Here, we love to throw parties,

Tell stories, find hope, and

Practice the ways for Jesus

As best we can.

We’re all hurt or hungry in our own ways.

We’re at different places on our journey but we

Share a guiding story,

A sweeping epic drama called the Bible.

We find faith as we follow

Jesus and share a willingness to honestly wrestle with God, and our questions and

Doubts.

We find dignity as God’s image-bearer and strive to call out that dignity in one another.

We all receive. We all give.

We are old, young, poor, rich, conservative, liberal, single, married, gay, straight, evangelicals,

Progressives, overeducated, being educated, certain, doubting, hurting, thriving. Yet Christ’s love binds our differences together in unity.

Here, everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.

-Rachel Held Evans

Here at the Festival Center, everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.

I recently bought a new welcome mat for my home. The old one, a simple teal mat that said hello, I am afraid was getting ragged and torn up from the countless visitors who have come to my home over the years. Visitors who I welcomed in for a meal, a cry, a laugh.

The new welcome mat is expected to be delivered today and says four simple words: COME BACK WITH TACOS.

I think we’ve upgraded.

I am not going to lie, I love welcome mats. I think they are a beautiful way to invite people in our homes and, essentially, into our lives. But lately, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to welcome someone.

See, for me, saying that you are welcome here is completely different than saying you are safe here.

You are welcome into this place, but only if you look or think in this way. You are welcome to into this place but only if you follow the rules. Lindsay, you are welcome to play baseball but you can’t run around the bases after you get struck out shouting “I am the MVP”. It doesn’t work like that….

Welcoming infers that someone is of ownership. Someone has the power. That rules have been made and those rules should not be broken.

When I welcome you into my home, you should follow my rules:

• Please take off your shoes
• Love my dog
• Please leave by 9

Here everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.

Being safe is different than being welcomed. When I say you are safe here, I am saying that I am not in ownership of this place, but rather I know of its safety because of the vulnerability that has been shared here, the stories that been told, the joys that been celebrated and the sorrows that have been mourned. I know of the safety here because I have come to this place with my whole being, my unapologetic self, the parts of my story that I’d rather not relive, and the parts of my story I am proud of. I have come to this place with my whole story, everything that makes me, me. And I have been safe, and loved, and challenged and encouraged, and so shall you.

You are safe here. Safe to be your unapologetic self. Safe to believe. Safe to doubt. Safe to question. Safe to be joyful, happy, hurt, learning, growing. Safe to make mistakes.

And you will be met with love, forgiveness and grace. Grace that none of us deserve but was freely given to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In a time where the world feels more polarized, where it feels like you choose a side. Here, we believe you can live. Live respecting others. Live learning from others. Live without fear of the difference that separates us, but live with the safety of knowing what makes you different is what makes you a needed part of the Body of Christ.

But I gotta warn you. It isn’t easy.

Here, everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.

In bias training, they tell you that if you are comfortable, you are doing it wrong. If you are comfortable here, we, as your community, are doing it wrong.

I hope that this year, here at the Festival Center or throughout your life journey, you begin to live in the tension of the uncomfortable. The tension of:

• Maybe the more I learn, the less I actually know…
• The tension of that person’s story is different than mine, but instead of correcting them, maybe I’ll listen and learn…
• The tension of maybe I might be wrong…
• The tension of questions with no answers…
• The tension of belief and unbelief…
• The tension of death and resurrection…
• The tension of forgiveness…

Here, at the Festival Center, we believe Christ’s love binds us together in unity: a love that sat with the marginalized and outcasted. A love that overcame death so that we might all live. A love that makes us a body of Christ, a Whole people of God: gifted, different, safe, uncomfortable, broken, sinful, and forgiven.