Lest I forget Gethsemane

This past Sunday night, I spoke at Gethsemane Church of Christ in Mechanicsville, VA. They have agreed to financially support the Area 10 Project. It really was a great time to get out there and cast vision again for what we are doing. Several people came up to me afterwards that were pretty pumped about what we were doing. When I tell people that the city of Richmond has no Christian Churches that seems to resonate with people.

I talked about how Jonathan took a risk in attacking the Phillistines in I Samuel. (Thanks, Erwin, Carl, and God for the inspiration) I talked about how we need to risks in our faith and step out and do something great.

Starting a church is the riskiest thing I could think of. As we used to say at Forefront, it's like opening up a hot dog stand for PETA employees.

I See Dead People

This past Saturday, we had our first prayer walk for the Area 10 project. Some people from here in the city, Mechanicsville Church of Christ, and Chester Christian Church joined us for a short walk with prayer time spread throughout. The weather was perfect...sunny...upper 70's. It was a great day for a prayer walk...or a zombie walk.

Strangely enough, the annual zombie walk was scheduled at about the same time, in the same area. Every year, a whole bunch of people-- mostly VCU students I think-- dress up with fake blood and torn clothes and walk like zombies down Cary street. Our favorite was the pope zombie.. Good times...It freaked my kids out a bit I think.

It struck me as strange that many were walking around pretending to be dead, while we walked around praying for many people to have life more abundantly through Christ. Thanks for those that came out and for those who are praying for us. Keep on praying...There are plenty of dead people in this city. They just don't know it right now.

The missional-attractional church

The family and I spent the weekend in Tennessee. We got to visit Gatlinburg (otherwise known as Hick Vegas) and I led a workshop at Johnson Bible College. We got to see the extended family. Abby's parents came down and her brother and sister in law and their kids. Good times all around.

One of the things I talked about at the conference was churches being missional. We need to be the hands and feet of Christ in the community. However, I have worked for churches that are very attractional...the whole come and see how cool this thing is...mentality. My conclusion is this: We must be missional or we'll die on the vine as a new church. However, we must be attractional so when people come to the "show" (I hate that I even just wrote that, but I think you get what I mean) they want to come back.

But the best way of looking at is what I heard from Mark Nelson, pastor of Crossings Church in Knoxville (where we worshipped on Sunday) who said "There is nothing more attractional, than a church that's living missionally."