Thoughts on where we're headed

I’ve been privileged not once but twice in my life to be a part of what I’d consider to be remarkably open and loving groups of people. The first time came during the fall of my senior year of high school (1996). I was hanging out with my friend Andrew after a Friday Night Football game (I capitalize that because Football is always capitalized in Alabama) and he invited me to meet some people with him at a restaurant called Moneer’s. Moneer, as it turned out, was the good ol’boy pronunciation of one Munir Accawi’s first name. Munir had imported his family and his cooking from Lebanon to Alabama in the 70s. The later served to pay for the former, and soon Munir had set up a 24 hour open air patio restaurant serving the delicacies of the Mediterranean to the hungry folks of Homewood. What better name for the restaurant than the odd way people in the South kept mispronouncing Munir’s name? I had been somewhat familiar with this restaurant through my friendship with Kevin Accawi (Munir’s son and a fellow senior at Homewood High) but I was not prepared for what I encountered that night. Here, in the courtyard of the restaurant on a warm fall night were nearly forty kids from my high school and neighboring schools. What’s more, they seemed like one group, all getting along and enjoying each other. This was quite different from what I was used to at school; where football players and wrestlers hung out with cheerleaders and spangles (that’s The Star Spangled Girls, our amazing school dance line and a breeding ground for eating disorders….but that’s another story), potheads and other recreational drug users made fun of everybody else (when they bothered to show up), and dorks like me didn’t hang out with anybody. I decided immediately that I was coming back to Moneer’s.

Over the next four (or so) years I probably spent more time at that restaurant than I did at home. Those people became the people I laughed and cried with; the people I dated and watched breakup; the people who were constantly around every part of my life. I stood with them when we buried Munir and I stood with them as a groomsman at (my dear friend) Davy’s wedding. Moneer’s closed around 2000 and we’ve since scattered across the country (Andrew’s in law school at Alabama, Dallas went to film school in Iowa and now lives in LA, Davy went to law school at Syracuse and now practices in Huntsville) but we still regularly talk and see each other every chance we get. Why? Because we have deep, rich, full community.

I want to suggest that we as group came pretty dang close to nailing the Gospel idea of community. This idea comes out of verses like John 15:9 “As the Father has loved Me so have I loved you, now remain in My love.” The key to this passage (as with similar passages) is the comparison between the way God loves and the way we are instructed to love. God is in effect saying “You’ve seen how I loved you, now go out and love others the same way”. How did God love us? The prophet Joel can help us with that one. At the beginning of his third chapter, Joel describes the future judgment of the nations “In those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem I will gather all nations and bring them down to the valley of jeshosphat. There I will enter into judgment against them concerning My inheritance, my people Israel, for they scattered My people among the nations and divided up the land.” Notice in the midst of that statement the two little words that precede “my people Israel”: My inheritance. What does that mean? Well, we learn in academic study of scripture that often when the name “Israel” is used in Old Testament prophecy it’s referring to the Church (as the Church is the spiritual or true Israel and thus heir the promises made to Israel). When you connect the dots on this one you realize that God is saying something pretty remarkable with Joel’s pen; The Church, the people of God (every believer that’s ever been, in other words), are God’s very inheritance! We are His reward! We are the motivation for every single thing He did! All His perfect obedience and His horrible death on the cross were done cheerfully and willingly by the Lord Jesus with an eye towards securing us for Himself. We, who deserve torment and damnation; who kick and scream and run from anything that smacks of holiness, who spit on the very cross that saves us, are loved. Loved so deeply that all our fears, our insecurities, our neuroses go away. Loved in a way that says “I chose to not be able to live without you.” Loved in such a way that says “though I could choose any other way, the way I will bring glory to Myself is by loving you”. That, in a nutshell, is how God loved us and how He tells us to love each other. Recklessly, completely, and without boundary.

Hanging out at Moneer’s was as close as I’ve come to loving and being loved the way the Bible tells me I’m supposed to love. I can honestly say that that was a place where it didn’t matter what you looked like, who your friends were, or where you were from. If you wanted to come hang out, we wanted you to come hang out and we were gonna love on you like you were family. That kind of love is my great hope for our ministry to young adults. More than that, however, it is the way we are commanded to love (2 Corinthians 5:18-21, Galatians 6:1-3, etc.). Thus, the barometer for the success or failure of our ministry is found in whether or not we’re building and maintaining Gospel community. Are we opening our arms to anyone that walks through the doors? Are we encouraging the “us” and “them” mentality that kept so many otherwise solid churches out the cities and the mercy ministries until recently? Are we teaching kids that the only thing they’ll ever have that’s worth anything is Jesus Christ; and encouraging them to build relationships based on that? The first moment we look at someone as funny or different is the first moment we fail as a ministry. For us to be faithful to the Gospel, the doors of Covenant have to be a border where all the artificial boundaries and judgment of this wretched, depraved world fall by the wayside and the love of Christ reigns. Moneer’s was a place like that once. I hope by God’s grace Covenant will be as well.