19 Years Ago & A Contrast of "Churches"

19 Years Ago

Isn't she beautiful!

I posted this picture on Facebook today with the comments: Nineteen years ago today was one of the best years of my life! Thanks, Lord, for bringing me an amazing wife! I love her more every day! If you had told me, 19 years ago today, that 19 years later we'd have 2 daughters, 2 cows, 5 chickens, be living on 40 acres, pastoring a church, and a volunteer fire fighter I'd have said you were crazy! God has such better plans for us than any we could make for ourselves! Multiple of you subscribed to this blog by email were there, that day, standing up front with us. Thanks for all of your love and support!


A Contrast of "Churches"
Yesterday we took some relatives from Germany to the building our fellowship meets at. It might have been the highlight of their visit, and it was a real eye opener for me. They were blown away that we had a kitchen in the building, a bathroom, and activities for the youth, as well as some rooms where we have special decorations and things for the smaller kids where they are taught special lessons geared toward their ages. Our relatives said that for them going to church was going into a building (with no bathrooms), sitting still for an hour, all ages together, and leaving. I found it such a contrast—where "church" is a building and a service. We strive so hard here to make the building and service second and to be the church, or body of Christ, a family. It was a reminder to me of how blessed we are to be family and to fellowship, and how grateful I am that the men I serve with and the body we are surrounded by don't want simply a building and a service, but to be Christ's body at work. It isn't always easy—we all have a lot of warts and bumps and imperfections, and we don't always get along or act in a way that would honor God—but the effort is so worth it. When "church" is simply a building or service it is not "church" the way God intends it. But when the body is the body, one member, together in love and united in Him with Him as the head, that is the church being the church the way God intended, and it will draw people to it and ultimately to Him.