1o Years of Restoration Church
Last month on March 24, 2024, Restoration Church in Clinton, Maryland celebrated 10 years of ministry. Even though I mostly attend Restoration Church from afar (ie. YouTube streaming service), I very much consider Restoration Church my home church and am an active member virtually. I attended my first service at RC in May 2014, joined as an e-partner some time in 2015, and was baptized in the church in March 2016. When I lived in New York City, I would drive down to RC Philly every Wednesday to attend services at the Philadelphia church site. From New York, RC Philly was quite a bit of a drive. It was a little over 2 hours to drive down, and then another 2 hours to drive back up to the city but I always felt that it was worth it. Sometimes when the traffic was really bad and I was tempted to turn around and go home, I’d tell myself “this isn’t a lot to pay to save your soul.” I love my Restoration Church family and take every opportunity to visit the church in person or see other members.
As part of the 10 year celebration last month, the church sent out a prompt asking members to share their favorite memories of RC to their social media pages. I was in the process of creating a post for my instagram but then I realized I was writing a novel. Also, I was having trouble deciding which memory I should write about so I thought it would be best for me to turn it into a blog post so I could share more about the memory versus a quick caption. Below are three of my most memorable moments at Restoration Church outside of my baptism and Jaxon’s christening since I already cover those in other blogs. I look forward to making new memories in the next 10 years!
Memory I: A Prophetic Prayer from Pastor Ren
July 22, 2018 - The day before this Sunday, my then boyfriend Dave and I had attended my friend Krystle Uche’s wedding in DC. Since we were still in town Sunday morning, I told Dave we should go to Restoration Church for service. He reluctantly agreed. We sat in the middle row, in the middle seats. At some point in the service, I think it was towards the end of the service, Pastor Ren looks straight at me and says from the podium, ‘Natasia I think I need to say a prayer for you. Why don’t you come up here? I feel like the Holy Spirit wants me to pray over you.’ Dave and I were having a lot of issues at that time in our relationship. A part of me knew if we broke up, it would be for good and I wasn’t sure if I was ready to let go yet. I assumed Pastor Ren could sense that my spirit was not aligned and I was dealing with some heavy personal issues. Whatever the case, I went upfront for prayer and let Pastor Ren pray over me. Dave isn’t a churchgoer so I wasn’t sure what he thought about my pastor just randomly calling on me to go to the front and praying over me but he doesn’t bring it up at all. We travel back home to New York City right after the church service. The very next day, I find out that I’m pregnant. I was not planning on being pregnant. I did not want to be pregnant. I was not ready to have a child or be a mother. Dave was definitely not ready to be a father either and initially tried to coax me into terminating the pregnancy. We went down to a Planned Parenthood clinic to hear about our termination options. Dave also looked into “the abortion pill” and the side effects of it. He reasoned that we were both not where we wanted to be professionally and having a baby would throw a wrench into our careers. Even though I was scared to death of being pregnant and becoming a mother, I was resolved. There was no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t keep the baby. I sprung into action immediately. Since Dave seemed like he didn’t want the baby, I knew I couldn’t stay with him. I was afraid he would convince me to abort the baby so I packed up my things and moved back to California. I am certain that the prayers Pastor Ren said over me that fateful Sunday helped give me peace and guidance over the situation.
Moment II: The Aberdeen Roadtrip
June 10, 2022 - This is probably one of the most memorable moments of my time at RC. As I mentioned above, I used to go down to Philadelphia to attend church there while I lived in New York City. The leader of the Philadelphia church was Minister Holly. I took a liking to her because she seemed like an amazing woman of faith. I knew she didn’t have a car so when RC announced that they were having a service at their new church site in Aberdeen and wanted all of the members to attend, I texted Minister Holly and asked her if she wanted to carpool down to Aberdeen. She agreed so I drove down to Philadelphia to pick her up. When I arrived, Minister Holly informed me that her friend was going to drive us down to Aberdeen. I tried to protest and insist that I can drive us down. I felt a bit uncomfortable making someone else drive when I was fully capable of driving but Minister Holly insisted, stating that I already had to drive to/from New York. This would give me a bit of a break. I reluctantly agreed. I ended up parking my car at Minister Holly’s friend’s house and we set off. About an hour into our drive, we stopped somewhere to pick up another passenger. She sits next to me and seems very nice. We make it to the church service right before it starts. In total, we drove about 2 hours to get there. The Aberdeen church was only about 75 miles from where we were.
At the end of the church service, Minister Holly introduces her friends to RC’s leadership and they spend some time talking. It was 10:15 pm by the time the four of us got back into the car to drive home. The roads from Aberdeen to Philadelphia are really dark with minimal street lights so the driver of our car drives extremely cautiously. At some point, the ladies in the car start talking about a midnight prayer call that they have to jump on. We get to the home of the passenger next to me right before midnight. The driver turns to me and says that we will park here for a bit so they can take the midnight call. I shrug and decide to go to sleep. Within 2 minutes, I’m abruptly awaken because someone in the car is shouting. It was the driver. She was shouting prayers on the midnight prayer call, and she had her phone hooked up to the car system so we could hear all of the other people on the call praying in agreement. She prays a thunderous prayer—-for different people, the government, family members, the community, the city, city employees, the US president. I mean everybody was getting prayed for. After about 20 minutes, she passes the phone over to Minister Holly who also prays a powerful prayer for about 20 minutes. They then pass the phone to the passenger next to me. Keep in mind, we are sitting in the car at about 1:00 am. They are shouting their prayers at the top of their lungs and the windows of the car are completely rolled down. I see lights turn on in the windows of the homes, and residents are peering out of their houses looking at us. I feel like someone was even recording us and I thought about how this video was going to go viral, and everyone was going to see me crouching in the backseat of a car at 1:00 am with these older women praying loudly over the city. I thought to myself, that wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. If I’m going to go viral for anything, please let me go viral for being in the company of some prayer warriors.
