<a href="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/di071209_0502_sm.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-354" title="di071209_0502_sm" src="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/di071209_0502_sm.jpg" alt="" width="527" height="350" /></a>
<h5 style="padding-left: 390px;">Photo by <a href="http://dimockimages.com/">Glen Dimock</a></h5>
Almost four years ago, I sat down for the first time in what I now consider my church. I spent much of the time blinking back tears.

The source of the tears was internal. I guess that's pretty much always the case. <strong>Those particular tears happened to be rooted in a variety of struggles I'd been having with God and with the church I had walked away from a few months earlier.</strong>

<strong>But while tears are produced and well up from inside, it's often something external that triggers them. </strong>Something happens around us, acting as a magic key that's capable of pushing aside our facades, the jail cells of our true emotions. Suddenly, those tears are able to escape—sometimes sneaking free, other times busting out.

<strong>At that moment, as I sat in that sanctuary for the first time, it wasn't The Voices of Angels, or The Warmth of God’s Love, or anything miraculous like that triggering my tears. It was the people. The very ordinary people.</strong>

A group of hippy-looking teenagers in the front row. Families of every size, shape and color. Couples that looked like they belonged together, and couples that looked like they didn’t. A grandmother with her grandchildren, and a woman with her elderly mother. Middle-aged single people sitting all together, not alone. And lots of children, everywhere, roaming so much from lap to lap that I couldn’t tell which kids belonged to which adults.

<strong>It was a room full of humanity, which, of course, can be divine. They were people who weren’t perfect. And they knew it. That’s what set my tears loose.</strong>
<h4>The difficulty of putting a diverse group of people into words</h4>
Now, four years later, I'm writing new copy for the <em>very</em> outdated church website. One of the new site's sections will focus on who the church is, as represented by the individuals who are drawn there.

It's a tricky thing to generalize and pinpoint. <strong>It's challenging enough to articulate what characterizes me, and I'm just one person—one I happen to know fairly well. But to take a couple hundred people, put them all together and say something meaningful about them? That's really challenging.</strong>

Yet, certain people are attracted to a particular church (or gym or cafe or vacation destination) for a reason, right? I figured there must be some red threads, so I decided to locate them.

I interviewed the pastors and about a dozen other people in the church. I've also been thinking a lot about what sets this community of people apart in <em>my</em> mind, based on my experience, both when I was first getting to know them, and now.

Here's what I've come up with, so far—some of the characteristics that tend to run through us, tying us together. I'm not sure if this list will end up on the website in any fashion, but it was an important list for me to make. <strong>I'm also really curious to know which of these characteristics are most important and appealing to you, whether you're a Christian or not.</strong>

<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>We are a community of people who:</strong>
…are broken and in need healing.
…honor Jesus and deeply desire to follow him, even if we don’t always get it right.
…are searching, and trying to find answers to big questions we might never grasp.
…try to balance our desire for intellectual honesty and passionate worship and living.
…are committed to mercy, justice and meaningful action in our community and world.
…don’t need everything to be black and white—we are willing to say “I'm not sure.â€
…actively try to repel polarization, whether religious, political, economic or racial.
…desire genuine fellowship and community with one another, seven days a week.
…value people coming together from many backgrounds.
…put loving God and loving one another above any strict doctrine.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Many families in our community are multi-ethnic or multi-denominational, or didn’t grow up in a church at all. Many individuals have had hurtful past experiences tied to religion. It’s not our intended niche, exactly, but I suspect it says something about who we are, or at least what we're trying our best to be—open and accepting.</p>