What's the point?

Some days you just have to scrap the blog post you had scheduled to say something else. Tonight proved to be one of those days. Tonight I sat in with worship team while Jen began her journey of maternity leave.

I should take a step back and say that 2008 was a hard year for Servant's. Anyone who is a part of our church already knows that. We've felt a lot of the growing pains that come with any transition period. Some of the pains were entirely normal and predictable. Some hurt a little more deeply because they involved losing people like George and Nancy Werkema, people we worshiped and worked alongside of.

That is what my scheduled post talked a lot about, the challenge of 2008. Maybe that post will see the light of day yet. But after worship team tonight I had to write something else. Because all of the transitions, all the hard conversations, all the planning and praying at Servant's has been to one end; growing more fully into our sense of call to be a church built and directed by the gifts of the Body.

It is the call that emerged from the interim period between Michael Mulder's departure and Jen and my arrival. It is the call that brought us here. It is a call for us to constantly be growing in our awareness of who God has made us to be, and what he is calling us to do in his Kingdom work of justice, reconciliation and hope.

That call has been lost in some ways through the turbulence of the last six months at Servant's. It has taken so much energy just to lament and listen as a church, that there hasn't been much energy to continually strive towards a new way of being in community.

For me at least, it feels like the time has come to start centering around that vision again. The primary structure we have talked about for shaping ministry from our gifts is Ministry Teams. Right now it is a pretty vague concept for most people in the church, because we haven't spent much time with the language or concepts. We will. But what I realized anew tonight was that for all the planning and restructuring work we have been doing in consistory, the core element of a team based approach to ministry can be learned in a night.

Essentially it is this.

When 9:30 came around and our meeting drew to a close I felt somewhat guilty thinking of the last three hours as work. What it felt like was sharing a dinner and a wonderful conversation about worship with a group of people I loved and respected. I had gained a broader understanding of our church and her life of worship. I had some specific things to do as a worship leader that were richer because they emerged from a group. And most significantly, I knew I was a better follower of Jesus for having been at the table on this night.

At the end of the day, that is what this sense of call is all about. I don't know how to give that away as a gift, but it is my prayer that the same experience would be played out in dinning rooms and coffee shops throughout Westown as the Body of Christ at Servant's gathers together around common calls.

It is my dream that we would all enter into that experience of being a part of something bigger than ourselves. And that we would be more whole from the process. It is my deepest hope that we would gather together, not around class, or race, or age or the cliques we can become so comfortable in, but around Jesus. And that around Jesus we would hear the call of the Spirit that leads us into something bigger than we could ever imagine. Something that demands the best of us and then blesses us with the strength to give it.

Even so, come Lord Jesus in our midst.