Deep space: Oscar Mmbali has a lesson from Belize

‘Our church grows in part because young people who are there love it.’

One of the conversations we have had this year at Belize Friends Church is about creating multiple sacred spaces for people with various needs. I find that the Spirit is in this conversation.

Creating multiple sacred spaces can be an alternative to, or can supplement, our more traditional mobilising of people to know and experience God through a sermon.
There is a way this theme resonates with scripture, too. To ground our work, to create multiple sacred spaces in both scripture and the Spirit, one of the places I find meaningful to look is the ministry of Jesus. Jesus’ messages were not all sermons. Some were conversations, or answers to questions in which healing, hope, and miracles happened.

In John 5, there is a story about a man who had been paralysed for thirty-eight years. Jesus healed him, then told him to carry his mat and go. It was the Sabbath. The temple had a designated place for the sick, the lame – those with different needs – to come and wait for healing, and that’s where Jesus encountered the paralytic. But the temple regulations had no space for someone to receive healing on this holy day. To pick up a mat and walk was to break Sabbath law. In my view, Jesus was recreating the temple space – creating an alternative sacred space.

In this chapter, Jesus was not preaching. He was listening, then he told the man what to do to get out of the situation that had held him for thirty-eight years. The miracle was in the conversation.

Some of the miracles we see here at church happen in multiple sacred spaces. Our church grows in part because young people who are there love it. They invite their friends, who in turn invite their friends. When we speak with them, we realise that they are at different places in their lives. Some of them are not even sure whether they want to have a relationship with God, but they love coming and participating in worship and fellowship. We don’t drag them to a place of perfection, but we create spaces for them. Over time, we see transformation in their lives. Young people who were restless at the beginning of a Meeting can now complete a one-hour service in complete calm, including a ten-minute time of silent waiting worship. Some who just sat and watched now participate in church committees, leading worship, praying for others, reading scripture and so on.

Creating multiple sacred spaces means being open to the work of the Spirit, who is at work in many ways that we do not see, until the fruits emerge.

Oscar is a Belize Friends pastoral minister.

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