Member Michael Winters (Sojourner Since Day One)

One time when I was interviewing for a job, I knew the owner was a Christian. He thought I was a Christian too, and asked if I was indeed a Christian. I said “Yeh, I’m a Christian, but I’m not part of the Christian sub-culture.” Looking back, it was a ridiculous statement. Of course I was part of the Christian subculture. I think what I meant though, was that I didn’t ‘fit in’ with church people.

In 1999, I was 17 and I went to a Christian high school. I was a follower of Christ, but I was really frustrated with the culture of Christianity I was experiencing. Everything I read in my Bible about Jesus showed Him and his followers to be so radical, so outlandish, and counter-cultural, but the Christianity I was witnessing didn’t appear radical at all. There just wasn’t anything life-changing about it. I was hyper aware of the gap between Christ’s ideals and lifeless church life.

One day I walked into the Christian bookstore, passed the lighthouse ornaments and ‘God is my Co-Pilot’ bumper stickers, and found a cassette tape that would set me on a new trajectory. It was a hardcore punk album called ‘Splinter Shards the Birth of Separation’ by a band called Zao. (The band’s newer albums unfortunately are not recommendable). Walking home with the Walkman playing in my ears and the lyric sheet in my hands, I felt a wonderful resonance between the extremes of the thrashing music, my internal emotions, and the extremes of Christ’s claims about the true nature of reality.

Soon after this, I got involved with the small and wonderfully close-knit local hardcore music scene, which had a surprising number of outspoken Christians. Those of us who were Christians would get together weekly and do Bible studies and pray. We’d also get together pretty much every day and have fun.

Together with this whole group of hardcore Christians, we started attending the weekly get-togethers that eventually became Sojourn. Those early years of Sojourn were marked by a distinct refusal to be just another half-hearted church. For me, it was a group of people that freed me up to struggle through pursuing Christ-likeness wholeheartedly. Our ideals were set so high, and it was completely refreshing and in tune with the spirit of Jesus.

So, Sojourn provided me with a context where I was free to be myself, and yet I was encouraged boldly to let God change myself into the person God wanted me to be. Life transformation was happening. And for the first time I felt like I ‘fit in’ with other Christians.

Inside this context of spiritual freedom and transformation, one area of my life that needed the most transformation was my artistic creativity. In my mind at the time, my interest in art and photography had absolutely nothing to do with church or my Christian experience.

But Pastor Mike Cosper and others at Sojourn proved to me that my creativity should be offered to God first and also offered to others. Mike continually encouraged my wife Mickie and I to make new art and they gave us our first art exhibit in the old Aslan’s How, which was an art gallery and small concert venue on Bardstown Road that doubled as Sojourn’s office space. Art, a compartment of my life that had been deemed unworthy to enter into the church, was now empowered to become a practice of praise.

Even though the work we were doing was really not very good, Sojourners were ruthlessly encouraging.  That encouragement did away with enough fear that Mickie and I were enabled to continue pursuing God and pursuing art photography both inside the church and outside the church. When we started our commercial photography business Sojourners supported us so strongly, making it easy to get started in a business that is usually extremely competitive.

My life was becoming a seamless whole before God. Some days it felt like I was learning to ‘pray without ceasing’ whether I was in classes at UofL, or working as a photographer, or hanging out with my friends.

But I don’t want to give the wrong impression. My life, as it relates to Sojourn, has never been comfortable. Though there’s been deep comfort in strong friendships and great comfort in the breadth of spiritual and material resources that exist inside Sojourn, there’s always been the discomfort of being on sojourn, moving forward.

Throughout Sojourn’s history we’ve yet to settle. Our name, and our whole philosophy of ministry has reminded us that heaven is our home, and there’s just not that much comfort until we arrive at that eternal home.

I’m so thankful that God has continued to stretch me through the years at Sojourn. One of the biggest stretches came when our community group leaders, Kyle and Hilary Noltemeyer, sat down with my wife and I and essentially asked us to leave their group. They had the vision that we could be sent out as new group leaders, though we couldn’t yet imagine it.

They said we should start a group that met the needs of artists in our community. We were young and insecure and didn’t initially feel up for the challenge, but again their strong encouragement cast out enough fear that we were able to move forward and that’s really when the ministry of Sojourn Visual Arts began. The group was a magnet for creative types like ourselves who had often felt like outsiders at church merely because of their artistic temperament.

Soon after this group formed another big stretch occurred when it was announced we were going to buy a building and it wasn’t going to be just a ‘church’, but it was going to be a community center with a focus on the arts. Pastor Mike Cosper sat me down and asked me if I could run the gallery. Again, I felt totally ill-equipped to accomplish such a thing, even though Mike had been teaching me about a theology of the arts, and taking me to conferences, and continuing to encourage me. But I had to say yes, because I was so anxious to let people know that art and faith don’t need to be mutually exclusive categories. God made us creative beings like Himself, and we don’t need to abandon our creativity for ‘by the book’ Christianity.

So, that’s when I became the director of The 930 gallery.

Over the last few years, God has continued to challenge me with ever-increasing responsibility in the church and every step of the way I’ve felt insufficient for the task. Every step of the way I’ve received strong encouragement from my brothers and sisters in the church, and every step of the way God’s grace has been sufficient.

Through the ministries of individual Christians, community groups, preaching, music, classes, and the arts ministries God is continuing to help me live in the way of Jesus, which of course is the way of the cross.

Until we reach the end of our earthly sojourn, and arrive at our heavenly home I will not perfectly ‘fit in’, but Sojourn for me has been a foretaste of heaven, where I’ve been stretched and encouraged and have found temporary shelter.

Praise God.