Life as a Sister in the Church

Written by Jenny Jeffries in 2001

I write as a single 46-yr-old sister, a New Zealander, who has lived in both the church in Atlanta, GA, and the church in Jacksonville, FL, and now lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

I first heard about church life in 1995, through reading How to Meet by Gene Edwards. That book provoked a radical change in my life, which has not altered course or slowed down since I read the first chapter. In fact, my conversion experience was tame by comparison!

Four of us came out from New Zealand to stay in one of the churches (in Florida) for two months. It was there that I saw true, organic, church life alive and well on planet earth. I felt immediately as if I had come home at last. That here was my true habitat, and these were my people. That view has not changed.

I stayed on and moved to Atlanta, joining the church at Lithia Springs. I have never in all my Christian experience been so free to be myself, and to be unfettered from the burden of rules, and rituals, and styles, and listening to sermons ad infinitum.

Originally I would have thought it impossible to conceive of a Christianity that could exist outside of the narrow parameters that most Christians believe to be the norm. There is so much fear that if we step outside these accepted traditions we will be in danger of losing our faith, or worse, placing our faith in the hands of a unscrupulous individual. Indeed, there are many examples of small, deviant groups, set up by a man who is the spiritual head, supposedly to be free of these things. Tragically, a worse fate than traditional Christianity awaits those who place their trust in such a man.

This is not what I witnessed, nor experienced in church life. There was no ‘man’. There was only a bunch of normal people, married and single, living in their own homes, close to each other, so desperate to pursue Christ corporately that they would be mad enough to want to experience their lives together, and dream up forever evolving and changing ways to encounter Christ. I came to know HIM better than I ever had before.

Every now and then we had our worker come and visit with us. He was a man we trusted, who could encourage us, help us with any difficulties we had (and there were many), who then left and stayed away for a while. We could not lean on him, we could only lean on each other, and Christ.

As a single woman, I have always been painfully conscious of not being part of a family, or married, especially on Sundays, if I was at church. For the first time in my life, and for the duration of my time in the neighborhoods in Jacksonville and Lithia Springs, it did not even occur to me that I was alone. That is no small thing. I was the recipient, many times, of small detailed ways of being cared for. It was as if the Lord was given opportunity to demonstrate through His body, the church, His husbandry. It occurred to me that He had called the church His body for just that reason, but I had never seen it demonstrated.

Of course, it was the brothers, or the sisters, who I experienced this care through, but we all knew it was the Lord who had inspired it, and were thrilled at the opportunity to care for each other naturally. It could only happen because we shared our lives as we did.

I cannot begin to describe the breadth of our experience, nor do I want to make it sound a blessed state of perfect happiness. On the contrary, some of the worst of human experience is borne when lives are opened to each other, and natural emotions and desires are brought unwittingly to the surface. It is this constant daily choice to lay it aside and press on to know Him together that makes the glorious so apparent. The combination of earthly life, with divine life, and the road we have chosen to walk together. I have returned to Auckland, and to a very new, young, experience of church life. Only ten of us together in neighbourhood, and much less vigour in the pursuit than my earlier experiences. Ah, but the unique, unsurpassable joy of a daily life, as a Christian, getting to know other believers, for the sole purpose of pressing on to know Him. We are excited about planning our next gatherings, we delight in spontaneous celebrations, we run into each other at the supermarket and chat, we have coffee together, we find excuses for weekends away.

Please don’t ever ask me to go into a large building and face the neck of the believer in front of me, and listen to a man drone on up the front about an experience he knows little about.

Listen, instead, to what one of my brothers here wrote and shared with us a few weeks ago:

Precious Lamb of the Father
Crucified before creation
All things are finished
Before all things
Life’s river flows
My deepest knows
Your life’s in me
My spirit’s free
From heaven He sought her
To be His holy bride
Mystery hidden
But now made known
One river flows
Our spirit knows
Love deep inside
Your peace abides

(to the tune of one of our New Zealand songs)

Read more by Jenny on her blog.