It was while driving beneath the towering deciduous tree canopy of Peasley Canyon Road on my way to church on a recent Sunday morning that I had the revelation: These people—my church community—are watching me age. Something akin to a shudder ran through my body. “How vulnerable,” I thought, “To be in one place for so long that the people around you watch as you grow older—they see you change year after year.” The thought terrified me. Quite honestly, it unsettled me to the degree that I began thinking, “Maybe it’s time to start over new.” I had never experienced safety in a church community for as long as this current stretch of seven years and had begun to fear that surely the dam would break soon. As W.B. Yeats once cynically wrote about the terror of the modern age, “Things fall apart; the center does not hold.” If this is true, then I’d rather not be there when the ground drops out from under my feet.

Real community terrifies me. . .