-up, bloody, and bruised.
and somehow with some of my dreams still in tact. way too soon and way too wounded we planted a new faith community, the refuge (www.therefugeonline.org). i co-pastor with a lovely team of men and women who are dreamers, too. we needed it for our souls, no doubt, but also knew that there were many others who were “done” with church in its typical forms but were desperate for God and living out the ways of the kingdom in really practical ways. those who were willing to engage in a level of authenticity that would challenge them, to love sacrificially, to throw away the typical barriers of “us and them” that is so present in so many churches.
we are only 3 years old. we continue to learn, try, experiment, fail, and try again. we are practicing sharing, what it looks like when men and women work and live and love alongside together in equal power-diffused relationship. we have a high value on conversation and mission. we are dedicated to authenticity and healing. we have a wide range of socioeconomics, education, political view, personal and spiritual life experiences. we are known as “those weird people who will help when times are tough.” it really is the most eclectic group i’ve ever been involved in my entire christian journey.
and it’s also been a dream come true. there are days i wake up and can’t believe some of what i have always hoped for when it comes to “church” is really happening. and trust me, there are more than a fair share of days when i realize that dreams are much prettier when they are just dreams. living this out has been hard, challenging, scary, and extremely humbling. it is far more messy and complicated than i ever expected. and while i see amazing beauty every day, i can easily see why some days “ugly” is a much more appropriate adjective!
i love the church; if i didn’t care about people gathering together in some shape or form i would have thrown in the towel a long time ago. i have found much hope in the online conversations about church & faith. i have made some incredible friendships that inspire me to not give up and to keep risking. i love what so many friends are trying in the kingdom of God as they live out their faith in really wild and creative ways that have nothing to do with 4 walls and a service. i still believe that “what could be” (http://kathyescobar.com/series/) is really possible.
i look so forward to the conversation and stories here on verve and the entire communitas collective. i hope we will continue to learn, grow, and dream together.
“one of my weaknesses is that i can be overly optimistic, a consummate dreamer.” A necessary weakness to have in our times, Kathy
Like hope and love for the least of these 
Rock on 
Kathy, The words “gritty” and “gutsy” come to mind. I think you have to be gritty and gutsy to move beyond the Christian sub cultural bubble, though, come to think of it, sometimes that world can be brutal. The real world and real community is messy, disorganized, and sometimes downright ugly (as you mentioned). But why play in a fantasy world when you can break away and be involved in something real? I am thankful that we can merge the dreamer side of our soul with the part of us that longs for something real. Stay gritty and gutsy! Keep on being an advocate for the disenfranchised! That’s what I like about you. Kathy, thank you so much for your involvement with CC!
Kathy, this is such an encouraging post. I can relate to so much of what you wrote. I went from being a socialist living in a commune to a Reaganite. And the whole institutional church trip… I still am in the “outsider” state. I can’t find a church anywhere nearby where I wouldn’t be one of “them”. And I don’t have the energy anymore to do the revolution from within thing. You said, “i think there is a general fear among many church leaders of actually creating real community.” In the institutional church it’s all too often about bucks and butts (or nickels and noses,) the numbers-based system of “measuring success”. And that drives efforts to find techniques that have “worked” in some “successful” (very large) churches. The whole church gimmick phenomenon is all about numbers instead of stories. You can’t measure (or reproduce or control) stories easily. And you only get to know them by investing time in individuals, rather than applying the latest church growth techniques. (I find it amusing to see more evangelical churches trying to be “emerging or missional”. But the ones I’ve seen are really just having another worship service in a different venue with slightly different music and a slightly hipper preacher. No true change of priorities and values. It’s really just a fear-based effort to staunch the bleeding.) I wish the Refuge wasn’t roughly 1,300 miles away from my house. But the very fact that the Refuge exists gives me hope. It makes me believe that there are others in my region who have similar dreams. If I have these dreams and so do a bunch of people in Colorado and Seattle and Minneapolis, etc. then maybe somehow a bunch of like-minded people can come together, even in my conservative, suburban wasteland.
sue – thanks, those are the kinds of reminders i need! glenn – so glad to be part…i do believe it’s worth it to stand on the tables on behalf of those without a voice or a place… gary – i’ve heard of bucks and butts but i hadn’t heard of nickels and noses, that was good. yes, i am so with you. authenticity and rawness and those on the margins isn’t exactly “comfortable” and because somehow comfort and power sells, that’s what often gets replicated. i am glad that somehow the refuge brings you hope from afar; i know it brings it to me, too, sometimes more days than others. thanks for sharing.
I love you and you are beautiful. You can’t ever know how our conversations have saved me from bitterness, because you exampled that church CAN be done well. You validated for me the truth that no one is too broken to be loved on. It can be so hard to move from dreamer into reality, because exactly what you speak is true: that it’s one thing to be idealistic, and another thing to make it real. I always hope I will have the courage one day!
hey Kathy- I didn’t realize how much what we had to say overlapped one another. ” i left feeling stupid, beat-up, bloody, and bruised.” Oh boy can I relate to that! i wish i had the weakness of too much optimism just occasionally! but I have to admit that I, too, sometimes have a fear of true community. Oh it is sooo messy being real. I wonder how I would respond if what I say I want suddenly came to be. 50/50 I’d turn tail and run! I need the encouragement of brave people like you who didn’t turn and run and lived to tell about it. ;D thanks!
What I love so much about this is that the mission of the refuge actually embodies faith in action. Even when I was in my less jaded & early days of college optimism, I yearned for so.much. more. I remember looking around the mega church sanctuary wondering how different “arriving” looked like in church vs that scary “real” world out there. Neither looked all that appealing. I now have a renewed faith that there *can* be a life in community that really looks like the Jesus I have read about. So very excited to be soon one of “those weird people who will help when times are tough.” ;D Thank you for not giving up hope, refuge.
erin – right back at you. in all of our different crazy ways we are finding our way & my friend, you have much more courage than you think…i’m not sure if you know how much what you write has helped people not lose complete hope. thanks for being such an amazing cheerleader from afar. i have needed it more than you know! cindy – yes, i agree with you, it seems that there’s so much wonderful overlap in all 3 of these blogs of our stories & experiences. i love that! and no doubt, true community IS actually scary!! terrifying. hard. and utterly beautiful when we can see the weird and crazy things we are learning underneath the surface about God, ourselves, others, life, love. so yes, we’re doing it, but remember almost every other week i want to run for the hills and live like a hermit (well, i guess i mean run for the beach…)
stacy – my friend, welcome to the weirdness. you’re in for a ride. and we’re in for a gift of your presence and love and heart for people. 
Love you, Kathy.