September 21, 2025
Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Last Sunday, 44 of us gathered for a Day of Prayer and Conversation facilitated by Mike Little of the Faith and Money Network, another offshoot of Church of the Saviour. In a remarkable display of goodwill, unity, vulnerability, acceptance, and creativity, we responded in a collaborative and orderly way to the following questions:
- What do we as a community hold most precious?
- What difficulties are we experiencing as we work to keep Seekers Church thriving and true to our values?
- Based on the values we’ve identified, what do we hope Seekers will look like in ten years?
The day itself was a profound example of liminal space. Liminal space is a time or place between what was and what will be. The word comes from the Latin limen, meaning “threshold.” It’s not where we were or where we will be but rather a between time of change. A chrysalis, or pupa, exemplifies liminal space. A caterpillar, a crawling worm, spins itself a cocoon and then dissolves into a soupy goop. The goop consists of what biologists call “imaginal cells,” which contain the blueprint for a butterfly. The butterfly emerges transformed, with beautiful wings and the ability to fly.
Liminal space is holy ground. A thin place where we glimpse the sacred. In liminal space the familiar dissolves and imaginal cells emerge, creating potential for transformation. It can be unsettling because the old reality is disappearing, but the new reality has not yet taken shape. It can be scary, but it is full of possibility. It is a time to be open, vulnerable, trusting, and affirming toward one another so that the imaginal cells can do their job of creating a new reality.
In both the Old and the New Testament, liminal spaces are places where we encounter God, refine our identities, and move from old ways to new calls, either as individuals or as churches. There are lots of examples of liminal space in the Bible. I’ll talk about a few and relate them to our journey as Seekers.
- When the Jews escaped from slavery in Egypt into the wilderness in search of the Promised Land, the wilderness became their liminal space. God was present in this space and their old identity as slaves was stripped away. It was the threshold of their new identity as God’s chosen people. Churches also often find themselves in transition, needing to let go of some of their old ways to embrace a new calling. It can feel uncertain, uncomfortable, and even threatening, but it is exactly in that liminal, in-between space that God does deep work—forming identity, shaping faith, and preparing us for what’s next. This is the kind of space we were in during our Day of Prayer and Conversation and also the kind of space we hope to re-enter as needed to further discuss our hopes for the future of Seekers.
- Jonah was swallowed by a whale after refusing to relay God’s threat of destruction to the people of Nineveh. It was a liminal space, dark and isolated, that invited confession, self-reflection, and spiritual growth. It was a sacred threshold that enabled Jonah to become willing to relay God’s message to Nineveh at which point he escaped the belly of the whale. What message do we as Seekers hope to convey, and how do we hope to convey it?
- Baptism is also liminal. When John preached at the Jordan River, he created a threshold space between the Old Covenant of Judaic law and the New Covenant of forgiveness and direct contact with God. What threshold space are we in at this time in Seekers’ history and how do we plan to use it?
- And here is another wilderness story. Wilderness is often portrayed in the Bible as a place of barrenness and danger but also as a place of connection to the Divine. After his baptism but before he took on his ministry, Jesus spent forty days in the desert. In the desert, Jesus faced hunger, loneliness, and temptation, which he resisted. In this liminal place, everything false was stripped away and he was prepared for his new call to ministry. Are there things we need to strip away as Seekers and what will we replace them with?
- The Upper Room is another one of those transitional spaces. After Jesus’ crucifixion, the disciples gathered behind locked doors in the Upper Room. They were not yet aware of his resurrection. The Upper Room became a liminal space of grief, confusion, and fear. After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples returned to the room where the Holy Spirit appeared as tongues of flame on Pentacost, empowering the disciples to preach the gospel. Our worship space is, literally, an upper room. What will we be empowered to do?
Going back to our Day of Prayer and Conversation, the organizing committee for this very successful event (Ellie Benedict, Jeanne Marcus, Mary Mehala, and John Morris) is stepping down, their job well-done. They have expressed the hope that the conversation we started on that day will continue and have offered a few questions to ponder and/or discuss. The questions are:
- During the day, what did you hear that felt fresh or important?
- What points did you have some change of heart around?
- What are you feeling more settled around?
- What do you see as important next steps for the community? For your mission group? For yourself?
