We’re Moving

By the end of January, we hope to move down the hall to the gymnasium for our Sunday Godspeed services.  And this is really good news!  We’re moving because we’ve outgrown our dear, familiar cafeteria.  Some of you may be sorry to see us leave our tables. Others will be happy to have a seat-back to lean against.  For all of us, it will be a change, and change isn’t always comfortable.  But it’s good for us. Here’s why.

There’s a strong theme of moving outward that starts early in the Bible and continues to the end.  It’s a theme that reflects the heart of a God who is like a loving father enjoying lots of children.  The theme starts in Genesis 1:28, “And God blessed [Adam and Eve].  And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.’”  But by Genesis 11 the descendants of Adam and Eve stopped doing this.  They said, let’s settle into one city, build a tower and make a name for ourselves “lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”  God confused their language and made many from the one, so that they would disperse and expand.

Later, God sent Jonah to the Gentile city of Nineveh, demonstrating there too his heart for the (now many) nations, a precursor to the missions movement of Acts and the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant.  Acts 1 continues the theme as Jesus explains to his disciples that they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth.  It’s the spiritual equivalent of Genesis 1:28 — be fruitful and multiply…in this case, disciples.  But reminiscent of Genesis 11, the followers of Jesus were still huddled in Jerusalem.  They apparently felt safe there together.  So it took persecution to move them outward: “And there arose on that day a great persecution agains the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria…. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word” (Acts 8:1,4). As this movement expanded all around the Mediterranean region, disciples multiplied, churches were planted and leaders established.  The family grew, to the glory of God and for his pleasure.  By the time we come to the book of Revelation, we see the throne of the Lamb surrounded by a crush of ethnicities all worshipping Jesus.

God loves an expanding family, and we should too.  Of course it’s possible to glory in our church’s size (as in “Look, we’re a successful church because we’re getting bigger”).  That would be wrong.  But it’s not wrong to be thankful that more people are hearing the Word, worshipping God, praying together and seeing gospel growth in their lives.  Luke loved to give expansion updates as the gospel changed people’s lives: “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Luke 2:41).

That’s a lot of Bible history just for a move down the hall.  But it’s important for us to see that even a small move, as we grow, is part of God’s work of prospering his church and continuing to move his people outward.

We won’t like everything about our move.  No more tables.  No food in the gym.  No windows in the gym.  A lot of things will be different and not everything will work well for the first month or so.  But in the bigger scheme of God’s plan for Godspeed, this is good.  It’s good that we are not getting too comfortable in one place, and good that we are moving outward.

As the elders look to the future, we are not interested in growing indefinitely, even if we could.  Our desire is to ask God to allow us to plant other churches, rather than just keep getting larger.  Just as Christians are commanded to make disciples, so we believe that healthy churches also should reproduce spiritually and “birth” other churches.  But we also believe that it’s possible to do that too early and undermine the health of the parent church.  A zeal for planting new churches could ultimately undercut our ability to do that in a sustainable way.  So we will likely need to grow more — not just numerically, but also in wisdom, leadership and ministry skills.

This move is the end process for a hard-working building team who looked all over for a new location.  When they started looking we didn’t think we could stay in the Martin School.  But God  has worked it out that we can and the building team learned a lot in the process about properties in the area.We are thankful to Eddy Capobianco, Dean, Gail Carley, Todd Blount, Al Summerly and Nick McCarty for doing a lot of research for us all.

So most likely by the end of January, we’ll be parking around the back, following new signs, entering different doors.  We ask you to join us in doing that with a sense of excitement — along with lots of patience — knowing that God is keeping us from getting comfortable in our “Jerusalem.”  The new room will be strange to us all, like a new house when your family moves, but it will soon be familiar and functional.  And as that happens, we will get on with the business of growing together in Christ and reaching out to those around us.  By God’s grace, we will keep focused on being a family with a mission.