I have been thinking, for the last 4 years now, a lot about containers. Containers for faith communities. You see, we gather on Sunday mornings. We have worship in song, worship stations, a "talk", prayer for one another, we take an offering, we have age appropriate classes. We lease a facility. We have a budget. We have a paid leader. The Sunday gathering is only one piece of our community. We have times of prayer, we have all-group community coordinators/leader meetings once a quarter. We have a leadership team that meets monthly. We have a few small groups. We are just beginning today a year long study of the Bible. It is structured as a learning group that will mostly interact online. Our guide for this part of our journey is Winn Griffin. Winn has a gift to communicate the story of Scripture in way that we can understand what the original hearers might have heard and then what do we hear today. The purpose, learning HisStory, the story we find ourselves in. We believe it is important to understand the story we live into and out of. We care deeply and passionately about serving the poor, the marginalized, the outcasts. We are barely scratching the surface of all that we believe we will be giving/doing in that area but we watch for the opportunities and respond to them as they come. I would say for me, I am most interested in trying to live out as faithfully as I know how the purpose of God for my life and the life of the community I serve.
I have many friends that have a different container. Their primary gathering is not on Sunday, it may be on Saturday, or Tuesday evening, etc, they don't have a facility, and their container in many ways, looks very different then ours. But I know them and their heart is to live out faithfully the purpose of God for their lives and the community they serve.
BTW it didn't snow
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