Jesus for 'special' people

My husband and I met at University Presbyterian Church just off the UCLA campus. It was a really different church from the ones I had grown up in. Being oriented to the college campus, most congregants were undergraduate or graduate students with a few people who stuck around after graduation and even fewer who had no affiliation with the university.  Having a Korean pastor, most of the congregation was also Asian; fresh-off-the-boat international students and US-born Asian-Americans. So picture a congregation between 18-35 years old, mostly Asian, with elite university-educated minds.

Nevertheless, what strikes me about my time there is what a motley crew of 'special' people we were. When I say 'special' I think I actually mean odd & needy. I arrived at the church in culture shock after having spent a year overseas; I had very little financial means; I was skeptical of the value of the formal church setting; and I'd had a really bad roommate experience while overseas. I was a mess. And as I think of all the friends at that church, I think about what a mess they were too. Individual, messy stories.

Our leaving LA coincided with our feeling that it was time to move on from that  church. So I'm not saying it was a perfect church. But a distinguishing feature of that community is loving messy people and loving messy people who are supposed to be ok. University elites are supposed to ok, to have succeeded in the past and to succeed on into the future. What I got to participate in for myself and with others was Jesus loving the little child in each of us; the child that we'd hidden away but was scared nonetheless, was hurt and confused.

Now that I've had some time away, I think how small my dissatisfactions were compared to the privilege of being with a pastor and church committed to loving 'special' people.