Unstoppable

I've been mulling the idea of the unstoppable church over for several weeks, as I have to do for some concepts and this is just a brief post as I've condensed several messages and conversations with friends.

Over the past couple years in our church body, leadership changed, programs were dropped, people left and those who stayed felt like they came to a screeching halt. We were stopped. We thought we weren't effective. We wondered why this happened to us. In reality, I believe we were going through a period of Selah; a time of being stopped by God to focus on Him. He stripped away everything we were relying on and said, "No. You need to seek me. You need to love one another. You need to acknowledge Me and not be dependent on programs and people." In Jeremiah 29:13b, God says, "...and when you search for me with all you heart, you will find me!" We needed to return to a passionate pursuit of God.

During this same period, I lost both my parents, both my maternal grandparents and my job of almost 10 years. The love and support from the church body during this time poured out in ways I don't remember even witnessing before. The church body was loving God and loving their neighbors and our family was blessed as a result. I know others have been blessed as well as we began to look at what we could to to help others in a very personal way and not just tell them to plug in to a program. As we've revved back up, small groups have been meeting and loving on one another and helping those who need it; a garden was started for feeding people; we're connecting with the Muslim community on a personal level; we share the church facility with two other congregations. We may have been stopped, but we are going to be unstoppable as there is so much more to God than we could ever know!

**many thanks to Pastor Scott for his messages that triggered this post!