Where to begin? Sometimes my heart and soul are so full, excited and even overwhelmed that I don't know how to start sharing with you all that God has been doing in an adequate way. I've shared that we have been going through our 2012 vision series entitled What if? and we challenged our entire church with an initial question. We spent the entire month leading up to the vision series asking...
What if... you committed to taking part in the 3 week vision series including all three worship gatherings and 3 Intentional Community gatherings?
To be fair that is a hard thing to ask of people. Lives are full and busy. Plans are made for things in advance. Work happens. Life happens. We tried to be clear that we know some people just won't be able to do all 6 gatherings. But we were also clear that we believed many people could do it. We asked unapologetically for people to rearrange their schedules, ask off of work, stay in town and quite simply to make the vision series a priority. Why? Because our leadership truly desires for the entire church to know where we've been, where we are, where we're going and what we're asking each individual and family to do in order to get us there. We challenged, but the question remained... how would our church respond?
Let me just tell you the response was overwhelming! People have gotten excited. People have decided to commit. People have shown up. We asked three questions over the course of the three week series and it was all based around our vision scripture and vision statement...
Vision Scripture
For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in
him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of
those who preach the good news!”
(Romans 10:13-15 ESV)
Vision Statement:
We want to be a church with beautiful feet committed to walking with our city down The Pathway of life by...
Serving our communities extravagantly.
Sharing the gospel with those we serve.
Showing people how to grow with Jesus.
Sending missionaries to start new Intentional Communities and new churches in Tacoma &
beyond.
The 3 Big Vision Series Questions:
1) What if... we served our communities extravagantly? (serve)
2) What if... we make our mission making disciples? (share & show)
3) What if... you ARE a missionary? (send)
As we preached through the series and dug deeper at our IC gatherings it was amazing to see the response, the consistency and the commitment. Every week I got to hear stories of how God is working in the lives of the people who make up The Pathway. I had a teenager come up and ask me to help him serve his school extravagantly. I had a couple ask for prayer as they welcome an unbelieving family into their home as they try to get back on their feet. They said they don't just want to serve them but they also want to try and make disciples. I had a young dating couple come to me desiring to be baptized. We had a man who has only been to our worship gathering once but is a committed part of one of our IC's give his life to Jesus last week!!! That's right, you should be saying "Amen!" and jumping up and down... the Kingdom is growing!
Numerically speaking we are so encouraged! We are basically out of room in our Kids Ave area... we're trying to figure out how to cram them all in!!! Our Wednesday IC had over 15 adults this past week and more kids than I could count as we talked about how to engage in making disciples. One of our IC's meets in a local apartment complex and they had 15 adults crammed into a tiny one bedroom apartment! Now I know sometimes people don't want to focus on the numbers... I get that... I actually put filters in place for myself so I don't even see our numerical growth on a regular basis. But lets face it... the people I just mentioned are not just numbers. The 2 getting baptized, the teenager wanting to serve his friends, the couple opening their home, the man who gave his life to Jesus... the over 30 adults in two IC's. These are not numbers, they are souls. They are lives that God cares deeply about. They are lives being changed, transformed & saved by the gospel of Jesus! Praise Jesus for those numbers!!! Our desire is to see the Kingdom of God grow in Tacoma.
So what's next? How can you pray? Let me tell you a few things.
1) Pray that the commitment we've seen over the last 3 weeks does not dwindle. Pray that it
multiplies. I don't know how it will happen. But God does!
2) Pray for the Christmas season. We are taking part in a pretty amazing movement within the
church in America called Advent Conspiracy. We are going to be launching this series the last
Sunday of November. It's all about Jesus & all about the true meaning of Christmas... that would
be Christ being born for us!
3) Pray for salvation and life change. Pray that God continues to change lives and bring people
from lostness to salvation and from spiritual milk to solid food.
4) Pray for our Christmas Eve gathering. We have never done this before but everyone is so
excited! We want it to bring glory to God, be an awesome worship time for the church and a way
to connect our community with the gospel!
That was a lot. Thank you for caring. Thank you for praying. Hard times will come. Satan doesn't like God's kingdom growing. Please go to battle with us in prayer.
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