Getting Started . . .

Many of us have been gathering in some way, shape of form for the last five months, and many smaller groups of us way before that. Over the course of the last couple Sundays it has become apparent that we need to be continuing to deepen our understanding of "what" this is and "what" comes next.

We are beginning to extend the conversation of living like Jesus together into our weekly lives together. There will be bumps and bruises along the way to figuring out how to best extend the conversations from the gathering table on Sundays into our hearts and minds throughout the rest of our week, and into our whole lives, but it our hope if living as Jesus.

Over the course of these last months, we have talked about . . .

• Trusting others with our hearts and lives
• Living more intentionally with each other -- physically, emotionally and spiritually
• There is a burning desire within individuals to be true disciples of Christ
• There is a sense of wanting to live and shine among those that don't know Him
  
• Fear and it's ability to stunt our growth and progress
• What is a disciple
• What is community
  

. . . among other things.

From these topics there has arisen a lot of great discussions, but as we discussed a couple of Sunday nights ago it has been very easy to keep these discussions in the theoretical. As it came to light, this may be because we have no parameters around which to understand our commitment to one another. Nick Shea made a comment that summed things up a little about "okay, so now is when we actually start to live as a community" . . . This is a scary thing for most of us, yet you would not be here if it were not for a yearning of this kind that has been planted in your heart.

Sunday night, thanks largely to Kelly, we were able to talk about defining some of the elemental things we are committing to live by. It is by knowing what we are committing to that we can begin to see the fruit of living those elements out together, and yet uniquely in our giftedness and calling. We start from the commonality of intention -- being disciples of Jesus (or whatever else you prefer to call it) and we extend it even further to specifics around what does that really look like played out. To think that we could even come close to purposing something that is exactly as God intended is a little lofty, so I would hope that we might just be able to agree on a baseline of things . . . some of us will want to tend towards the simple and the few, and others of us will want it to encompass all the specifics and make sure 'the list' is complete. I hope that we will use some of our personal time with Jesus, and time one on one with each other to flush out the depth to which the things we choose are core beliefs and expression of a disciple of Christ. I believe we all have to come to a compromise on this to some level . . . we have to decide that it's worth getting out of the boat and onto the water with Jesus. We have to continue the journey, allowing (and trusting) God to make course corrections along the way.

What I am asking is that we would focus on the task at hand and that is "just doing it". Beginning to ask questions of each other, and allow others to ask questions of us that align us closer to being a disciple of Christ -- and most of all doing it together.