A First

(Wednesday January 28th)
This is my first ever blog entry. I have been invited to blog several times but just did not have any "inner" thoughts I wanted to post. However I think simplechurch.com is going to be the best place for me to join in this cyber world. Currently I meet every Sunday with a group of eight adults, Erin, Don, Sandra, Juanita, Rich, Jaylynn, Theresa and myself. Sometimes we have a few more but these eight are the steady ones. I grew up in organized church (baptist) and was an ordained in a non denominational organization for a few years. I left all that about 15 years ago. I was searching for an expression of Christ that was more genuine that what I had experienced. I continued to attend a non denom organization while I was searching and had my kids going thru the youth group (I helped in the youth group). During this time I very puposefully did not take any leadership role. I had seen way too many abuses by leadership and did not want to be part of that system. While my kids (Joshua and Katie) were in high school we began to experiement with meeting together in our home. We basically had my kids friends over and my sister in law (Juanita) and her husband (Rich). There was no set agenda and the meeting basically just ran itself but after the kids went to college it stopped.

From there we bounced around visiting easily 25 or so organized churches. By this time my other brother in law (Don)and his wife (Sandra) had moved from Charlotte to Fayetteville. They went with us as we all tried to find some place that we could build relationships with and grow in Christ. I wore out first. I told them to go ahead and keep trying and let me know when they found something they liked. After about 2 years we all decided to meet together at Juanta's Sunday mornings.

We have been doing that now for a little over a year. We have all decided that, Lord willing, we are going to attend the "Finding Organic Church Regional Events." in Orlando this July 16-19. This excites me because I was not sure if the other members of the group would want to go.
In this group I have worked very hard again not to take a lot of leadership. (i.e. We have a rule that there must be 100% agreement on anything that we do. Even Jaylynn our youngest member ,just out of college, can veto an idea until she thinks it is good, and she has not so much vetoed but definetly steered us in different directions at times.)
Fortuanately, as you can see I am related to most of these people so they do not feel compelled to listen to me or obey me. I was worred that I would become some kind of defacto head preacher, but I determined that I would let the group die before I would carry it.

Our meetings have been good, everyone is learning to that each member has to be willing to give of themselves to the whole group. We have a long way to go but we are encouraged. We just had another friend visit last Sunday. We did not plan for him to share his testimony but it just flowed that way. He shared his testamony and his vision to help the poor in Mexico. Now, looks like we may have a door opened for us to be a part of his vision. (He is not the classic missionary - he runs a landscape company and has been financing his own tirps to Mexico to help the poor) Anyway some good things are starting to happen. I am especially encouraged because I am determined not to "take the bull by the horns" and make things happen. I am going to see God direct and build this or it will not happen. It has been wonderful watching different people in the group being used by God to minister to each other. No great revival type things just small meaningful things.