Being the Church

We talk a lot about the idea that YOU CANNOT GO TO CHURCH, but rather WE ARE CHURCH. So wherever WE ARE, CHURCH IS.

In other words... the church is not a building, institution, or organization. It is the PEOPLE OF GOD, gathered together and sent together. We gather together for worship and fellowship and discipleship and ministry; and we are sent together on mission. This is what it means to BE THE CHURCH.

This weekend has been an excellent example of what it means to be the church.

Over 80 folks gathered Friday night for an evening of prayer and worship. In addition to the fact that extended time in worship and prayer is always powerful, a couple things we struck me: we gathered with folks from other local churches because we are all church together; the night was conceived by, planned by, and led by all volunteers --- a reminder that we are all ministers to each other! And during prayer time and throughout the worship it was powerful to watch people minister to each other. A very powerful night!

Today we had three missional things happening as part of Saturday Serves: (1) we re-launched our "Coffee Ministry" in Willimantic (we set-up and give coffee to homeless folks), a team of folks served with the MAAC Food Pantry in Manchhester, and we had a big team working on sets/props for Imagine Christmas and decorating our building for the Christmas season... a form of hospitality to the hundreds of people we will connect with over the next month!

In addition to all of that, our facilities today were used by counselors from Klesis Ministries (one of the Christian Counseling ministries we partner with) and tonight a local community-based, multi-church youth ministry is doing a fundraising pasta dinner to help support their ministry to teenagers in our community.

And one last note... a team from St. Paul's just returned from a week working in New Orleans on continued Katrina relief and rebuilding.

It is not even Sunday yet and great things have been happening at St. Paul's already this weekend!