Monday, June 21, 2010

Back to "Normal"

The past three months have been a whirlwind for me, our staff and many volunteers as we have pushed hard to move from the mall to our building. I feel like we did a good job. Going into a move you never know what will happen but our church community REALLY CARES and it showed. People stepped up in every area to make the move a great success. Thanks!

The physical move went well. It will take a year or more to know if we made the emotional and spiritual move well. If, in a year, we are back on track...growing spiritually, growing in our relationships and reaching more people, then we can call the move a total success. We need to keep working at that though.

Right now I'm eager to get back to "normal". For me "normal" means building friendships and helping people know God in a way that produces lifechange for them. It means looking outside of our community to help others in significant ways. To some degree that has all been put on hold while we packed and moved boxes and greeted people who are new to Cedarbrook. It's been fun...like one big party...but parties can be superficial. You can't party forever and I'm starting to feel that now. I'm ready for normal. I hope you are too!

The reality is that we'll be greeting new people for months to come. We've always been a church with lots of newcomers. We are a big target right now and many people are checking us out. So we need to find a way to welcome newcomers and keep moving forward with our mission. We need to find a way to incorporate newcomers so they can become a part of our mission and not just be observers sitting in the bleachers watching the rest of us.

So please invite people to join you in your small group, on your ministry team, on your mission trip. They may not know it but they are looking for more than a Sunday meeting. They are looking for something that will change their life and finding a purpose outside of themselves that helps others will do that for them.

Join me this Sunday as I start my new series... REthink Church...learning from the early church in Acts.