Daniel’s Pilgrimage

I had read this before, but it’s really good and I just found it again. This is the membership covenant that the original members of Church of the Saviour in DC agreed to:

I come today to join a local expression of the Church, which is the body of those on whom the call of God rests to witness to the grace and truth of God.

I recognize that the function of the Church is to glorify God in adoration and sacrificial service, and to be God’s missionary to the world, bearing witness to God’s redeeming grace in Jesus Christ.

I believe as did Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

I unreservedly and with abandon commit my life and destiny to Christ, promising to give Him a practical priority in all the affairs of life. I will seek first the kingdom of God and His Righteousness.

I commit myself, regardless of the expenditures of time, energy, and money to becoming an informed, mature Christian.

I believe that God is the total owner of my life and resources. I give God the throne in relation to the material aspect of my life. God is the owner. I am the ower. Because God is a lavish giver I too shall be lavish and cheerful in my regular gifts.

I will seek to be Christian in all my relations with other persons, with other nations, groups, classes, and races.

I will seek to bring every phase of my life under the Lordship of Christ.

When I move from this place I will join some other expression of the Christian Church.

I’m still being a slow blogger. But I will fill you guys in on the last couple of days. Thursday night we went over to Leslie’s place for a weekly dinner that her and Scott are hosting over there. It was a nice night of food and fun, and I found out that my wife is colorblind. Friday night we didn’t do much of anything, watched TV and hung out at home. Today(Saturday) we went to the WW2 memorial in DC with my parents, grandparents, uncle and brother. I got our car lost in DC for a while and we only got to be there like 20 minutes before it was time to leave. Then to my parent’s place for a nice dinner with the fam and then we hung out with some friends… we went to 2 different Target’s to try to find something for Leslie and then to dinner at Hops. Nice times with friends and family, but nothing too exciting. And no big revelations on my last post yet either. I’ll let you know if we have one.

I’m struggling a bit right now. I’m fighting with a handful of questions. Questions like the following. Why is no one we know interested in the kind of ministry we are? Are we really supposed to be doing this stuff or is this just our way of trying to get away from Horizon? Does God want us to work through our hurts and go back to Horizon? If so, would it be a temporary thing? If not, how do we do something new when all our current friends are a part of Horizon? Or maybe we are just supposed to work through our hurts before God releases us to do a type of ministry that fits us better? Who knows… If you could say a prayer for us I’d appreciate it. If God tells you anything about our situation, please share it with us.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about missional purpose. For example, I think Horizon is very much a missional church. I just think they have a different mission than we do. I think this goes a little back to the streams of the christian faith. A missional community focused on the Evangelical stream will look different than one focused on another of the streams.

This is helpful to clarify in my mind what we want to be a part of. Now we need to try to figure out which stream we fit the best into and figure out what a missional community in that stream looks like. At this moment I’m thinking it is probably the Incarnational stream.

What would an incarnational missional community look like? Is that what Vineyard Central, The Landing Place, Vine and Branches and Ordinary Community are?

I’ve felt like I need inspiration for a while now. I’ve just been feeling like I’ve been drifting along. So, for part of my needed dose of inspiration I spent some time reading some websites of missional communities. If you are interested, checkout the following: Vineyard Central, Ordinary Community, The Landing Place and Vine and Branches Christian Community.