Let’s Stay So We Can Go

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43:19

Last Sunday was a blast! Great worship, mixed and mingled with the family business of dreaming and thinking about what’s next for us as a church. Specifically, how purchasing the building we worship in can help move us more fully into the mission God has called us to. I got goose bumps when JD announce that vote to move forward was unanimous. I am so excited to see what God does next!

It was great to be joined Sunday by Stephen Hsiao, Evangelical Chinese Church Chair. His stories of how God has moved miraculously in their church and in ours as we both have strived to be faithful was truly inspiring. We were also joined in the congregation by Claudio Carrasco. Claudio leads Centro Biblico – Manto de Amor, a community of hispanic Jesus followers seeking do be a people of the Word and a mantel of love to the world. In a couple of weeks, Claudio will begin hosting a Bible Study at Creekside on Sunday’s at 2:00pm. The generosity of the Evangelical Chinese Church allowing us to be generous in providing them with space to help them start. Claudio was thrilled to worship with us and hearing these stories.

My point is that God has moved, is moving and will continue to move. Our vote to purchase the building and our sacrificial efforts to do so are ultimately not about a building at all. Rather, they are about joining more fully in what God is doing. God desires to have a renewed humanity who participates in his plan to restore creation. We are called to hope: to be advance foretastes of that new creation. We are called to be the beneficiaries of this hope personally and as a church, and to be agents of it in the world. You matter. What you do matters. What we do as a church matters. Our space matters — not to build the Kingdom but to build for the Kingdom.

As we said in the letter we sent out with the pledge cards yesterday, we have seen God’s hand miraculously move on our behalf throughout this process. Our experience both humbles and empowers us. We can move boldly into the future He has prepared for Creekside.

Our desire is to move deeper into our vision by having a location where we can:

• Have a consistent presence to impact our community • Grow deeper roots by training and equipping our congregation • Be a place of legacy that invests in the future generations

This next step of faithfulness is bigger than any of us, but not bigger than our God who calls us to partner with Him. For it is God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us. To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! (Ephesians 3:20–21)

Peace, hope and love

Doug