Just showing up

Over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself in a lot of different places.

Little churches in small towns. Parish halls that smell like coffee and community dinners. Anniversary services with bulletins that tell stories longer than any of us has time to write. Conversations in the parking lot that go just a little deeper than expected.

It's been a gift. A reminder of how sacred the ordinary is.

I’ve been visiting parishes to help mark anniversaries and provide some summer fill-in coverage. It’s not the numbers that have stayed with me. Not the liturgy, not the planning, not even the sermons (mine or anyone else's).

What’s stayed with me is the people.
Their stories.
Their laughter.
Their grief.
Their resilience.

What’s stayed with me is how they keep showing up for one another.

Not because it’s easy. Not because they have to.
But because it’s what they do.

They show up to stack chairs and wash dishes and keep the doors open.
They show up to sit with someone who just got a diagnosis.
They show up to celebrate the good days and to hold each other through the hard ones.
They show up even when the building is cold, the roof is leaking, or the future feels uncertain.

I don’t think we talk enough about that kind of faithfulness.

It’s not flashy.
It doesn’t trend on social media.
You won’t find it in many church growth books.

But there it is, week after week, year after year, quietly holding communities together. Quietly holding people together.

I was chatting with someone after a service and they said, “I’m not here because I always agree with everything or because it’s convenient. I’m here because these people were here for me when I needed them. And I want to be that for someone else.”

That line stuck with me.

Church isn’t about being right or relevant. Thought, sadly, we’ve made it about that.
It’s about being present.

Not fixing everything.
Not having all the answers.
Not always knowing what to say.

But showing up anyway.

Being the one who remembers.
The one who notices.
The one who sits beside.
The one who stays.

Maybe that’s enough.

Maybe that’s the whole thing.

In a world that’s moving faster and getting noisier by the day, the simple act of being with each other, of choosing to stay when it would be easier to leave, is quietly revolutionary.

So here’s to the people who keep showing up.
To the ones who bring the banana bread and set up the chairs.
(Even those who bring your jello salads.)
To the ones who call just to check in.
To the ones who don’t give up on each other, even when things get awkward or hard or just… ordinary.

Here’s to the kind of church that isn’t always polished or perfect but is real and rooted and willing to walk with people through whatever comes.

Here’s to showing up.

Because in the end, that might be the most powerful ministry any of us ever offers.

Photo by Emma Shappley on Unsplash