When I was younger, I would often seek out sitting with the stinky kid just as much as I would the popular kid at school. At the time, I wasn’t able to put words to this posture toward others. But I consistently remember being interested in who people were more than their status or how they looked. Even from a young age, I remember listening to their sometimes painful stories, but also seeing value in who they were despite what could have diminished them. I believe this came from my own story of suffering growing up. I knew what it felt like to be devalued.

I’ll never forget leaning on my locker in my flared jeans and Calvin Klein tee blubbering like a baby. It was the start of 8th grade and my grandpa had died unexpectedly. As I told Mrs. Fitz why I would miss school the next day, tears started and wouldn’t stop. Her face melted in sympathy as she drew me into a long hug. I felt safe, my grief validated and understood. I had my first experience to the contrary only days later.

Sojourn just celebrated its 20th birthday as a church. I wasn’t a part of the very earliest days, but stories abound! So what do I feel like I missed out on that day? In a parking lot, almost 2 decades ago now, a group of believers demonstrated in a very public and unmistakable way, their commitment to identify with and follow through on a call to a kingdom priority over an earthly one. They willingly destroyed something temporal, and in some cases valuable, in order to clear the way for something transcendent and God-centered. They chose the mission over the material. I want that - for me, for my family and for our church on Rudy Lane in East Louisville.

Every night—Eh-Vah-Ree night—before bed, my children like to engage the poor schmuck who does their bedtime routine in what we call “Theology 101.” Before we go any further, gentle reader, let’s define some terminology. First, by “poor schmuck,” I mean it’s either me or my husband. We dearly love our children, we just also really like listening to absolute silence and the bliss of no one touching us. I mean, we like other things too, but these two items rank pretty high up there in our mid-30s.

If you google the words “Christians” and “boycott” together, you quickly find that the internet is a fairly unkind place (if you didn’t know that already). Most links will lead you to criticism over Christianity’s reputation with boycotting. Even within our own tribe, other believers question the validity of boycotts, often calling them a waste of time or an arrogant display of self-righteousness. And conversely, scattered among these articles are pleas from high profile Christians strongly suggesting that your reputation as a believer is dependent upon you immediately removing your support from certain well-known companies that have publicly abandoned biblical morality.