"summer church"

for those of you that are going to be in salem this summer, a few of us are going to start up a "church." we honestly have no clue what is going to happen, but this could be quite an exciting and bumpy ride. I wrote out sort of the vision for the church. you'll find that below. also, we are thinking of calling the church "reconcilation" ("recon" for short)...the idea in this comes from 2 Corinthians 5 - that God reconciled the world to himself through Jesus, making it possible for us to know God. he has also entrusted to us the message of reconciliaton to bring to a hurting world. that's the idea behind the group of people that we'll get together this summer.

basic vision i wrote up:

Here’s the idea. We’ll get a small group of committed people together to live life together this summer with “gospel intentionality." This will be our “church.” We are the church, and we will meet weekly to exalt Christ through hearing the Word of God, praising Christ in music, praying together, taking communion, and encouraging one another. Apart from the weekly meeting, we will simply be living life together – hanging out with each other, serving with each other, caring for each other, and looking to spread the gospel in word and deed with our unsaved friends/other people we meet.

Goals for the summer:
- Glorify God and experience his awesome love
- Grow in our love for Christ and for each other.
- See our group grow from 10 to 25 at Sunday meeting
- Have opportunities to share the gospel and, by God’s grace, see some friends/coworkers come to know Christ
- Serve the poor, hurting, and wounded in the city in a real way.
- Send each other out at the end of the summer and continue to pray/encourage each other through the next year

Core Values: Gospel Focus, Community, Disciple-Making, Service




currently I am not sure when or where we will meet weekly, but that isn't really all that important. the more i look at church in the Bible, the more i think that the emphasis have to come away from events and services and return to loving relationships in the rhythms of daily life.

and, i said gospel a lot in the vision stuff. what is the gospel? it is the good news of Jesus Christ entering into our broken world and redeeming us - realizing that even though we are weak and frail, God chose to love us anyways and has made it possible for all men to come to him. therefore, the gospel is for us, but it is inherently for other people and focused on them. read this article if you're still confused: what's in a name?

please don't mistake this for some cool new thing. its probably not going to be all that cool. but, i'm praying that God will use our foolishness and our often misplaced desire to please him this summer and just do something incredible to affect the city of salem with the gospel. i pray that God will use us weak, ignorant, inexperienced people for some great work of God this summer...and i have faith that he will. he loves to use the weak things in this world to bring glory to his name...

feel free to leave comments/questions/ideas/etc. this is only in its very beginning stages.