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MY STORY

Only as I sat down to reflect on my story for this book did I realize that my beginning relationship with Jesus was in a kitchen, yet long before my soup kitchen experience. It was in a little apartment in Indianapolis, Indiana. I was raised by a single mom and lived with her and my sister. We went to church and some classes on Sunday and knew about Jesus, but didn’t really know Jesus.

My sister and I were embraced into a surrogate family that knew Jesus. Their family and our family became one. My mom worked days mostly, and my friend’s parents worked nights, usually on weekends as musicians. So between the two households we were covered and together all the time at one house or the other, most often playing Charlie’s Angels. We were the perfect representation of Charlie’s Angels, the blonde, my sister, played Jill. My new found friend, turned sister, and the smart one, played Sabrina, while I was the other girl, stuck somewhere in the middle with no distinguishing label, and played Kelly.

Since “Sabrina’s” parents had a flexible schedule during the week, they were always there for breakfast. We would spend endless breakfast mornings over at their house being fed scrambled eggs with green peppers, grits, toast and a good dose of vitamin pills to boot. Not only did this mom feed us breakfast, she would feed us with the love of Jesus. She was always on fire for the LORD. I remember her Bible being out and open and the sound of her flipping through pages as she would talk about this Jesus. Jesus was like another person at breakfast with us. Jesus this, Jesus that. I liked this guy Jesus. He was warm and inviting, kind, and full of hope.

It wasn’t too long before I accepted Jesus as my Savior. I was in seventh grade. I think I had my own Bible at home, but it wasn’t alive like hers. And even though I went to church to learn about Jesus, it was the Jesus that was in her kitchen that was alive to me. My real church was her kitchen, and my Bible was her Bible.

Only a few years later, they moved to the west coast. I stumbled in my faith walk for the next twenty or so years. I would hop from church to church, but never belonged to one. I had never gone to the lengths of an official membership at any of them.

Over the years, I gained ownership of a few more Bibles in different versions to help make more sense of my NKJV Bible, in which I had some simple phrases highlighted in red that I thought I understood, or heard God talking to me about.

Then, some twenty-two years later, I chose Jesus not only as my Savior, but as my LORD. I was baptized as an adult on August 13, 2001, at a lake submersion ceremony somewhere north of Tampa, FL. I was raised a new woman in Christ, went on my first date with my future husband four days later, and was married within five months. As a wedding gift from my mother-in-law, I received a new Bible with my new name inscribed on the outside, “Mrs. Renee J. Crosby”.

Within the next two years I was indoctrinated into my first church membership through marriage. My husband was raised in and believed in belonging to a church. So we did church. I took my inscribed Bible to studies with some wonderful women, and started learning more about this Jesus fellow. This church became my church. This Body of Christ is what nurtured me, encouraged me and loved me. I had finally begun to understand the workings of Jesus and His Bride, the church.

The amount of exponential love and growth that I experienced in the Body of Christ was amazing. I can’t imagine what my life would be like had I not been in that nest of the church. I know for sure that it would have taken this bird a lot longer to learn how to fly had I not been there. Being in the Word of God set my heart on fire, and being connected within this Body of Christ healed me of my past and moved me into the future. Together they transformed me.

I had also come to understand that each member of the Body of Christ had spiritual gifts and work to do for the Kingdom of God with those gifts. Before long, I was serving in the church with my spiritual gifts.

The process to arrive at serving in my local church started with members encouraging me to teach adults the Word of God. I even thought I heard God calling me to teach. I wondered how this could be. God had started to knock on my door to serve in the local church.

After hearing about and having the opportunity to take a spiritual gift test, lo & behold, it confirmed that teaching was my strongest spiritual gift. Go figure! So, I moved forward with great discomfort towards my work for the Kingdom of God.

Why was I uncomfortable? Well, I couldn’t believe that God could use me to help build up His Body of people. I couldn’t believe that others in the Body of Christ saw gifts in me and asked me to serve in church. I couldn’t believe that I had any amount of knowledge or wisdom or skill to actually teach the word of God. I was such a spiritual newbie.

I moved forward like a deer in headlights, eyes wide open yet blinded, not being able to see where to go. You see, I had Coach Christ in my corner of that wrestling ring. But, I was not the Christian athlete who jumped in the ring ready to take on my challenger. No sir. I was the scared, shivering, untrained first-timer who had to be shoved in the ring by the coach. Through many wrestling matches, I learned to trust Him that He had it all covered, whatever I was doing. I was to be the vessel. I wasn’t in control.

One of those trust moments when God was working on me was the day before a women’s conference where I was the key note speaker. I woke up at three in the morning on Friday, the day before the event, and Ephesians 6 was on my mind, the armor of God. I couldn’t shake the feeling that God was leading me to this scripture, but I couldn’t figure out why. I had planned to refer to it during my speaking engagement, but wasn’t going in depth about it. What was God showing me?

I reviewed the scripture and my reference to it wondering if I had misused the reference, or my message about it was wrong (that shows my newbie insecurity). I meditated over the words, but wasn’t hearing God lead me to expand the message on this scripture. I was perplexed. What was it about this scripture that God had placed it so heavily on my heart?

