A New Church Home

Today, November 22, 2009 I became a member of Seattle Mennonite Church, effectively transferring my membership from Grace Hill Mennonite Church in rural Kansas.  It seems a bit weird, to be joining a church where I can rarely worship, but as life would have it, SMC is really my church home.  Here are the words I shared with congregation, having been asked to articlate my faith journey:

My name is Sarah Klaassen. I am twenty-six years old. Today I share with you my faith journey. It’s really my life journey too, because for me, the life of life and the life of faith are one and the same.

When I was five years old, my mom, my twin sister and I were walking down a gravel road in Kansas on one of those days when the sun’s rays spread out from behind the clouds. It reminded me of God, and I confidently proclaimed, God can see us, but we can’t see him. Then I solemnly added, “I wonder how he stands up there,” before dancing on down the road. When I was thirteen, I read through the Bible in a year on a less confident quest for God and truth. When I was sixteen, I began dating my best friend, another girl. I loved her and hated myself and told no one. I thought that God and the church might condemn me but Jesus surely did not. When I was seventeen, I was baptized at Grace Hill, and I shared my conviction with the church that life was hard, but God was good.


When I was twenty, I began the academic study of religion, learning first the many dimensions of the Bible and its varying contours of authority. Later that year, I decided that God was not a “He” and may not even exist, and my life of faith swerved into uncertainty and then settled into a faith of questions. But I never stopped going to church, nurtured by the Disciples of Christ and Mennonite saints I discovered here and there, some in one conversation or tidbit of encouragement, and some in ongoing relationships: Kate Becker, Margaret Penner, Phyllis Bixler, Patty Shelly, Lee Lever, Phil Waite, Dorothy Nickel Friesen, Mary Schertz, Robert Kaufman.

I began coming out, and I began to love myself again, after assurance that I could be gay and still be right with God and with some parts of the church. When I was twenty-two I began my studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School, which had pulled me there with the promise of academic rigor and a theological education marked by a social justice consciousness that fit with my Mennonite convictions for active peace living, discipleship, and simple living. When I was twenty-four, I felt a calling to test the waters of pastoral ministry, and as luck, or God would have it, I was brought here to Seattle Mennonite Church. It was a summer of hospitality, grace, and the confirmation of my deep passion for the work of Christ for truth and justice in this world through Christ’s church. It was also the connection with a community that would and could support me on the journey in ways my home church in Kansas would not and could not.


Last year, my partner and life companion, Jamie Haskins, received a job offer from University Christian Church here in Seattle. Shortly after we arrived, I was offered the job as part time Assistant Minister at Richmond Beach United Church of Christ, in Shoreline. That is where you can find me most Sundays, preaching, teaching, and asking questions, Anabaptist sensibilities and all. I am grateful for their welcome and the way they nurture my pastoral skills and challenge my life of faith, but I am convinced that they are not ultimately my home.


In the meantime, there is a blessing that runs around in my head. In his charge to our class last spring, the divinity school dean said, “May you make your home like Ruth with good people, even when they are not your people.” I assure you that on most Sunday mornings, I make my home with good people. But you are the ones I struggle with and cry with, and you are the ones with whom I laugh my deepest laughs. It is here that I follow Christ most authentically, and on this Sunday, I am profoundly grateful to be accepted into you who are my people.

Here are the words the congregation shared with me:

Sarah, we freely receive you as Christ has received us as members of Christ's body.  We open ourselves to fellowship with you and to worship, study, service, and discipline together.  We commite ourselves to give and receive counsel, to offer and accept forgiveness in the redeemed community.  We joyfuly welcome you as a sister in Christ and are grateful for your many gifts and compassionate heart.  We also welcome your gifts for ministry, which you have previously manifested here at SMC as our ministry intern and are now exercising in the United Church of Christ.  We bless you in this mnistry and look forward to the time when your gifts will be exercised in the Mennonite Church.

Beautiful?  I think so.  Seems about right, along with all the handshakes and hugs and the special greetings by many of my fellow young adults in the congregation, a testament to the fact that I'm not the only Midwestern kid who's come home in Seattle.