Change is a comin'

Good morning all.

Clayton and I have been doing a lot of talking about next steps, what God might be calling us to, how we see God working in the world. To be honest, it is a lot of talking. We strive to hear accurately from the Lord and let that leading guide our decisions and want nothing less than what God would have for us as a community.

When I first moved to San Mateo, CA in 1998 I took a drive down to Santa Cruz to hit the beach. Along Highway 280 there is a strange building that runs under the freeway near Palo Alto. It is called the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC for short) and it is a one mile long shed like building that essentially speeds up atoms for the purpose of splitting them. Now to say that atoms are small would be an understatement. A recent Rob Bell DVD I watched stated the size (or lack thereof) of atoms as this: If you were to take a drop of water and have every person on the planet count one atom per second it would take 2000 years for all those people to count the atoms in that single drop.

So, a friend of mine worked at SLAC (workers there were affectionately known as slackers) described the process. In layman’s terms it loaded atoms in a “gun” and shot them down the lane of this mile long building to get them to split. Had the building been shorter, the very microscopic and critical work they were trying to do could not be achieved.

What does that have to do with us at the Center? I believe we are trying to do some very critical work. All around, the Church universally is struggling. We are gathered together to cling more closely to Christ and operate as He would have us be His hands, feet and voice in our world today. This is a very delicate process and it takes time. The challenge we face is that time is limited on the chosen night we currently have in place.

Many factors limit us on Saturday evenings. An ever present reality is that children have a bedtime, adults are invited to weddings and numerous other things pull at our attention and time. Just when the Spirit might begin to work within our group, our natural and earthly selves start leading us elsewhere.

The question might be raised “well where is your commitment?” To be honest, my commitment sometimes stops at 8:30 because I worked hard on the lawn all day and I start falling asleep or our commitment is really leading us to enjoy the sunshine (a limited resource in Eugene/Springfield) for an hour longer (in the case of two weeks ago when no one wanted to be inside).

So we would like to propose that we begin the process of moving to Sunday mornings. Not too early for those non morning people but early enough that we do not feel pressed for time. We want to be open to the Spirit and allow God to work within us. If we end on time so be it. But if the Spirit moves us into the afternoon we also have the freedom to go with it. We would still have time for a meal afterwards and I believe it will open us for greater fellowship opportunities with each other and the community as a whole.

We would like to begin to implement this sometime before the summer reaches full swing. Anyone who has been here for a year or two knows that this is the recreation capital of the Northwest and people tend to disappear on the weekends around here. We were thinking either May 18th or 25th, though the 25th falls on Memorial Day weekend and some people may be gone.

Please understand that this is not a decision to fall in line with the traditional church or do something because that is always the way it has been done. We simply want to open up the freedom for God to work in our group without any limitation.

Thoughts and feedback are welcome.