Big City Small Town

I spent Friday and Saturday with the Crimson Bears in Haines, Alaska. We went to the home of the Glacier Bears. (Picture a real life animal with silver fur and blue eyes. Based on the taxidermist's work mounted in a glass case I guess they really do exist.)

Haines is small town America, with Alaskan weather. Picture in your mind Half Moon Bay, or La Conner, or Carpinteria in the old days. Haines boasts the highest concentration of bald eagles in North America. Everybody (people, not necessarily eagles) knows everybody. It was Prom weekend, and it seemed the entire town was mobilized to provide a quality experience for the seniors and their dates. Haines is apparently well known throughout the region for their creative prom themes.

And I heard it said more than once, "Oh, you're from Juneau; the big city." Now according to me and my continental ways Juneau is a lot of things, but big she is not. But to folks living in Sitka, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Skagway or Haines, Juneau is the big city, with big city lights and big city energy. Juneau is where one goes for shopping, and for intensive medical care. Juneau is where one goes for a university education, and for employment. The other towns have cars; we have "traffic."

Juneau is not big, but Juneau is vitally strategic. Most if not all of the culture of Southeast Alaska passes through the filter that is Juneau. The other Southeast towns are dependent on Juneau. Maybe by choice; maybe not.

In starting up a new church in Juneau we cannot be limited in vision or scope to Juneau alone. We need to see what happens in Juneau as being vital and strategic to what could happen in other places in Southeast. We need to raise up leaders who will go and grow the church in other Southeast places, connected by vision and heart if not necessarily by timely travel.

If you want to see what a new church start up can look like, both the highs and lows, come our way. But if you want to see an impressive high school prom, go to Haines.