Reflection

I was just thinking back to this time last year when God was really pushing us to set aside our personal agendas and serve others. Think about all of the amazing things that God has done through his servants since then. Remember Bridging Back where we took an entire week's offering and gave it away to our attenders just to give it away to people in need. Remember Advent Conspiracy where our attenders spent less on Christmas presents and focused more on Christ, then gave thousands of dollars to Project Chacocente. There have been dozens of electric bills paid, cars fixed, jobs found, prayers for healing lifted, and many other random acts of kindness here locally thru GAP. Then, 25 people put together enough money over and above their tithe and building gifts to travel to Chacocente, Nicaragua to serve some people in need that they had never met. We will have relationship with these people for the rest of our lives; they are siblings in Christ. Now, our big focus is to sacrificially give of our time and money to build a spiritual epicenter for our county, our Sprung building. People have already sacrificially given enough to buy 10 acres of prime land on the 67 corridor. Our epicenter will be located 11 minutes from every corner of St. Francois County and will be the perfect location to go and "feed the hungry, give cups of cold water, heal the sick, visit the prisoner, provide shelter to the homeless" -- all of the things that Christ commands in the Great Adventure of Matthew 25. It looks like the start date for construction will be October 1.

I believe that we are the quintessential missional church. Our Great Adventure Project that is about to get off of the ground in a big way (it has already been responsible for all of the above ministry) is going to be a model for the evangelical church world. God asks us to risk big for His sake, and so we are going to keep pushing the bar of risk to fulfill the mission that He has challenged us with in the Great Commission.