Enjoying the Journey...

Do you like taking long trips? I love them. We have often taken two or three weeks at a time and headed out west to places of grandeur. We have visited the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone Park, the Black Hills, Badlands, Glacier National Park, the Grand Canyon, the Canadian Rockies, Mount Saint Helens, Redwood National Park, and many others.

While many people might just fly to their destination, Dee and I enjoy taking our van or RV so that we can enjoy the scenery and make “accidental” discoveries along the way. Some of our most cherished memories are of these spontaneous “side-trips” along the way to our main destination.

When we return to one of our favorite places, we will often take an alternate path just to see what else we can enjoy along the way, and to discover more of the beautiful country with which God has blessed us. The new discoveries along the way enrich the journey and often become the jumping off point of future trips.

On one of our side trips we visited a site along the old Oregon Trail. So many covered wagons had traversed the trail that in some places the wagon wheels had carved ruts in the limestone that were 6 feet deep!

Life in the church is often like that. We are all on a journey to spiritual maturity and faithful service of God’s Kingdom. Some people have traveled by the same path for so long that they can’t even see the scenery any more. Their lives are in a “rut.” They repeatedly do the same thing in the same way, whether it is their method of Bible Study, the way they pray or sing, the way they talk to others about God, or the things they think a church should or should not do in order to reach the people in their community for Christ.

Some people grew up traveling the same trail that their parents did, never having seen the scenery outside of their ruts. They have no idea that there are other vistas, other side-loops, new routes to take. They have no frame of reference, other than their own experience, from which to see new possibilities. In other words…they don’t even know they are in a rut. They just keep plodding along thinking “this is the way it is supposed to be.”

It is time to explore the trail …

This year, I will be joining eight of our lay leaders on a spiritual journey called the Fruitful Congregation Journey.  It is a 9 month process of lay and clergy leadership development during which the group will study 8 strategic books on spiritual growth, congregational health, faith sharing, strategic planning, effective communication, and missional focus for the church. The group will also meet with leaders from 5 other congregations in our District who are also taking the “journey.”

The process is designed to help us all look beyond our own “ruts” and learn from the experiences of our sisters and brothers in Christ who are leading effective, faithful, fruitful congregations.  It has been said, “It is hard to think ‘outside the box’ if you don’t even know you are in a box.”

My prayer, and I hope you will join me in this prayer, is that we will be able to better understand the lives and needs of the people in our community whom God has called us to love and serve. And that we will discover more effective ways to reach them for Christ. 

That is the destination. But this isn’t a quick trip. It is going to be a long, but enjoyable journey. You will hear stories along the way from the members of the team.

So far, Mark Haase, Delbert Frazier, Jody Willis, Rick Dawson, Bill Sponsler, and Tony Ortman have joined the team. I have two others who are giving it prayerful consideration. 

I invite you to pray for them: Pray that God will open our eyes and ears so that we can see and hear what God wants us to learn and communicate it effectively to the rest of the church.

I’ll see you in church!

Pastor Ken Wells