HOME.....what thoughts do you have when you here that word? For some those thoughts are not as good as they had hoped for. I was blessed to be raised in a Jesus loving home. I was safe. I was fed. I was family. I was home. Even with all that, I was playing a game of hide and seek. Seeking things that I wanted to hide. I wanted to be real. When the concept of the Refuge emerged, I was all in. In for what? I wasn't real sure but I knew that I was tired of church with its same old same old routines. ‘How are you?‘ ‘I'm fine, how are you?‘ ‘I'm fine too‘. Well great everybody is just fine! Does that get tiring and boring and deflating to anyone? What about being real? I was not fine 100% of the Sundays when I was at church. No one is!!! The Refuge is real, full of real people. And guess what? Real people can be a little messy and messed up but they are not any less loved than Billy Graham or the Apostle Paul. The Refuge welcomes all in whatever shape they can get themselves there. Jesus takes it from there. Come to a place where you will be loved. Your neck will be hugged. Your past will not define you. Your stumbles will not banish you. Come to the Refuge. Come and see HIS hands and feet. Come and lay your burdens down. Come home!

I had swallowed the wrong Jesus. The Jesus that I had swallowed had me walking in a half measure of salvation. I was just a sinner who had been saved by grace. I believed in an all powerful God, but I never could break free from the shadows of my past. A couple of years ago, my daughter and I walked through the doors of a high school choir room, and that marked the day that changed everything that I understood about church and about God's loving plan for me. It marked the day that I never had to walk alone. The Refuge community embraced me and my daughter with wide-open love that was a little uncomfortable and scary for someone who was still clawing her way through life. I believed that I would always be someone's burden. I would always be a liability. I would never have it together. After two years of beLIeVING with The Refuge, I am convinced that we will live out who we believe ourselves to be. I believe that God is who He says He is, and I am who He says I am. I found out that I am a saint, a pastor, a disciple. We don't go to church. We are church. I found out that nobody has it all together. I found out that grace is messy, but there is always at least one "me,too" to help me find it. I found out that God's mercies for me are new every day. I find myself no longer willing to hide behind "I'm just". Today, I am enough, and I am a part of...The Refuge.