Presence: The Art of Showing Up | 10/12/25
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How have you experienced someone else’s presence as a gift, someone simply showing up for you in a meaningful way?
The early church shared meals, resources, and worship together. Which of those practices most speaks to you, and why?
When have you experienced “doing life together” as something holy, even if it didn’t feel overtly spiritual at the time?
Paul told the Thessalonians he shared not only the gospel but his very life with them. What might it mean for you to share your life as part of your faith witness?
How might God be calling you to be more intentionally present—in worship, in service, or in relationship with someone else?
Transcript:
Sometimes it feels like my life truly began in college at the University of North Florida. I was out on my own for the very first time, making my own decisions, choosing how I got to spend my time and my money. And it felt like I was thriving until important dates like my mom’s birthday, my sister’s birthday, or Christmas rolled around, and I had nothing to show for it all.
Growing up, I had this experience where someone else would keep track of these dates and then, magically—like some adult magic—a present would appear that I could offer as a gift for my mom or my sister or for Christmas. I didn’t have to do anything for it. But when I got to college, no one was keeping track of my calendar. No one was buying gifts for me, and I had to do that all by myself—use my hard-earned money from Sippers Coffee House to set aside time to buy a gift for my mom or my sister. So, like the clever and slightly poor college student that I was, I came up with a new slogan that I used in these moments: my presence was present enough.
Somehow, though, I don’t think that’s exactly what we mean when we stand up here and join the United Methodist Church, committing to use our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness to support the church. So what does it actually mean to offer our presence to support all the work that we do here at Trinity?
I believe that to help us uncover the value of offering our presence, we can go back to the early church in Acts chapter 2. The early church is described, and I think they understood the value of presence really well. Will you follow along with me as I read the Scripture from Acts chapter 2, beginning in verse 43?
“A sense of awe came over everyone. God performed many wonders and signs through the apostles. All the believers were united and shared everything. They would sell pieces of property and possessions and then distribute the proceeds to everyone who needed them. Every day they met together in the temple and ate in their homes. They shared food with gladness and simplicity. They praised God and demonstrated God’s goodness to everyone. The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved.”
This is the Word of God for us, the children of God. And we say together: Thanks be to God.
Will you pray with me?
God, will you be present with us at this moment? Help us to trust in your Spirit that has already entered and has existed in this place long before we arrived. Open our hearts and our minds that we might hear all you have to say to us today. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.
When that word presence rolls off our tongues in that litany of commitments we make when joining the church, our minds often go to the understanding and importance of our presence here at church—that our butts are intended to be in the seats and in the pews, or our computers tuned in to the livestream on a Sunday morning. Since our childhood, we have heard of the importance of church community and the value of our participation in that community. But have you ever given much thought to how you participate?
It’s not all about which service you attend, or what Sunday school class or Bible study you go to, or even what service opportunity you participate in. All of those things are important, but they’re not everything. All of the ways that you participate in the life of the church have the potential to be so much more—so much more robust an experience—based on how you choose to show up in those places, how you choose to inhabit those spaces. Our presence, how we choose to show up, can offer us a more robust experience of what community should and could feel like.
This is something that the early church understood very well. The church that we just read about in Acts chapter 2 was committed to this idea of presence, of doing life together in an intentional way. They shared meals, shared resources, shared worship, shared work, and shared space. They had no choice but to be fully present with each other all the time. And it worked. People were growing in their love of God and in their love of one another in droves. The Way, which was what early Christians were called at the time, was exploding. Baptisms were happening left and right. And Scripture tells us that day by day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
I think this idea of togetherness is what I miss so much about my last year of college, in particular. I had the opportunity to share an apartment with two of my very best friends, Hayley and Melissa, and shockingly, they are still some of my very best friends, even though we spent 24/7 together. We shared meals together and cooked alongside one another, sharing different recipes and sometimes making recipes just a little bit better as we worked together. We shared our resources as we went grocery shopping together and split the cost of food. And we shared really fun experiences—like line dancing every Thursday night, or curling up on our big comfy couch with our blankets, singing along to the theme song of Gilmore Girls.
In the midst of the day-to-day life, we talked about important things too: the ways we might have been struggling in class, or the anxiety about what was coming next for us as graduation approached. We also had the opportunity to celebrate with one another. One of my favorite moments was celebrating when I received my acceptance letter to Duke Divinity School. There were probably way too many shrill screams; I’m surprised we didn’t shock our neighbors that time. That apartment wasn’t overly spiritual, but I believe it was holy all the same. It was presence, the day-in and day-out rhythms of what it looks like to do life together.
This movement, this kind of presence, is at the heart of who we are as a church. This intentionality is what was envisioned from the very beginning. So if that’s the case, I wonder why church doesn’t always feel like this. And what might we need to do to recover that spiritual practice of presence?
Did you know that there are church communities who are wholeheartedly committed to practicing presence like the early church did? They are called new monastic communities or intentional Christian communities, and they are committed to reflecting this model of togetherness—where people make the choice to leave their life of individuality and instead share resources, share meals, share living space, and share common work and worship together.
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, you could walk by this house [pictured] without a second thought, but something beautiful actually happens inside of it. Inside, people who are not from the same family are intentionally living and working together in community. This is a Catholic Worker house, specifically the St. Kateri Tekakwitha House, dedicated to offering a safe place for victims of domestic violence to work together, heal together, and worship together.
