Praising Jesus as we wrapped up our 2013 vision series yesterday. It is hard for me to believe that was our fourth vision series as a church! Where on earth does the time go? Part 3 of our vision series boiled down to 3 things. The local church, commitment and partnership. We talked a great deal about the reality that part of our vision includes becoming a church. Right now we are still very much a church plant. But we are not content with that. We want to become self-sustaining and more importantly reproducing. We talked about the importance of commitment to Christ and the local church and discussed what it looks like for individual believers to become covenanted partners with The Pathway.
With the partnership portion of our vision series paving the way, I taught our first ever Partnership class last night. I'd say the class itself went well. No matter what you do to prepare for something, the first time always has its ups and downs. We had a much bigger turnout than I expected, praise Jesus, with over 30 adults in attendance. I learned very quickly that in the future we need to keep the class smaller so that people can engage more effectively and ask more questions. I learned what people care about, what they're interested in and that their questions about partnership are different than what I expected.
But most importantly, I learned that there are a good number of people who care deeply about being the church in Tacoma. My heart was encouraged by the number of people in attendance but I was also excited about who was in attendance. We had diversity in age, race and gender. We had new believers, seasoned believers and not-yet believers in attendance. When it was all said and done I learned a lot, and I think the folks in attendance did to. Most importantly, we have 25 covenanted partners of The Pathway church. Twenty-five people who said I'm all in for the next year of my life and I'm want the leadership of the church to hold me accountable to my commitment. That's a big deal in my book.
Please pray for our new partners. Pray that the passion doesn't die. Pray that the commitments are taken seriously. Pray that accountability happens and that grace is poured out on all of us. Pray that these 25 people turn into 50 people. And those 50 people turn into 100 and so on and so forth as the church spreads it's wings in Tacoma and beyond!
I'd also like to ask for prayers for my family. We've had a challenging month in a lot of ways. I always like to be as transparent as possible in my blog, but we're just worn out. We've had some emotional/relational struggles. We've had crazy things happen. Our dog got hit by a car last week. Praise the Lord she's ok and didn't need surgery! Good ole' Bobby screwed up on our taxes last year and we had been figuring it out, but it all kind of hit the fan this month. And then we got a citation from the city of Tacoma that the renovations done on our house before we bought it were not done with the proper permits. We've been working through what this means but it has the potential to be a pandora's box of time, money and energy. A friend reminded me that when these things happen, it usually means Satan is attacking. And Satan usually attacks when God is in the midst of doing something big. I needed that reminder!
Thanks for letting me share the joys and the struggles. In regard to the struggles, it truly has been amazing to see God provide for every single one of our needs (inspire of my small faith at times). Thanks for your prayers. All who read this are truly a part of The Pathway and we thank God for every single one of you!
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