Imani MCC of Durham

This Sunday will be a HUGE day in my life! It’s OSCAR SUNDAY!!!

I’m kidding. It is Oscar Sunday, and I do love the Academy Awards, but that is not what I am most excited about. The 1st Sunday in March of last year was the first day of my assignment at Imani. So this Sunday will be our first anniversary in ministry together.

And what a year it has been! For me, it was a return to a faith community that was both familiar and new. It was familiar insofar as some of faces were familiar, and the unique and strong spirit of this church was certainly familiar. It was new insofar as most of the faces in the congregation were new to me. Yet, there was an immediate spiritual connection between Imani and me which left no doubt that I was in the right place at the right time - God’s appointed time in the life of the church and in my life.

Imani is absolutely wonderful at welcoming new folks. I have experienced that myself; and I have never witnessed new folks coming into a church and so immediately and seamlessly integrating into its life and culture.

We experienced an extraordinary outpouring of the Holy Spirit during our worship at Imani Sunday. It is such a gift when that happens! We know that God is present everywhere, all the time. We know that. But there are times when there is a discernible atmospheric shift in the room. I don’t know how else to express it. I don’t know a better word to describe it than extraordinary; extra-ordinary; the felt experience of the presence of God among us above and beyond the norm.

I treasure these experiences because they confirm, for me, everything that I know and experience relative to my relationship with God. They confirm the reality of it all. I hope and pray that they do the same for everyone present, particularly those who need that confirmation.