Ok, you may have to read through my bias a little bit, but I was so encouraged by Autumn Fonceca’s talk this last Sunday at VLC. If you missed it, click here to listen. This Sunday I will be talking about community as it pertains to love and mission. I would love for it to be more than a monologue, so come with your thoughts and ideas. And, as usual, we’ll pass the microphone.
Sometimes my reading and research take me far and wide across books, blogs, and articles. This week was one of the more interesting ones. In a serendipitous way I happened upon a video blog of Phil Shepherd a minister from Fort Worth, Texas. In short, his encouragement was for church communities to take a posture of clay – malleable, moldable. Clay with too little moisture is rigid, inflexible, and will break under too much pressure. Clay with too much moisture is mushy, messy, and unable to hold a shape. But clay with just the right amount of moisture is usable, strong enough to hold a shape, and yet soft enough to be amendable.
Like the Scriptural illustration of God being the potter and we being clay, it works well on both an individual and community basis. Lately I’ve seen this in our church community, as a group we are taking the posture of clay. Not only to the moving of the Spirit, but also in relationship with one another. Even in our Sunday morning talks, we are allowing ourselves to be challenged in our understanding of love, mission, our identity in Christ, and the power of our story. We’ve wrestled with the assumptions, the status quo, and the ruts that we’ve accepted in our lives and the implications of making changes as they are revealed to us through the Spirit, the Scriptures, and by one another. It’s not an easy road, but I do believe it is a more excellent way. We need to experience the Spirit, examine the Scriptures, and engage one another in community, for it is the context of development given to us by Jesus and by which he purposes to fulfill the mission of the kingdom. I feel privileged to be with you in this season of shaping.
Grace and peace,
Brook