Growing up in the US, you unconsciously grow up in a world of rules, regulations, systems, and labels. Your title, program, group, and status allows you to know how to function and allows others to know how they should interact with you. When it comes to church your denomination, size, and other various church labels help steer you on the right path, and often put in you the boxes that people are comfortable with.
I have both struggled with and enjoyed leading a church with no name, no programs, and no plan. Our only agenda week to week is to worship God and better understand His desires for our lives. Everything we do centers around those two things. And somehow God is showing up. There is no growth plan yet we had almost a hundred in worship for Easter, double what we had in January. There is no building committee, we are happy to have a school classroom and the ability to invite people from the community to join us. There are not programs, yet our Children’s Sunday School has almost 50 kids and we started an Adult Bible Study by announcing the time in church and promising them Bibles if they would just show up to study them. There are no committees, yet people volunteer to lead children’s Sunday School, be the liturgist for worship, and sing in the choir. It is a simple, amazing, and most certainly humbling experience.
The church is a big part of the life of the children at Angel House and becoming a bigger part of the life of our neighbors in the village. We started off worshiping in public, outside of the children’s home, and a little over a month later baptized around 45 people. The children at Angel House are constantly asking questions about God and the Bible and people in the community are learning to seek God’s will. It has been a blessing to see the spiritual life of so many people blossom, it is also comforting to know that in an area where life is hard, and resources are scarce people are relying on God. I am kind of hoping at this point that we keep going with the no name thing and allow ourselves to fully focus on that which is most important, God. With that label, how can you go wrong?
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