a church without God? (another Kenya update!)

Every time we embark on a GO! Team adventure, God provides special people and opportunities for us to find.  Our time in Kenya was no exception.  While in Masii, we met Laura, a young French woman who was finishing an internship with a local NGO located in the same building where Tumaini had its offices.


Laura became close friends with many Tumaini people including William, the pastor of Masii Christian Chapel.  What made the friendship even more interesting was that Laura was a devout atheist.  Not only did she not believe in God, it made no logical sense to her how or why others would profess such a belief.  Laura was not shy about her views, and she and William had countless conversations about the plausibility of Christianity.  


We had the pleasure of meeting Laura shortly before her return to France, and we discovered some impressive dynamics about her relationship with the Christians in Masii.   She attended church services regularly, sang, contributed and fellowshiped in a personal and powerful way.  The church didn't convince her about the existence of God (yet) but it showed her something she'd never seen before- the unconditional love and caring of community.  And though she could deny the reality of God, she couldn't (nor did she want to) deny the reality of the love that a group of people from another culture showered upon her, even though they were on different pages when it came to faith!


The one thing Laura told us she wanted to do upon her return to France was to begin a church that had all the same fellowship components as those in Masii, but a church that didn't have to believe in God!  We chuckled as we talked about how that would ultimately look, since the love she'd found represented God himself.  And though it may sound strange to you that she wanted a church without God, I understood her sentiment as a tribute of the highest order to the believers there. She has perhaps never experienced such community in her life in France.  Yet people in another country, because of their faith took her in, accepted her, and by loving her made her hungry for more. She may not understand this as God's love (yet), but I believe she will.  And we're praying that this love will cause her to search until she finds it somewhere among God's people in her own culture.


I love the fact that the church in one small town made an international impact on one unbeliever simply by loving her the way Christ told them to. She promised us that she'd keep her mind and heart open to the possibility of God, and we told her that we would pray for her. Even though she's an insistent atheist. Even though she doesn't understand what she can't see. Even though she doesn't believe.


Yet.