Joe Manafo

Sheep for Wheat

If theStory had a church bulletin that listed the weekly events in the life of the church, it would look something like this:

Prayer Meeting (Occurrence: Monthly)
Formal Gathering (Occurrence: Sundays @ 11:11am)
Poker (Occurrence: Thursdays @ 9:00pm)
Settlers of Catan (Occurrence: Sunday afternoons, & randomly throughout the week)
Shutter Bugs Photography Group (Occurrence: Monthly)

The early stages of our tale has had its fair share of surprises but none has astonished me more than the community truly being built on the backs of 2 games and people just hanging out and having a good time - most of which is occurring outside of Sunday. We didn’t plan this, it just happened. People at various stages of the spiritual journey are mixed together and it is a beautiful site. We’re taking the time to nurture friendships, and we’re most certainly not putting all our eggs in the Sunday basket. However, in the long run, what I’m expecting it will do for Sunday is that it will truly separate that particular hour that we meet to center our thoughts and position our hearts towards God. By my observation most churches try to cram into and hour and a half what we experience in a week’s time. Have we then arrived? Can we check ‘church planting’ off our list of things to accomplish in life? (Like Homer Simpson’s list that included seeing Stevie Wonder naked?) No, but I do think we’re at least pointed in the right direction.

Filed by Joe at February 20th, 2007 under Church Planting