Amazing

God is amazing. I know I am not telling you anything you do not already know, but He continues to show Himself. I met for lunch with a very close brother yesterday and we had some great fellowship time. Once we got to talking, the subject of church of course came up. He is somewhat familiar with this journey I have been on, so we started laying out some things that we feel church needs to be. It is so cool how God continues to teach and show me all of this from a lot of different directions - that is the amazing part. I am not saying that there are not churches that are doing some or all of these things - I just know that a lot of the people I am talking to are missing some or all of these things in their church experience. There is a hunger from a lot of believers and followers of Jesus that I have not seen before. For those of you that read this crazy thing I type regularly know I do not pretend to know anything about anything, but I do hear what people are telling me. Church for a lot of us has become a building, so I personally know a lot of people that are not involved in a church right now. They may go to a building, but church is missing. So this list is by no means all inclusive and I may add more to it (or you can) - but here is what church is becoming for me as I grow closer to a lot of you:

Desire, true Worship of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the God of all, community (truly living life together, walking through it hand and hand), bring your crap (don't try to hide it but true transparency), discipleship (not giving a list of rules and saying good luck, but truly teaching what it means to be a man or a woman of God), evangelism (loving the world enough to die for the world the way Jesus did), relevant teaching (not the 3 point warm fuzzy preaching), teaching our kids that they have what it takes to make it (this is a whole other area, but the youth need us to be consistent, and to stand up for Christ), truly loving our neighbors.

I know there is a lot more, but for now that is what I have. I know that there are many families that feel the same and as I posted a few posts ago I am going to be in touch personally very soon. Please let me know if you are interested in at least a together with other families so we can kick all of this around and talk some about it. On the verge.....