After the passenger next to me prays, she passes me the phone to pray. I’m shocked, bewildered, and have no idea what to do. I couldn’t follow up their prayers. I was nowhere near a prayer warrior like they were. However, I decided it would be easier to say a 30 second prayer than to protest and not pray so I mumbled a 30 second prayer and passed the phone back. They seemed pleased that I participated. Minister Holly turns around in her seat and tells me “The Lord is going to use you to do amazing things Natasia. Things you never imagined. Your ministry will be great. You’ll see.” The passenger next to me jumps out of the car and we finally head back to the driver’s home. I drive Minister Holly back to her house and when I looked at the clock, I realized it was now close to 2:00 am. Our drive from Aberdeen back to Philadelphia took close to 4 hours! It should have only been a 2 hour drive, and that was longer than it needed to be to cover 75 miles. As I drove back to New York, I couldn’t believe what I had just experienced. I may have been tired before but I was wide awake now. My mind was whirling. What in the world just happened? Did Minister Holly say I was going to have a ministry? I was so confused but I knew that it was part of God’s plan to place me in the car with those women. I could see a faithfulness and dedication to God that I hadn’t seen in a long time. My parents were dedicated followers of Christ but I haven’t lived at home in awhile so I haven’t seen people pray for hours at a time. I was also proud of myself for getting out of my comfort zone and carpooling with these women who are all at least double my age. It gave me a picture of what my faith could look like one day. They didn’t care about what other people thought. They didn’t care what time it was. They didn’t care that people were shouting “shhhhhh! Be quiet!!” from their windows. They were praying and they didn’t let anyone interfere with their time with God.
Moment III: The Call to Be A Life Group Leader
December 2022 - About 6 months after that very interesting road trip to Aberdeen, I see a missed call on my cell phone from Lady Meleasa Johnson, Pastor Ren’s wife. She doesn’t normally call me so I immediately went into panic mode. I was worried that something happened to Pastor Ren or someone else in the church. I reached out to my friend Krystle to ask her if anything was wrong at the church and told her that I had a missed call from Lady Mel. Krystle laughs and says “you’re going to want to take that call. They want to ask you to serve in the church.” I was sprawled out on my couch and almost rolled right off of it. I jumped up on my feet to pace my living room. “They want to ask ME to serve in the church? ME? Why me? I’m not even there in person. I’m not really a good prayer person. I don’t know all of the scripture. I did just finish reading the entire Bible… But why me? I’m so unqualified,” I protested to Krystle. Krystle chuckles and says “I don’t know but you should call her back.” I end up calling Lady Mel back and she does indeed ask me to serve in the church as a life group leader. The life groups are a way for the church members to get into community at the church and develop lasting relationships and be more involved. Lady Mel informed me that the church leadership had prayed about who they should ask to serve in 2023 as a Life Group Leader. The leadership team had unanimously nominated me to lead a group in 2023. I was speechless. I felt so unqualified and unprepared. This couldn’t be right. However, I didn’t want to be like Jonah in the Bible and end up getting swallowed by a whale for my disobedience so I reluctantly accepted the role.
A year later, at the end of 2023, I saw another missed call from Lady Mel. A day later, there was a missed call from Pastor Ren. I felt like I knew what they were calling about so I purposefully did not pick up their calls because I thought “maybe if I just ignore it, they’ll have a change of heart.” They did not have a change of heart. They called again, and when I finally did pick up, they asked me again to serve as a life group leader. Again, I reluctantly said yes.
This was a difficult ‘yes’ for me because I don’t want the responsibility of being a leader in the church. I can lead businesses and strategies all day, every day, but when it comes to someone’s spiritual walk, I feel like I’m deeply unqualified. I am so flawed and imperfect. I struggle with anger, doubt, discipline, forgiveness and a plethora of other things. I want to be helpful, and I want to help lead people to Christ but I don’t really know how I can possibly lead people to Christ if I’m struggling myself to follow Him and keep His commands. However, I show up every day and do the best that I can to be there for my group. This year, I co-lead a group of about 15 people. What’s been really eye opening for me is leading a group of people that have very different lives and challenges than I do. Some of my group members have asked for prayers for friends that had their children murdered. Others have asked for prayers for friends that have been sexually assaulted by family members. These are situations that are so heavy and I’ve never had to pray over so finding the words to pray for them and be encouraging has been tough. It’s really caused me to stretch my faith and rely on God in new ways. It has changed my perspective on life and loss in so many ways. Becoming a life group leader at RC is truly one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life.
