Have you ever been hiking at night? If the woods are dense enough, almost no moonlight or starlight penetrates the thick canvas of the forest roof. When you turn your headlamp on, the immediate area in front of you lights up, and everything else is draped in blackness. You can see clearly for maybe thirty feet, then after that it tapers quickly back into pitch black. There’s a certain amount of faith that you have to walk in when you are night hiking. You have to trust that the trail will take you where it is supposed to go. You have to have faith that the trail itself is safe, even if it runs alongside a step cliff or next to a rushing river. You trust that the noises you hear are really just big squirrels and not hungry bears looking for tasty, out of shape and slightly plump, stray hikers. So you hike in faith, knowing for sure only what lies 30 feet in front of you and hoping that you’ll reach your campsite before Roscoe the Mountain Man jumps from the shadows to demonstrate to you his deep knowledge of the movie “Deliverance.” It really is exciting. Believe me. Try it sometime. Well, I am on a night hike of sorts right now, figuratively speaking. All of us that have entered into this amazing adventure that is following Christ are on night hikes. Our destination is certain: the Kingdom of God. Our trail is firm: the Path of Righteousness and the Way of the Cross. Our light, The Holy Spirit, illuminates all that we need to know in order to navigate through the world that is shrouded in the darkness of sin. The path that I am currently on is not one that I ever thought that I would take. It is a crazy trail that already has seen miracles, struggles, leaps of faith, and mighty acts of God. And we're only at the beginning. My hiking companions are my wife Brandie, and my three sons, Sam, Jack and Luke. It is a journey that we would love to share with all of you, if you want to read along.

Monday, September 6, 2010

This Weekend

This weekend is the first larger gathering for the Gainesville Church. Our partners in planting, Dan and Patti Cleere, are hosting a group at their home on Saturday. This will be our first meeting now that we have definitely decided to go to Gainesville. Technically then, I think that this is the very first gathering of the Gainesville Anglican Church!

Maybe it is a little too early to begin thinking about a name, but I can't help it. I am open to suggestions, so offer any bright ideas any of you may have. I have mixed feelings about naming a church,and since I process information by thinking out loud, I will think "out loud" while I'm typing:

On one hand there is the school of thinking that would say to shy away from anything that sounds too "churchy". No Saint names, no denominational tags, no biblical geography: Mt. Zion, St. Peter's, or anything that ends in Anglican Church (or Methodist, or Baptist, or whatever) would all be out of the question. The thinking is that all of these carry such negative connotations with un-churched or the disenfranchised. Names that are vague like South East Community Fellowship or The Journey are cool because they sound a little more open and don't suggest dogmatic, uptight, and hypocritical people reside on the inside.

And I can see the point here, I really can. But I have also really come to appreciate the art of naming something. Naming a church St. Patrick's carries with it the Celtic churches traditions, a church named St. Jame's hopefully would try to embody the truth of Jame's epistle, and so on. There is meaning in a name, and people and places live into that meaning.

OK. I really am no closer to coming to any conclusions. Maybe I should name it Gainseville's North Georgia Journey Anglican Community Fellowship. Any help?

Keep praying. Our meeting is at 3:00 on Saturday. We really are underway!
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