Several times in the history of Hope Home, we have caused a conniption during church. Take a group of multi-ethnic, street smart, beautiful, tattooed, ex-delinquent and probably gang affiliated teenage girls straight up out of a juvenile center and plop them down into an almost all white, not too terribly diverse Baptist church in a pretty rural town and, you are sometimes going to cause a scene. You just are.

A few of these unfortunate disturbances have taken place during Communion time, much to my dismay.

Once, one of our former residents was there with her baby daddy. (hehe, I like saying that – BABYDADDY!) He was a super sweet guy who had been to church like- never. So, after everyone had drunk their Communion juice in unison, and had nicely placed the little cup into the allotted cup holder and were quietly praying, I heard an alarming SLURPPP! somewhere in my vicinity. I whipped my head to the side just in time to see him  leaning back, chin tilted upward, loudly drinking the remaining …. drops?…. from his cup. I gave him that one look that says —- OHMYGOSH, YOU’RE CAUSING A SCENE!! … until he put the cup down, grinned sheepishly, and whispered  “Well… I was thirsty!”  You. Were. Thirsty??!!

One day, one of my girls used her communion bread to symbolize a tiny airplane and was flying it over the pew in front of us. Sound effects and all. I shut that down pretty quickly.

Then, there have been a few times when, upon the beginning of Communion, I looked with horror at the very confused faces around me and realized that I had failed to explain the Lord’s Supper to this particular group of girls. At that point, we had to form a panicked Hope Home huddle in the middle of the pew so I could hurriedly explain it before the solemn man passed with the plate of bread because my kids FREAK OUT when they don’t know what’s going on. They freak out, people.

What can I say? We’re a barrel of fun. 🙂

With that said, I am so grateful that we belong to a small, genuine body of believers who scoop us up and love us despite all of our weirdness and issues. They are awesome. Every church should love inconvenient people as much as ours does.