Looking Back

It has been a few days since we returned to Charles Town. As I reflect back on our week in Maine I have some thoughts. Earlier this year at CTBC we went through the a church wide study produced by the CBF. It's Time: a Journey Toward Missional Faithfulness was an enlightening and challenging look at how we as a church do missions. The emphasis was that it is way past time for the church to be the presence of Christ in the world. We learned that missions is more than giving, missions is going. Going into a hurting, dying world with the message that there is salvation found in Christ. The peace and joy and grace that the world longs for is found in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It's time for the church to stop sitting in the pews, listening to sermons and songs of praise and inspiration, only to walk out the back door unchanged and unmotivated to be the presence of Christ in the world. The church talks too much and acts to little. The idea of being a missional people is one that challenges the congregation of CTBC to reach out and offer justice and mercy and hope to Jefferson County. We partner with organizations like Jefferson County Community Ministries (www.jccm.us) and Good Shepherd Interfaith Care Givers (http://www.gsivc.org/) and we send a team of 8 to Sabattus, Maine to partner with Pathway Community Church.

As you can see from earlier post this team of 8 bonded together in laughter, hard work, prayer, and Christ. In an area that is apathetic to the gospel, there are churches like Pathway Community Church and pastors like Mary Beth Caffey who are proclaiming the goodness of the gospel. In an area that values its privacy and independence, there is a message being proclaimed that is calling persons into community with Christ and each other. It is this privacy that the people so long for and cherish that hides a multitude of needs. On the outside looking from the road things appear to be good. Things look nice and tidy, but on the inside there is heartbreak, hopelessness, and helplessness. In houses and lives that look like they have a handle on life there resides chaos. Chaos of living paycheck to paycheck, chaos of having the ends not meeting at all, chaos of family hurts, chaos of grief, chaos of abuse, the chaos of loneliness. But in such chaos, a God of order is being presented. A god who is able to still the storms of our lives or to still our hearts in the midst of the storm. This loving, caring God is being presented in a small congregation giving out of its own needs to be the presence of Christ in its community. A beacon of hope proclaimed as it host mission groups who paint houses, repair rotting wood, trim hedges, wash out old dorm refrigerators and storage bins so that a local homeless shelter can receive a donation to carry on its ministry to those in need. Overall we had a great experience and one that changed each of us.

Thanks to all of you who prayed for our team as we prepared to go and went to Sabattus, ME. Thanks to all of who who contributed money to fund our trip. Thanks to Mary Beth and Pathway for their hospitality.

Continue to pray for CTBC and Pathway Community Church as fellow partners in being the presence of Christ in their respective communities. And may they be faithful and called "for a time just as this."