I hope we will find ways of creating liminal spaces to think about and talk about these questions. I pray that the Holy Spirit will visit and inspire us, showing us how to keep what we treasure about Seekers and giving us new ideas about how to be who we are.
Our day of prayer and conversation, perhaps not coincidentally, occurred just as we were entering what we call our “recommitment season.” This is the part of the year when we talk and think about whether to commit or recommit to Seekers and about what such a commitment means to us. Recommitment is an annual rite of passage for us, a time when we pause to notice whether what we initially committed to still matters to us and whether the nature of our commitment has changed or needs to change. It is a regular liminal space in our year.
Recommitment has the strange quality of being neither a pure beginning nor a simple continuation. It sits in the threshold space, the in-between, where the old is not quite finished and the new has not yet fully arrived. In that sense, it is a liminal act: a doorway that we step through knowingly, with memories and intention. Our return carries the weight of past attempts, past failures, past moments of joy. The liminal nature of recommitment is what makes it powerful. We acknowledge that we are not the same person who first made the commitment. We’ve been altered by time, doubt, weariness, or discovery. In this space, we get to decide again, but from a different vantage point. The choice is reborn, but with deeper roots
To recommit spiritually is to renew our commitment to Seekers even if we have faltered or drifted away. We remember the path, even if we have stepped off of it from time to time and are choosing to stay on it. It’s not about perfection. It’s about returning. Recommitting even when we haven’t strayed (if any one of us has never strayed) is like watering a plant. It’s about renewal. We pause, take stock, and say yes again because we want our commitment to stay alive and growing. Each time we recommit, we deepen the connection because we’ve chosen it not just once but once again.
As we approach Recommitment Sunday, we are being asked to prepare by spending a silent hour of prayer in the sanctuary (our “Upper Room”). Or, if that’s not possible, in our homes. We are asked to consider the following questions:
- What have we created as a church that I want to hand down to the next generation of Seekers?
- What is my sense of how God is calling Seekers today to engage the people and communities around us?
- How do I envision us using our essential values and strengths to do this?
- What are my doubts as I consider committing to Christ and to Seekers Church?
These questions are similar to the questions the Day of Prayer and Conversation committee left us with in that they offer us opportunities for change and transformation within the context of our commitment to Seekers Church.
I know that I will recommit, for so many reasons. My first contact with Seekers was in a School for Christian Growth (then the School for Christian Living) class. I could see that these were my kind of people: Kind, authentic, vulnerable, creative, principled, and deeply spiritual. When I attended a worship service, I loved the lack of hierarchy and shared ministry. How nice to hear a different person preach every Sunday. Seekers is small and friendly. I know everyone. It feels physically good to walk into the sanctuary on Sundays. I’m interested in what people have to say. People are supportive and don’t give me a hard time if I make a mistake. We have fun together. And we grow together. What more could I ask for?
As we move toward Recommitment Sunday, we are invited once again into a threshold space—not simply to repeat words, but to allow ourselves to be reshaped by them. Each story of liminal space in Scripture reminds us that God does not leave us unchanged. The wilderness prepared Israel to become God’s people. The belly of the whale transformed Jonah’s reluctance into readiness. The Jordan River opened the way from old law to new covenant. The desert stripped Jesus of illusions so that he could embrace his ministry. The Upper Room turned fear into bold proclamation. And here, in our own Upper Room, we too are called to open ourselves to transformation.
Recommitment is not about perfection, nor is it about clinging to what has been. It is about choosing again, in this moment, to live faithfully in community, to trust the Spirit’s imagination, and to say “yes” with the knowledge of who we have become since the last time we said it. Every recommitment carries within it both memory and possibility—memory of God’s faithfulness in the past, and possibility of God’s future unfolding in ways we cannot yet see.
My hope is that, as Seekers, we can continue to hold one another with the same grace and vulnerability we experienced on our Day of Prayer and Conversation, and that we will continue to create spaces where the Spirit can work among us—spaces where we can ask hard questions, speak truth in love, and wait together for the imaginal cells of God’s new creation to take shape. May our recommitment this year be not just an individual act of faith, but a communal step across the threshold into God’s unfolding future for Seekers Church.