Is A Multi-Campus Sojourn The End Of The Family? Which Site Will My Friends Choose?

You’ve read the five responses from Sojourn elders to questions we members have raised about plans for a new campus in St. Matthews.  You might even be one of the many who asked those questions.  Here is one that no one asked in our online message board or here on TravelBlog:

If we’re meeting in different parts of town, are we really one family?  What if I don’t see some of my good friends on Sundays anymore?

There, I said it.  It isn’t the first time, either.  Our move from rented space in the Highlands to our own building in Germantown filled my gut with butterflies, too.  And the decision to hold two services — then three, then four — knocked me for a loop.

I don’t like change.  When I first began attending Sojourn Gathered in 2004, I didn’t know anyone.  It quickly became a “safe place” for me though, which is how I wanted it to stay.  It felt like family, it felt like home.  The thing is, I was about the 200th person to feel that way, quickly followed by 201, 202, 250, 300, 350 …  The next thing I knew, our elders were holding a meeting about the opportunity to buy the building we now call “The 930,” with a 450 seat auditorium and plans to hold two Sunday services.

Maybe you’re like me, and you cringed at the knowledge that some of your friends would go to a different service.  Maybe you polled your friends to see who was going to which service, or where the majority of your close friends were going.  Maybe you said things like “We’re really two churches now.”

Or maybe you weren’t going to Sojourn Gathered then.  In fact, most of you who read this weren’t going then, because we’re currently over three times the size as the beginning of 2006.  You Sojourners would likely not be Sojourners if we’d remained in a smaller building or refused to hold more than one or two services.  But maybe you know how it felt back then, because now you’re thinking similar thoughts:

• “My community group is going to the St. Matthews location. I don’t want to leave The 930, but I don’t want them to go, either.”
• “I’m going to miss the faces I see every Sunday at my service time.”
• How can everyone act so excited and seem so full of vision and energy?  Won’t they miss their friends?  How can I make sure all my friends pick the same campus?”
• It’s just not the same as it was back in _____ (take your pick: 2007, 2005, 2002 …)

In fact, even though no one asked any such thing here on TravelBlog or at connect.sojournchurch.com, I have a suspicion that a few people have felt these same fears.  It’s natural.  Even the greatest missional Christians have felt the discomfort of beginning a new part of their journey.  And many times, for many believers, discomfort was just the beginning.  They were betrayed and even persecuted.

Paul wrote to Timothy from prison.  You can feel the ache in his words, as his letter of pastoral advice draws to a close:

Do your best to come to me quickly, for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry. I sent Tychicus to Ephesus. — 2 Timothy 4:9-12

Friends whom Paul sent away on the mission to spread the gospel, and friends who deserted Paul when the going got tough. Obviously one is worse than the other, but alone is alone.  Then in verse 16 he says:

At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me.

And then in Paul’s final greetings, verses 19-21:

Greet Priscilla and Aquila and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus stayed in Corinth, and I left Trophimus sick in Miletus. Do your best to get here before winter.

These were all friends whom Paul had talked with, prayed with, broken bread with — he would have loved to have had even one of them with him when his current companions deserted him.  Who can read these passages quoted above, and not feel the ache of  “do your best to come to me quickly … Demas has deserted me … only Luke is with me … get Mark and bring him with you … no one came to my support … do your best to get here before winter”?

But we know that Paul “ran a good race,” because of the prize set before him.  The glory of God motivated him more so than either the loss of friendship or the temporary separation from his true brothers and sisters in Christ.

And of Christ, we remember a time when someone interupted him to say “Your brothers and your mom want to have a talk with you.”

He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. — Matthew 12:48-49

Was He saying, “Family, shmamily”?  Not hardly — not the man who rebuked the Pharisees for dishonoring their parents, just three chapters later (Matthew 15:3-9).  Not the man who, while agonizing on a cross, asked His friend John to care for Mary as if she were John’s own mother (John 19:26-27):

From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

Jesus’ point in Matthew 12 was that no commitment is more important than the commitment to do the will of God, to spread the news “The Kingdom is at hand.”

Sojourn isn’t a place, it’s a journey.  It’s why we chose the name “Sojourn.” It’s a movement to preach the cross of Christ and work for the kingdom of heaven in Louisville and beyond.  This might occasionally mean we start a new community group, we help build a satellite campus, or even that we leave Sojourn to plant a church across this region, nation or globe.  If so, then God will restore the fellowship we’ve missed (1 Corinthians 16:17-18).

But if our friendships are real, if they are intentional, then they need not end simply because they are no longer easy.  In our age of technology and travel, the world is smaller than ever before.  But it has never been too big for the family of God.

And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers. (Philemon 22)

– Bobby Gilles