The vicious cycle of starting a church...
...or should I say life in general. Life, as you all know, tends to flow in a constant cycles of highs and lows. We ride out the high times with glee and we ride out the low times with sweaty palms and faith. The same is true (times 10) with this church planting stuff. A week ago Celina, Nick and I were ready to pack up and move. We had dealt with such crap from the people we trusted. Also it felt as if God created more mystery about next steps with...friends, neighbors, church peeps, church vision, etc. We were up in arms about what to do. We were begging with God to give us faith, confirmation, direction and grace. We tried laughing it off, crying, yelling about it and dumping our hearts to best friends and family. Then came this week...
Tuesday night DCAF (women's Bible study) had been canceled last minute (which isn't uncommon). So, we decided to combine men's and women's DECAF on Wednesday night...why not? We had been meeting separate for months. Just about everyone came! Jeff and Debbie brought dessert with their fresh new understanding of who God is, Jonas and Julia brought Mexican lasagna with their wisdom of the faithfulness of God, Craig brought humility and vulnerability, Matt brought brownies with a passion to connect, Celina brought soda with her passion to serve, and Nick and I brought fruit with his amazing abilities to lead. The Spirit lead the whole conversation and we all walked away blessed by this amazing glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven. In the last few days of this week, after that time, I've seen my neighbors with a new spark of the Holy Spirit. God is Good. This is what we came here to do! When we came we knew it would take time but we never would have guessed it would take 10 months to gather our first small group of 10 believers. That though, is the culture of Christ. It's take this long (or this little of time) for neighbors who didn't know each other's name to feel comfortable sharing matters of the heart with one another.
Thank you God for allowing us to see a piece of the Kingdom of Heaven at work in the lives of us and our neighbors, especially when we were feeling so discouraged.
Tuesday night DCAF (women's Bible study) had been canceled last minute (which isn't uncommon). So, we decided to combine men's and women's DECAF on Wednesday night...why not? We had been meeting separate for months. Just about everyone came! Jeff and Debbie brought dessert with their fresh new understanding of who God is, Jonas and Julia brought Mexican lasagna with their wisdom of the faithfulness of God, Craig brought humility and vulnerability, Matt brought brownies with a passion to connect, Celina brought soda with her passion to serve, and Nick and I brought fruit with his amazing abilities to lead. The Spirit lead the whole conversation and we all walked away blessed by this amazing glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven. In the last few days of this week, after that time, I've seen my neighbors with a new spark of the Holy Spirit. God is Good. This is what we came here to do! When we came we knew it would take time but we never would have guessed it would take 10 months to gather our first small group of 10 believers. That though, is the culture of Christ. It's take this long (or this little of time) for neighbors who didn't know each other's name to feel comfortable sharing matters of the heart with one another.
Thank you God for allowing us to see a piece of the Kingdom of Heaven at work in the lives of us and our neighbors, especially when we were feeling so discouraged.
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