Are we a picky church?

Last weekend I was in Charlotte for the Beyond Conference gathering. A group of New Faith Community pastors like myself travelled to hear inspiring words about the future of the church and find practical advice on how to answer the question, “where is God working today?” (more on this in a moment). Above is two of my favorite speakers from this conference, Gail Song Bantum and Lisa Yebuah - CPO and Pastor respectively of SERT in Raleigh. One thing that inspired me from these leaders, and others from the conference, is how beautifully they were able to say who they served. With pinpoint precision these thriving churches named the population that they were called to show God’s love to. For SERT their parish is 1-2 miles around their church building located in a prominent South East Raleigh neighborhood, and the people that live there define the church’s goals and filters their decisions together.

This is Jesus at work. Think about it, Jesus never showed up to a community and created a ministry with a sweeping focus of ‘everyone.’ Jesus went with accuracy to the vulnerable individual to offer exactly what they needed. The story of Mark 5:25-34 comes to mind. In it Jesus is surrounded by a crowd of people, probably doing really good work and saying really good things! But Jesus wants to be particular to one person who touched his cloak.

So the question above seems entirely the right one to be asking. Where is God working today? I have been around plenty of churches who have food pantries, sewing groups, building projects, daycares, utilities assistance, and more. In fact, most of the churches I’ve been to have had all of those. What I think is worth wondering about, is in our spreading out over multiple ministries is it possible we are missing where God is working today? What does it mean for us at KUMC to be able to name with pinpoint accuracy who we are currently called to serve? How can our service that goes deep offer more transformation than our service that goes wide?

Will you pray with me?

One of my favorite prayers comes from Psalm 46:10. It’s sort of a combination of a prayer and a mantra, actually. It’s one simple line that slowly reduces to show us all the different ways it speaks to us. In our practice of knowing where God is, let’s focus our prayer (and pray it slowly):

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know that I am.

Be still and know.

Be still.

Be.

Amen.

“Listening is the first act of loving.”

Steph