Tomorrow we meet in our home and we are both jazzed! We're cleaning and shopping and cooking and emailing and texting the gang that will be gathering here.
It feels like preparing to host a party with all our most intimate friends--AND, the Holy Spirit!
There's nothing like it in Christendom.
A momentous day.
ReplyDeleteLots of black ice here. So, we were afraid to pick up the elderly whom we normally transport to our gatherings.
As the gang staggered in, we talked about our future. We have a facility under lease through August of this year but we really have outgrown it, not in terms of its space, but spiritually. Gatherings in a, well, church, aren't the same as those that take place in any home we have ever met in. So, today we agreed never to meet in the facility again. I wasn't certain how that decision would go for everyone in the group but, in the end, everyone expressed the conviction that to abandon the facility is natural and right.
We will meet in our home. YESSSSS! And every gathering will include the taking of the bread and the cup.
We will contact a local on line auction company to liquidate our possessions. Later on, we will decide who to give that money to.
I was prepared to lead the taking of the bread and cup but Evelyn surprisingly declared that she would lead. Surprisingly because she was the one who had asked me to lead in the first place. It was a wonderful interactive time of reflection on His mercy and our sin and redemption which led into an amazing time of fellowship as we all squeezed around our table, bumping elbows and passing the peas. Again, nearly everyone contributed to the meal we at.
It strikes me just now that there was no specified prayer time. There was, however, lots of praying.
Song time was as joyous as ever.
Another amazing day.
The amazing grace of Acts 2 42 in action motivated by pure hearts...Love.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that your "pure hearts" take comes from your take on Evelyn, and that is legitimate.
DeleteThe "love" part, I think, does fit well.
Our talk, which we do seriously attempt to walk, stresses the "three love commands," i.e., of the Lord, of our neighbor and of one another.
Thanks for the kind and gracious words. We get few of them from within the CGGC.
Looking back to Saturday when I wrote that it felt like we were preparing to host a party, that's what it felt like in reality.
ReplyDeleteThe time came, several years ago, inspired by Ed's New Testament plan definition of mission, when I became convinced that gathering in the way the first disciples would be the best way to do the congregation component of being a disciple but the conviction was merely theoretical. There was no flesh and blood to it and no Spirit in it. I had no sense how it would feel to do it as a settled norm in my life and I had no idea of how I would be altered by the practice.
You know the teaching of Jesus that the Kingdom is like a banquet? Well, it seems to me that, now that we've settled into this way of gathering, that gathering is a foreshadowing of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is joyful, like a party.
Unless you've experienced it, I doubt you can appreciate that reality. At least, I couldn't have.
Oddly, I am more convinced than ever that gathering is not essential to a life of obedience. Yet, gathering is now more important to my life of obedience than it has ever been.
The most odd thing. Since we have chosen to become what we are as an assembly of disciples everything about being a "church" has become new and different.
ReplyDeleteWe have stopped trying to be an externally focused church. There has been nothing intentional about this shift, the shift is fruit of repentance in large picture values.
What we are now is a group of externally focused people who gather to provoke each other to, as Hebrews says, to love and good works.
We are externally focused, you might say, on a micro level, not on the macro/congregational level.
AND, PEOPLE HAVE BEGUN COMING TO US--asking if they can come to our gathering and, now this week, if they can bring a friend who really needs to be loved.
I don't see Jesus teaching us to have externally focused churches but He does teach us, individually, to go into the world making disciples.
And, that is what we seem to be moving toward. I'll trust Him as to what we ultimately will become.