"We are going to start going to church"

I love craigslist. I absolutly love it. Today I bought two bookcases for $20. They are the perfect size, a little scratched up, but who cares? I needed them and the price was right!

I got lost going to get them, but was pleasently suprized when I pulled up to this random little triplex. The triplex was brand new and surrounded by some really old houses and barns, so it looked a little funny. I was even happier when I pulled up to these peoples house and saw that they were members of the Sierra Club, lol becuase you can pretty much bet that any member of the Sierra Club is either A: From the Bay Area, or B: Far enough left that they could move to the Bay Area and be happy as a pig in mud. In talking to the lady that sold me the bookcases, I found out that she is from Santa Clara, loves hiking, and studies Kabala. She even invited me to join her Kabala (Am I spelling that right?) group that meets on Thursdays to eat Hummus and talk about politics, new age thinking, and the Kabala of course. Honestly, she could have just said 'There is free hummus" and I would have been in for sure, but the rest of it sounds interesting too! Just a few minutes later she asked me why I had moved to Redding and I told her that I was here to go to Bethel Church. I am pretty sure that this freaked her out. Oh well. When she asked me what kind of church it was the word apostolic got stuck in my throat, I had said half the word when I realized that I only half grasp the word apostolic, so why should this lady understand my Christianeze? Its the free kind of church, I told her, the kind with a great culture and a lot of freedom. It was the best I could come up with in a jam. You could check it out if you wanted, I told her. "Ya, actually we are going to start going to church" she told me. This is the statement I keep thinking about, over and over, and over. We are going to start going to church. Like, I am going to start taking a yoga class, or I am going to go to college. We are going to start going to church. This makes no sense to me, and yet I think it means a lot.

You see I guess up to this point I thought that going to church was something you had to convince people to do.

I never thought that maybe, the idea was alreaddy in the back of most peoples minds, and they were waiting for the right opportunity to act on it.

No one would have to convince me to take a yoga class, if the opportunity arose I would go happily. Could this idea be the same with church?

Yes. Maybe if we could offer people the opportunity to go to church with no questions asked, with no preasure on, maybe if we made them feel welcome, and treated them as though they were wanted, maybe, just maybe they would actually like being in the presence of The Living God. Maybe their hearts would be touched and their burdens lifted.



I think that if we pair a welcoming spirit with a powerful presence, we would get somewhere.



Thats all.