Dispersion today

[Neighbor]

Hi all,

Having attended a four and a half hour short church membership class yesterday afternoon I am struck by the enthusiasm of the sixty some  potential new members of a middling sized local body of Christ Jesus that attended.

 Amongst all the needed information as to what the local body is was a history of this local body  of Christ Jesus.

Seems a local town of many older people wanted to gain some younger individuals into it's gatherings and membership. It worked harder at its youth ministry, gained younger families, and was so successful at it that it became a church problem to the older crowd, what with the activity of the young, driving too fast in the parking lot, making noise  etc. Finally the youth pastor  was asked by the other elders to go start a new local church, taking the younger families with him. And so, this church whose class I attended was formed,and it grew and it has planted more local church bodies plus some distant ones too.

 Kind of funny that this church of the younger families has become an attraction to me an old geezer, but I am convicted that it is where I need to be it is to be my new post as  a soldier in the army of my Lord Jesus. And I have already  started to get acquianted with its purpose policies and a few of its people and its ministries missions and outreach.

My own bride my sweet Texas peach is excited and convicted too!  We spent time in prayer last night  for our own neighborhood, our family, our church body and community like never before. There is a new lifting within us a pushing of us out of the nest  of old comforts. Don't know how we will best fit in, but we are pursuing the lead God has set before us to follow.

To me the exciting to part is not  us, but that there were some sixty others  there also. More than enough to go  out and plant yet another local body rather than just gathering and listening to the message of one favored pastor/elder and slowly over time dying in our comforts. Seems many are being led to outreach even as they are gathered inward.

So I see that discomfort, tension, even angst, is used by God to cause a continuing dispersion amongst the members of the body of Christ Jesus,  causing  many to go  about the business of sharing the gospel of Jesus by joining in planting new churches, all by the will of God for His own. It has taken some time,  but God has led us to the place he will have us to serve- least for a time till He finds us a little too comfortable and lacking in  our further sanctification process.

And as we do participate we also do have to look hard at where we have thought to go. Are our own plans the plans of God for us or not?  That little tension seems the opportunity to be of new bond-servant service to God. I praise God for the tension that tightens the bonds. This is fun! It is really fun stuff, this continuing dispersion.

 

May God's mercy and Grace abound in your life's adventure, 

neighbor