ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHING
November 16, 2021
I am one that shies away from sounding the alarm or declaring doom. It can quickly become a Chicken Little moment with mistaken panic and a loss of purpose in the life of a faith community. I use those words as a preface because I am not intending to give any sense of panic. With that said, the Cypress Creek family finds itself at a very curious moment. In fact, most every church in the United States finds itself at a critical juncture in regard to both the future and the present. What we do in the next 12 months will shape our trajectory as a faith community for the next decade. We can be risk takers or we can be care takers. I tend to be somewhat cautious, taking the slow approach… a bit of a care taker. Though as I have often said (borrowing the idea from Bill Easum), a care taker church will almost always need an undertaker before long. Maybe it is time to take a few more risks, but such a choice requires buy-in from the entire church. It is easy for the pastor to announce that “we” are going to take some risks. Yes, it might cost me employment in the long run if it include some risks that do not play themselves out, but when there isn’t much buy-in, it is more rhetoric than anything else. So, what would risk taking for Cypress Creek Christian Church look like for you? If it was risk taking with buy-in from the entire congregation, what would the implications look like for individual members of the church? What would it mean for you? I think about Joanna in Luke’s Gospel (8:3). There is very little about her, except she and some other women provided necessary resources for Jesus and others who were following him. What little we do know of her, she most certainly took some risks that had genuine implications for her life. There are a ton of Joannas out there whose names we will never know, yet they took some pretty significant risks for the sake of Christ’s mission of love.
Great and Gracious God, create within me a humble heart willing to surrender to the good work of the Gospel, the good work of living the Love First Life. Where there are risks to be taken, provide me both examples that inspire and your Spirit that encourages. Amen.
