It started with a phone call on Monday night. Two of my friends had heard me talk about our house church enough that they wanted to come Thursday to see what it was all about. I was so excited.
"Finally," I thought. "Things are starting to happen."
Over the next few days I called our 'members' just to make sure they were coming and to let them know we were going to have 'visitors'. One by one they seemed to all drop out. One is on a cruise. One has to work. One is out of town. One wants to spend the evening with his girlfriend. One had to work.
"What's going on?" I thought.
I was super bummed. I called my friends and told them not to come. This would be the second week in a row that beer church would be cancelled due to lack of participation. I had made up my mind.
Beer church was over.
It made me sad. Like a part of me was dead. And it was. I had such high hopes for a house church. I truly saw the need for something like this in our community. Something that was authentic. Where barriers came down and no one was there to impress anyone, but everyone was there to glorify God. A place where we could discover what it meant to be a church and travel that road together.
After two of our 'members' got off work, they ended up coming over. I told them my disappointments. Suprisingly, I was met with theirs. The more we talked the more I realized they wanted beer church as much as I did. The problem was, beer church didn't exist.
Oh sure, we had a Bible study every week. But where was the worship? Where was the communion? Where was the confession? Where was the prayer? And not the end of the meeting, do it out of obligation prayer. Where was the excruciating, soul reaching, depth of my splatna prayer? It seems the very things I was afraid of pushing were the very things they were craving. I was so afraid of taking leadership and being placed in a position I wasn't even sure I wanted to have exist at beer church, that I was missing the opportunity to lead these people to God.
It's amazing how nights when church is cancelled, God still shows up.
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4 comments:
Jake, I would attend your beer church.
You would be welcomed with open arms.
-pastor jake
Relax, I'm getting there. Been gone for two weeks. Give a nigga some time.
I think you should type your blog, THEN use it as your lesson. I raise my wine glass to you and your ability to grow (painful though it may be)
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