We’re Having a Baby!

No, my wife isn’t pregnant.  I’m talking about our church…

This past Tuesday (March 25), our church started our third micro-church on the southern end of Harrisonburg.  There were seven of us there.  All but two of us are either de-churched (it’s been years since we’ve regularly attended a church) or completely unchurched (the planter, before he came to Discovery, was severely de-churched). 

Here’s how the new church should progress, in construction terms: 

1. We’ve laid the foundation–Jesus.  We’re spending the next several months reading through the Bible book of John (one of the biographies of Jesus), at a chapter a week pace.  We’re just getting familiar with Jesus.
2. We’re putting up the framework.  As we run across things in the book of John, we’re introducing them into the new church.  For example, when we got to the end of John 1, we read about a dude named Andrew who spent a day with Jesus, and then went and found his brother Peter.  He convinced Peter to come and meet Jesus.  I got to explain our core value of Commission, which is all about introducing people to Jesus.  We talked about other people in our life that we would like to introduce to Jesus.  We also talked about doing an event to invite these people to, especially if they’re not quite ready to “come to church.”  So, the church is all of two days old, and those who came are already thinking about bringing new people.
3. In time, the “house” will be finished.  By the time we get through John, this new church should be a fully functioning micro-church within the Discovery network of micro-churches.  We’ll have introduced everything our churches do–the Lord’s Supper, DVD teaching/discussion, prayer, offering, just hanging out.  We’ll have talked numerous times about our five core values.  We’ll have introduced and implimented our strategy for reaching new people, for serving our neighbors and community, and for eventually starting a new church from this new church.

So, right now, it’s screaming, kicking, purple, and covered in cheese… but the new church has started!