Tour Day 6 – Birmingham AL to Community of Christ Church

Real quick before I get started, you still have the opportunity to help the Salvation Army in Bowling Green, KY.  Just go to www.ngsingers.com click donate now and put Salvation Army AC in the reason.

Maybe I’m a bit of a sadist. I think it’s more that I’m just nostalgic.  I love sleeping on church floors. I mean, I admit it’s true that there is no chance I’m able to move my hips in the morning, but it’s all worth it.  When you sleep in a church you just don’t forget that. Like tonight, how I’m typing this in a nursery resting my elbow on a small, pink rocking horse. The card games, the girls singing in the sanctuary with the church folk who have lingered just a little longer, the conversations happening; as I sit here listening to the boys in the fellowship hall behind me, I am certain this is the sound of life-long friendships being built.  It’s the sound of future groomsmen in weddings. It’s the sound of the friends that will ferry each other through inevitable losses and victories in life.

The Community of Christ Church here in Crestview, FL reminds me a lot of that kind of love. The connection to this church really is mostly through my dad. When he was a young man in the 70s, he pastored a camp in these parts called Wilderness Camp where kids spent a week in the woods, slept in tents, bathed in the creeks, and cooked over an open fire. I remember going to “Wilderness”, as it’s often referred, when I was a young kid and a lot of the people who are now leaders in churches around this area were teenagers back then. So, for me coming here was a lot like going to a family reunion where you are re-meeting cousins that you only have faint recollections of, but your parents know each other well.

That group, much like this one, were teenagers who grew up to eventually form the most important relationships in each other’s lives. Even a few marriages resulted. It, again like New G, was a set aside time where you had to work hard alongside people you started out barely knowing, and by the time you’re ready to go home, you’ve met “that friend”. But now  it’s this group’s chance to learn those lessons, and that wasn’t lost on the audience tonight, who, on multiple occasions, reminded them to cherish this time in their lives. The gray hair sharing a little wisdom with the blonde.

So, this performance tonight was great.  But the thing this cohort of kids are going to take away from tonight is the value of shared suffering. Waking up stiff after taking too long to finally go to sleep. Eating one too many cupcakes that the parishioners left behind. The kindness of strangers who just feel special that they get to pass the gift on to another generation of kids.

Thank you, Crestview Community of Christ, Thank you.