In 1933, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin founded the Catholic Worker Movement as a way for Christians to intentionally live alongside the poor and in solidarity with them, rather than accumulating more wealth for themselves. Today, there are over 200 houses and communities across the United States where people choose to share their lives together in this way and to tangibly live out the Beatitudes from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Each house is focused on a different aspect of social justice or a different marginalized group within greater society. In 2017, a young woman named Lindsay Hoffman went on a journey around the United States exploring these types of intentional living communities and how they practiced the gift of presence. I came across an article that she wrote in a spiritual academic journal called Missio Dei. In seminary, I was writing a paper all about intentional living communities because I was fascinated by this idea.
One of Lindsay’s stops was The Open Door, a Catholic Worker house in Atlanta, where she lived and worked alongside persons experiencing homelessness. It has since closed, but Lindsay said this about her experience there:
“Working side by side with community members, I helped serve meals, hand out clothing, and even give pedicures to those in need. I listened as a young Black man, a member of the community, spoke tearfully about how it would be an honor to be arrested for activism and a just cause, and I was challenged to reconsider my own assumptions about law and justice.”
For Lindsay, practicing the intentional gift of being fully present in a community transformed her understanding of what it meant to be church together. She lived and worked and was fully present with the people of each community that she visited. And as she was working and living, she was being conformed to the image of Christ. Isn’t this the entire mission of the church: to make disciples for the transformation of the world? And for Lindsay, it worked because she was intentional about practicing presence in a way that was similar to that of the early church, and particularly the Apostle Paul, when he would go around and start new faith communities.
Have you ever wondered how that happened for him so frequently and so well? In his first letter to the Thessalonians, he shares his ethic, or the way that he practiced ministry in each place, and particularly in Thessalonica. He says:
“As you know, we never used flattery, and God is our witness that we didn’t have greedy motives. We didn’t ask for special treatment from people—not from you or from others—although we could have thrown our weight around as Christ’s apostles. Instead, we were gentle with you, like a nursing mother caring for her own children. We were glad to share not only God’s good news with you but also our very lives, because we cared for you so much.”
Did you catch that? It wasn’t just important for Paul to share the good news of the gospel, it was also important for him to share his very self, his whole life. There was no barrier between him and the people he had come to serve. He intentionally became a part of that community. That takes real presence. I imagine that they, too, shared meals, shared space, shared resources, and shared moments of deep worship together. This is what it means to offer the gift of presence in community—it’s offering our whole selves.
What might it look like for us and our community if each one of us were to offer our whole selves in this particular kind of presence? I’m not saying that after this church service we should all go home, sell all our stuff, quit our jobs, and then come back to church for a 24/7 lock-in. I’m sure some youth would like that—but as a former youth director, I can tell you those are exhausting!
What I am saying is that we can learn something about what the Ministry of Presence looks like through the early church, through the Apostle Paul, and through these new monastic communities. We are called to show up in community with others by offering our ministry of presence, who you are, just as you are.
If you decide to join the Visitation Team, one of the first things we do is offer training because we don’t expect you just to know how to do the thing we’re asking you to do. Kathryn Bowlus and I lead this together sometimes, and we talk about this idea of the Ministry of Presence and what that looks like. It’s very clear through Scripture that you do not have to be a clergy person—or even on our visitation team—to offer this ministry of presence, no matter where you are.
So I want to share three tips and tricks that I offer to that team—for you to use as you go about your day-to-day life—to practice a spiritual ministry of presence.
The first is to be fully present in the space. This means that we need to manage our own expectations coming into that moment. Sometimes when we enter a space, we have a really firm idea of what actually needs to happen, and sometimes that’s not what happens at all, and it’s beautiful. So what would it look like to let go of expectations as you enter a space? It means trusting the power of the Holy Spirit that is already at work, going before you, doing amazing things. You get to sit back and explore and discover when you let go of your expectations.
The second tip is that authentic presence requires embodied listening. That means we show up to a space listening with our whole being. It looks like making eye contact with the person you’re talking to. Sometimes it means leaning in. Sometimes it means knowing what you’re bringing into a space before you enter it, so you can set that aside to really see the whole person in front of you. And it also means that you’re listening to whatever the person has to say without creating a response while they’re still speaking.
I had a beautiful example of this idea of embodied listening at the early service at 8:00. We had Wendy Vencuss and Tom Vencuss, two retired clergy persons, serving communion. I’ve never had an experience of communion where I felt as seen as when Wendy leaned in and said, “This is Christ’s love for you.” I felt so seen because she was looking at me and leaning in closer, like this was a great secret that only I and Jesus got to know. That is embodied listening and the gift of presence.
The third and final tip is to pay attention to the conversation. Within that conversation, the Holy Spirit will show up and spark a need that the other person might have. But it’s also important to know what you can and cannot meet all by yourself. That is the gift of community: there are so many people who are gifted to do things you are not gifted to do. So being able to listen well and know the needs of the other person means you can connect them to even more community. That is a gift that can only be met through presence.
So friends, no matter what space you choose to inhabit here at Trinity—whether it’s a pew or a chair, a Bible study, a small group, the Mobile Food Pantry, or Circles—your authentic presence matters. The way that you choose to show up to a space is a gift. It’s a ministry, and it matters. Because when you show up, Christ shows up within you, and Christ’s love shines through you.
So yes, your presence truly is a gift to this congregation of the United Methodist Church, and your presence is present enough.
Thanks be to God. Amen.