How am I Transfiguration?
I started as a lurker. You know what I mean. I was the person who came to services, but never ‘officially’ joined, never stayed for coffee, never participated in anything and never pledged, just threw a few bucks into the plate from time to time. I was such a good lurker that I managed to avoid being Dingwalled!
But anonymity is hard to maintain and the more I showed up the more I was welcomed, and JD remembered my name and pretty soon I knew that I had found a home. I’ve been a member now for almost seventeen years.
Transfiguration’s mission statement about seeking and serving Christ in all persons has always resonated with me. It is one of those things that sneaks up on you, suddenly you have one of those “aha” moments, and understand exactly what it means, and you see God. I’ve seen it so many places at The Fig: on my trips to La Ceiba with the Honduras Mission, at the clinic at North Dallas Shared Ministries, as a Eucharistic Visitor, at the wonderful agencies we partner with through the Outreach Committee, and in all of the parishioners who give so much time and energy to all of those things. Sometimes I see it in something as mundane as a badly needed cup of coffee! But I see it absolutely the most in the children and the extraordinary children and youth ministries here. In VBS (which really is more fun than Lego camp), in high schoolers putting up drywall and learning to clog in rural Kentucky, in a tired donkey and fidgety sheep in a Christmas pageant, something wonderful is happening here.
It would be great to think that all of these things just spontaneously appear, but over the years (and particularly as Chair of the Outreach Committee) I’ve learned that money talks. All the wonderful and fun things come from the same pot of money as the boring stuff, the heat and the roof and mowing the lawn. So I pledge now, not like in those lurker days, and I try and increase the pledge whenever I can. An extra $500 from me allows ten kids from St. Philips attend VBS (with maybe a bit leftover for the roof) and it keeps the magic going and I get to keep seeing God.