Frontier Reality

It's not like everyone is necessarily thrilled when I tell them I'm here to plant (start) a church. And I can understand if a church person views me as a potential threat to their own church. Deb and I are here to start a church, not join a church. So when it came to Easter Sunday we didn't have any particular place to go.

When I was out walking the dog on what was the continuation of a string of stellar weather mornings I was experiencing an emotion, but couldn't define or describe it; until later in the day. I didn't feel sad per se; just missing something.

I didn't miss the planning and logistics necessary to pull off an Easter Sunday service. I didn't miss singing "Crown Him with Many Crowns" or "Up From the Grave He Arose" (though I did have those tunes in my head throughout the day.) I didn't miss wondering if new visitors would show up, if we would have enough food, our coffee decent, or if our church would double in size. I didn't even miss my feeble attempt/s to craft a Easter Sunday sermon that included the important stuff and made the important stuff clear.

What I missed...and it took me a while to get this...was gathering with the people of God. I missed the sense of covenant, and community, and shared lives. I missed the people at Soteria Church and other churches we have called family in years past. I realized again that our faith, our relationship with Jesus is intended by design to be experienced in concert with other people, in community, like family.

A reality of the frontier is that there is not necessarily a pile of people waiting for the frontiersman. If the early days of starting a church don't feel like isolation, those days do include a certain sense of free drift autonomy, like doing life apart from relational bearings. And the way God's designed me, all of us for that matter, is not for autonomy or isolation. We're designed to express our relationship with Jesus in the context of shared relationship with each other.

And in that I'm already looking forward to Easter next year.