Rowing Out

Our newsletters have gone out and we're starting to gear up for August 1. I've been thinking about the passage in Luke 5 where Jesus called the disciples back to fishing after a night of not catching anything. As we head out its like we have left the shore and its getting deeper.  It reminds me of my old fishing days in Canada.  My friends and I used to paddle and portage for dozens of miles into the wilderness.  Starting this new church feels a lot like leaving the safety of solid ground and portaging out into that Canadian wilderness counting and depending on our faith in Jesus and all we know of Him so far in our journey.  All of a sudden we're out in the deep water.  We can't see the ground anymore and its a scary and exhilarating place to be.    

Part of the gathering of this new church is like Paul talks about in Ephesians. He says that Jesus fills all things in every way.   What He's asking each of us to do is complete His "body" here on earth.  We aren't just gathering people from other churches, but gathering those who are not yet part of Jesus body.  That's amazing!  Jesus body is not yet complete. Its exciting to think that we are paddling out to gather in parts and members of His body to give fuller expression of all that Jesus is.   We wonder who will Jesus gather through us?  What will their strengths and issues be? How will we see more of Jesus in and through them and what this might become?  

As part of gathering people freshly out of the world, I think of my own experience of being gathered in: skeptical, afraid, insecure, despertately lonely and without hope, suspicious, anxious.  I sat in the back of the chruch, hyper-ventliating, confused and looking for the exits.  I picked up the Bible not knowing what the Old and New Testaments were, who Paul was, or what grace was about. We long to create a safe place for people not yet part of God's Kingdom to come to learn and grow.   A place where its okay to struggle and not have everything figured out, but a place that will soon reflect more of the Jesus we long to know more.