bob.blog: if Solomon was a church planter...

March 16, 2006

if Solomon was a church planter...

Thinking...

Say you had some reasonable solomon-like assurance that God would answer affirmatively ONE prayer that you prayed as a pastor/for your church community...

What would you pray?

Mar 16, 2006 5:46:59 PM | church planting

8 Comments

I pray for growth unto maturity for those in my fellowship.

blessings,
iggy

Posted by: iggy14u | March 16, 2006 at 08:30 PM

I would pray for my church to be an eternal spring of churches that were also eternal springs. Does that even make sense?

Oooh! And I'd pray for a lifetime supply of Bananas Foster. Who needs wisdom when you have dessert like that?!

Posted by: Drew Caperton | March 16, 2006 at 08:38 PM

wisdom :)

I mean, if a community has wisdom, the rest will follow...

Posted by: Nuno Barreto | March 17, 2006 at 03:13 AM

Love, not for each other only, but for the world around them. Whether we grow or not, if we are sharing Christ's love for the community, His Kingdom can't help but grow.

Our church, btw, has a tremendous love for each other, but we are still working on the whole love everyone else thing.

Posted by: Chris Marsden | March 17, 2006 at 07:39 AM

On our board that we have started for our church plant (thestory.ca) that is happening in the next year we asked a similiar question "what should be important to us?" I feel this is a similiar question.

There is a number of things i'm sure, and there is no right or wrong, but here is what i posted as that answer.

I want to see us be a church that our identity is found not on Sunday in a building that each of us attend once a week (maybe twice if you are spiritual and go to prayer meetings) but instead in our homes. I think this is hard for us to fathom right now because we see church being a place we go, but I think that when we start to uncover what the scriptures mean when they are talking about church we will notice that its speaking about us as a people interacting in each other's lives, in each others homes.

I want to see seeking, studying, praying and fellowship going on outside of Sunday. I want to see those things going on outside of a program of small groups or forced participation. I want to see those things going on because that's just what Christians do when they hang out with each other outside of church.

On another side of things I would like to see our interaction with everyone else (family, co-workers, neighbors) happen outside the church walls after. I don't encourage you to bring your friends to church so the person up front can preach to them three points. I want to see us building relationships with the people around us for the sake of relationships. If it comes to sharing your faith, I want to see each of us being able to do that in the context of relationships. I don't want to see a guy that the person doesn't know present the salvation message to them over and over again by Romans Road.

I think that if theStory is going to be the type of church that will affect people outside of ourselves we need to live lives that are outside of the church building. I want to see neighbors coming over for dinner every week and joining in conversation with us. I want to see them become our closest friends. I want to see two high school students get invited to someone's house who is sixty years older than them for food because they both value relationships with each other.

I want to see this community being able to exist without a Sunday service, without a facilitator who makes you go to small groups, prayer meetings and committee meetings. I want to see a community that exists on so many levels and is intertwined in so many different ways that nothing is dependant on one person, but all of us are dependant on one another.

That is the community I hope to see unfold from our lives.

Posted by: Nathan Colquhoun | March 17, 2006 at 12:05 PM