I put the Church On sabbatical

"He's gone on sabbatical."  That's what the elders say when they are trying to release a Pastor from his duties and move him on. What if a pastor puts the church on sabbatical?


Let's begin here; a few weeks ago, an absurd situation arose at the hotel where The Gathering meets, and as a result The Gathering got the boot of fellowship! Following that, I've gone on sabbatical. Not because my church wants me too, they don't. However, I felt it was time to get away and rest, recover and seek. Actually just rest and recover.

Things that I thought hadn't affected me, came boiling up and I found my self quite spent. Done with it all. This morning, over coffee, my wife blurted out that she was going to go to services at "The Ridge." A friend of mine is the Lead Pastor there. I told her, "OK honey have fun." I didn't feel the slightest bit like I was missing anything. All that's left is a strange, numb, dis-interest. I'm somewhat worried.. I've never felt this way before.

Rez Sunday Redux 2012

This Journey

I was just thinking of the past couple of years and this journey I've taken. I never realized how much my children's lives could effect my faith. You start out with all the typical Bible verses and parenting techniques and one day you wake up and realize, hell, none of this stuff made much of a difference as far as I can see. My children still did the things I did. They still went through many troubles and gave in to many temptations. Their hearts were broken. They had to deal with judgmental Christians and narrow-minded Pastors. It really made me bitter towards other Christians when I witnessed the way they and their children treated my children. You know, Christians talk about thier witness, but do they really know that part of that witness is the way their children treat others? You can tell a Youth Pastor's fruits by the way that his/her youth treat others too.

This is a two way street and the same goes for me, right? Ive been bitter towards the church for a while now and I really need to shake this. These, like it or not, are my brothers and sisters struggling with regrets and hurts just like me. If you have any advice, Brother, give it to me now!

Gathering Hope

Our new care package operation started a couple weeks ago and so far we have been able to put together 12 packages bi-weekly to help the needy in our community. We are working to partner with other "guerrilla" churches, home churches and corporate churches in our area to expand the hope God has started through "The Gathering" We have named our care ministry "Gathering Hope" because we have become a bridge into our community which will allow other Churches to help. We will be gathering supplies, food, toiletries and as winter approaches, blankets and coats. God is amazing and He continually pushes us to the next level. If you want to help, get in touch with us through this blog.

Aletheia is her name.She is deep, powerful and dangerous! She is like the ocean. She cannot be your friend, she has to own you. Many have sat next to her, few have tried to know her, and fewer still have tried to tread into her depths. The problem they will tell you is that you cannot just be her friend. You must surrender to her, and lets face it, you long for her. You have spent a lifetime of searching for her.When she speaks, something happens deep inside of you. It is like you were meant to be together. Now that you have found her you must make a decision to surrender and submerge yourself in complete relationship into her depths or stand on the shoreline forever wondering.
Her name is truth, for in Greek, Aletheia is truth. Do you want to know the truth about life, about your place in it? Jesus said "I am the way the truth and the life" Your search is over. You can spend the rest of your life standing on the shoreline or you can walk into the truth. There is one warning; you will lose yourself , but you will so gain much more.

Dear "Believerforever" er Christian forever
Things change, when I wrote that profile I was in a different place in my journey, one That still had hope for those that call themselves "Christian"

One slave to another-Acts 16:16-21

Does our faith get in the way of evil? Have you ever been in a position to radically change someones life for the better(without money)? I heard a story of an evangelist who answered the call to preach to "call girls" in the inner city, He began to meet them with the gospel and some believed and left their "jobs" He was confronted by an honorable man(a pimp) who told him to knock it off because he was losing his income. Has your faith ever brought you into that kind of trouble? In acts 16 we see Peter driving a demon out of a "fortune-teller" slave (someone who told people about their future)and thus preventing her from making an income for her owner.She was following Peter and his fellow missionaries and shouting that Peter was a "slave" of the most high God and that he was preaching about the messiah. Interesting isn't it? a slave and demon-possessed woman calling Peter a Holy Spirit possessed man a slave of Christ, preaching a totally different future for those who would believe? Well after a couple of days of this Peter finally had enough and cast the Demon out of her thus preventing her from being exploited by her owners for monetary gain. Freedom in a sense. Has your faith ever had that kind of impact? after this the slave owner caused Peter to get thrown into prison, and that was just the beginning of the story.