anniversary thoughts

Tomorrow we're celebrating our ninth anniversary as a church community (the actual date was Sept. 13). As I've been thinking about this anniversary, it's occurred to me that we are entering the year before our 10th anniversary. True, I'm not the most brilliant mathematician, but the significance of this is about more than just simple arithmetic.

I remember when we started Grace Community in our living room and were dreaming the vision that God gave us. There were a bunch of numbers attached to the vision, but it was all about what we'd look like in our tenth year. So now I'm thinking about what we'll look like in our twentieth year. That original vision was developed as a way of directing us in our first decade. And now I see this coming year as a time to develop our direction for the next decade.

To be honest, I don't think any of the leadership team (including myself) has a clear picture of where we'll be after the second decade. The only one who does is God. So that's who we should be consulting. This coming year needs to be about discerning together what God has in mind for us. It needs to be a year of prayer and preparation. Not intercessory asking prayer, but contemplative listening prayer. We need to know what is on God's heart and how that applies to the specific time and place in which he's put us.

There's lots to celebrate and I'm looking forward to the year-in-review slide show and congratulatory words from our superintendent, Evelyn Johnson. I was just telling my kids after bedtime prayers that if we hadn't been used by God to start this church community they wouldn't have all the friends that they do now. God's brought a lot of great people into our lives through this work of his called Grace Community. And I know that I can trust his plans for our future to be good plans, full of blessing for us so that we can be a blessing to this world that he loves and for which his Son gave his life.