Blest Be the Bind that Ties

Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love:
The Fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.

These were the words that the congregation sang yesterday as I joined Trinity Presbyterian Church as an affiliate member with two others joining in full membership.  I am keeping my membership at New Providence Presbyterian Church in Maryville, but I also feel a strong affection and affinity for Trinity Presbyterian where I have been attending since I moved to Nashville eighteen months ago, and I wanted to more formally acknowledge that tie that binds.

I began thinking about joining Trinity in the fall when I began filling out and writing essays for seminary applications.  I also decided to begin the ordination process.  The first step to ordination in the PC(USA) is becoming an inquirer, which is done through your church of membership and presbytery.  I grew up in New Providence--I was baptized and confirmed there, and there are people there who have changed my diapers, rocked me in the nursery, taught me VBS, loved me when I was an awkward middle-schooler with braces, took me on youth trips, sent me care packages in college, and supported me prayerfully and financially during both of my YAV years.  It is at New Providence that I learned how to love and how to ask questions and where I was first encouraged to think about ministry as a vocation.  Belst be these ties that bind.  When I go to New Providence I feel as if I am going home.

But I also feel as if I am at home on Sunday mornings at Trinity.  My faith changed in dramatic and subtle ways while I was in Guatemala, and when I came to Trinity just a month after returning to the US from Guatemala I was welcomed with enthusiasm and invited to participate in the life of the church  but never felt obligated to do so.  Trinity is openly and unapologetically progressive on issues that are important to me, but does so with love and joyful hospitality.  And while New Providence has continued to support in many ways since I returned from Guatemala, Trinity is where I have been living out and processing some of these changes in my faith and values since returning from Guatemala, and they have helped carry me through a time of major transition and change in my life.  It is strange sometimes to be in a church where no one knew me before I was 23, but they have loved me for who I am now, and it is at Trinity that I am learning how to live a faith that is not only intellectual but joyful.  Blest also be these ties that bind.

So this is why I joined Trinity as an affiliate member at the same time as I begin the ordination process through New Providence.  I have found a home in both places and am grateful for the ties that bind me to the churches and the individuals in them.