I was about to set it aside for a while, when I realized I had one more place to check. I went to the conference gift bags to check the handout with the scripture references. It was a five page document. Lo and behold, there it was. On the bottom of page four was item number forty-five, Ephesians 6:10-18, only it was split at the end of the page, and I had to go to the top of page five to finish reading it. The problem was that there was no page five, it was page four again. I had copied and stapled all of the scripture references with two page fours and didn’t include page five–oops–leaving the Ephesians reference incomplete. I laughed. What an amazing God thing! I had no doubt that God had covered every last detail of the conference. All I had to do was trust Him, and allow Him to work through me.

That pivotal moment was a building block in the foundation of my trusting God and was a cornerstone in building my relationship with God. After that, my teaching started to change. I finally stopped using my notes in class as a crutch, and learned to let the Holy Spirit lead the class. Not that I didn’t prepare for each class mind you. I learned that I didn’t have to have all the answers, and that all I needed was a hungry heart for truth. God would provide the answers, the way, the knowledge and the wisdom.

About a year after the foundation was complete, another major point in my faith walk occurred; I was about to experience this fellow Jesus in a kitchen where he would really come alive for me. Only this time, my childhood kitchen spiritual mentor wouldn’t be there with grits and vitamins. It was just me and Jesus.

After a couple of two by fours over the noggin, I finally heeded the call to start seminary. I was excited and nervous about taking my first class. In the first week, I was basically forced to choose to serve somewhere in our community for a semester long seminary project. I didn’t want to serve, and was upset that I was required to do so.

My spiritual gifts were in teaching, and I was doing my part. I remember being on a church bus going to a leadership summit and talking to one of my pastors about how inappropriate, offensive, and annoying it was that I was being made to do such a thing. My gifts were to serve in the church, not out of the church. It seemed contrary to God’s plan for me, and quite frankly a waste of my time.

You see, in the first twenty some years of my Christian experience, I had only come to understand that God’s mission for us was to serve in the Body of Christ with our spiritual gifts. Somewhere in the context of my learning about being a Christian, I had equated serving in the Body of Christ to serving in the church (as in the church building/institution). I had taken several spiritual gifts tests and my gifts were to be used to teach the Body of Christ. The only spiritual gift from those tests that I could see that would require intentional work outside of the church walls was that of evangelism, which I found I didn’t have, with great relief I might add. Can I get an Amen?

So, I thought we had it all covered. Why was I being required to serve in my community? Needless to say, I begrudgingly accepted the assignment and elected to serve in a soup kitchen. Have no doubt that the soup kitchen changed my life and my relationship with this wonderful friend of mine, Jesus.

Looking back, it seems ridiculous that I could have forgotten about my earliest kitchen experience where I learned of Jesus. I learned not just about Jesus, but this is where Jesus and the Bible came alive for me. My Jesus became my Savior at a kitchen table from a woman who was proclaiming the Good News and the vast benefits of vitamin consumption.

You may have guessed that by serving in my community at the Ft. Walton Beach Waterfront Rescue Mission that I learned that when Jesus talked about serving others, He wasn’t just talking about our serving within the confines of our church walls. By serving outside of the church, I was introduced to many other faces of this mysterious and wondrous God and His mission for His people that cause us to rise up and taste mercy in the very soup we serve.

I had to ponder how I could have missed the mark so badly on what is required of me as a Christian to serve others as Jesus did–outside of the church walls. After the shock wore off, I realized I must not be the only one who thinks I am doing my part for the kingdom of God by serving in my church with my spiritual gifts. As I learned to articulate the vast amount of heartfelt knowledge God shared with me while serving in a soup kitchen I have come to do my part in some small way to realign God’s people with the full mission God has set before us.

This book is about radically new-old ways of doing the gospel. It’s about changing our mindset from being a “come to” church to becoming a “go from” church. The new-old way is about a dual approach to our Christian mission. It’s about serving within the confines of our church walls, and about going and “bringing the Good News to the poor”.

It’s coming to understand and loving God in a more meaningful and relevant way because we have stopped limiting God and have gone to find Him where He is when we bring the Good News to the poor. That is where He reveals Himself to us in a personal, profound and miraculous way!

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What key people have been influential in igniting or developing your faith walk? It could be several people from a teacher, or a parent, a neighbor, a friend’s parent, a relative, a pastor or a co-worker.

2. Can you remember a time, place or event when and/or where this Jesus fellow “came alive” for you?

3. Describe the events surrounding the time when you accepted Jesus as your Savior. Was this the same time as when Jesus became your LORD, or did this develop later?

4. I ask that you challenge yourself to evaluate if you personally have come to expect God to meet you where you are, or have you experienced what it is like to go and seek God where He is?

5. What have you come to understand as the mission or missions God has for Christians? Do you believe we should use our spiritual gifts in the church (institution) and are you using them? What about this dual approach to our missions? Do you believe God desires and directs us all to also serve outside of the church walls?