When I first joined Lumps back in May of 1999 (wow, that long ago?), I was really excited to be a part of a fellowship that I thought would be a part of for a long time. It was the first time I had joined a San Francisco church fellowship that felt like a campus fellowship. Unlike most SF Chinese churches, SCBC is blessed with enough people in their 20s to form a good sized fellowship that actually meets in a "large group" setting. Most churches have a lot of small groups that never meet together in a large group format. Even Cornerstone Chinese Evangelical Church, which has a lot of young people gathers people in small groups, rather than large groups. There's something different about the large group setting that's very different from just meeting with 5-6 people every week.
I'm not saying that small groups are bad. But when you work in an office all week and are couped up in a cubicle, it's kinda fun to meet 50+ people every week. Yes, I'm admitting it.
Silicon Valley Office Life=Horrible social life for at least 40hrs/week.
Those of you who are unemployed get to hang out with each other, at least. That's kinda fun!
Anyways, as I was saying before. Lumps was/is still very special because corporate worship is something you don't get outside of Sunday services and The Rock. Most small groups just have about 5 people and some of them don't even have a worship leader within them. So it's kinda cool to have corporate worship.
In a lot of ways, Lumps feels like a college fellowship. I think it may be due to the fact that the clear majority of the members attended a college fellowship and modeled it based on their experience in school. That's what I liked most about Lumps. In 1999, I had been out of undergrad for 6 years already and had never found any church that offered that kind of feIlowship experience. It was kinda hard when I left college and missed a lot of my friends. I have always felt nostalgic of those days at UCLA. I still love Westwood more than Cambridge. (And if I had to choose a school to identify my "college experience", it will definitely be UCLA over Harvard). The biggest reason why I feel this way is because I had such memorable and personal experiences with my friends in fellowship. Lumps was the first fellowship group that I was a part of that actually rekindled such feelings.
So three years have passed since I first joined Lumps. It looks very different from when I first started. I was in my 20s then. Hahaha. I know. Greg always gets a kick out of announcing "Lumps is a fellowship of 20-somethings" and giving me a smirky chuckle/look. Alright, I'm the ancient person in Lumps.
But actually, it's not my age that makes me feel "old" at Lumps. Instead, I feel "old" because I've watched several transitions in the "makeup" of the fellowship. A lot of people have come and gone from Lumps over the past three years. Timing and frequency is unpredictable. It's not like college, where you could expect certain people to graduate on a 4 or 5 or 6+ year plans. We were aiming to complete our degrees in college and had many similar experiences, studying, fulfilling requirements. But now that we're in the so called "Real World", I find that everything happens randomly, without any predictability. People move in different directions at their individual pace
Back in 1999, Jerry mentioned that "Lumps is a transitional" fellowship. When I first heard, this, I cringed. It made me feel like we were discouraged from caring establishing long term friendships. Many times over the past three years, I've asked myself if these friendships would last longer than the time when we're all in the same city. I didn't like the idea of "transitional" because it's always hard to say goodbye indefinitely. But over the past three years, I've seen several phases of departures. This summer, Lumps will witness it's largest departure as 10 people will leave for school or career.
Let's take an inaccurate attempt to look at "significant departures" since 2000:
2000: JimmyQ
2001: DaveL, JanaH, GaryL, BerniceY, Michelle+Dan, JacobL, KarissaH, JanelleJ
2002: EricaC, GregW, JeffM, CharlesL, TinaN, JasonC, JasonC, WalterW, AliceA, MC, JC, AaronF, KenM, KimY, FeliciaL, JessicaM
2003(expected): ChrisC+AudreyF,TimY(M)+KimC, OwenT+AmyL
As I was saying, I feel old because I've watched people come and go. Being a veteran feels weird because I sometimes wonder if there is a time when I will leave Lumps. Yes, me. I haven't found a specific time or year. But it's something I've wondered about. I don't have a conclusion to make about this. But I just wanted to make these entries to ponder some of the changes in a "transitional" fellowship.
