Update and God is soo good!!!
Well, it's been a big nuts around our house. I have my 3 kids here 18,15, and 19 months.....and my 2 nieces ages 11, and 8 until next Sat. It's been fun but very hard to get even a moment to myself. I was thinking about heading out by myself even if it's just for a walk tonight.
On top of all that we've been a bit stressed about our church situation lately. It's been a long time coming that we knew we needed to make a change for Sadie's sake and haven't found a new church we felt comfortable with. In our current church Sadie is it for kids!!! Yep you heard me right only Sadie all alone. We really want her to experience Sunday school etc...and how will that really happen much if she's all alone. Our church body is made up of mostly elderly which is rapidly declining due to deaths etc.. Some people in the church have desired to make a drastic change for some time now....but the elders in the church are very afraid of change. It's always hard to change. Every time we've come up with a proposal things have been put off saying we'll address this at the next meeting etc. 5 yrs ago we voted to not move to a new building and stay where we are but to make changes....well those changes never happened. My husband, Luke, was asked to be on the revitalization committee this time. He's spent about 20 weeks every Tues evening meeting to try to come up with a proposal that will work. Well, we had a very big and stressful meeting last night to vote on whether to accept the proposal or not. When the votes were tallied after a 4 hr meeting the vote was 34 against it and 43 for it. WooHooo you can't even imagine how excited we are to finally have gotten somewhere with this. I love the people at our church it's like family and we really didn't want to leave but we had decided if this didn't go through we were done. Well, the proposal was to start a church within a church....we will have our own governing body and be technically seperate but use the same facilities etc... We have been given enough money from the current church body to feasibly finance this for the first 3 yrs. We will be looking to hire a new pastor as well as keeping our current pastor for the traditional church. We are looking to really creat this new ministry as an externally focused church. We need to minister to those in our area that are unchurched...bring them in and make them part of our "family". Every Sunday when the contemporary worship service is over Sadie loves to go up to the stage to see the instruments etc... She stands there and sings and dances. The greatest thing said last night by one of our members was that now Sadie will have the chance to be up here on this stage leading worship in a few years. He said he can't wait to see Sadie and her friends leading us "old" people in song and worship. I'm just sooo excited to be a part of this new and blossoming ministry. It will be a lot of work but will be well worth it. Through this all one thing my husband and I have longed for was to build relationships with other christians and get involved outside of the church walls....yes this is going to happen!!! We also have become a lot closer with a few of the others that were a big part of this. We're both hoping we can have a big part in making this work. So that is where our energies have been and I'm sure will be even more so to come. We have been so blessed to have found this church.
Our story is when we moved into the neighborhood our church is in...the people that lived in the rental house we were moving into wouldn't move out. The youth pastor of the church came over with the church van and helped them move out so we could move in. He also came to my apt the next day to move mine and my kids' things. He invited us to church and especially extended a welcome to my kids to join in the children's activities. Well, here we are a few yrs later members of this church and excited to see it grow and prosper again.
Sorry it's so long....can you tell i'm excited???
Michelle
Michelle, I am so happy for you and your family. I'm espeically excited for your community because having people like you guys there willing and excited about reaching out to the unchurched is something you can not put a price on. May God bless you guys and I pray you find a new pastor who has your vision and is truely a man of God.
Hugs
Teresa
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