Time rarely moves slowly anymore. It seems that in our
swirling modern world of social media and instantaneous everything, hours tick
away and they are gone. That has not proven to be the case for us in our first
couple weeks in the Siouxland. Our days
have been full of the same issues that any new family has when moving into a
new city. We have had to find the post office, Laundromat, and power
company—knowledge of streets and directions sort of come from learning the
necessities. During the process of getting settled, all three of us have been
able to do the one thing that slows life to a beautiful pace—conversations.
Students, barbers, ministry leaders, believers, atheists, agnostics, angry and
content have been some of the categories that one could put on our new friends
in West Central Iowa. We have been able to learn about our fair city, some of
the deep struggles of her citizens and share the gospel with some of them.
The challenge for us is how to make
friends from our ever increasing community of relationships. Thankfully, we
have seen some imperfect success by utilizing a thoughtful strategy by Michael
Frost called BELLS. The acronym (Be Generous, Eat, Learn Christ, Listen to God
and Sent) is a summary of the weekly spiritual and personal disciplines we
stress in our church and neighbor life.
- Be Generous- We challenge all church members to be tangibly generous to two people, one inside the faith, one person outside the faith
- Eat- Share a meal or coffee with one person outside the faith
- Listen to Christ- Pray/journal intentionally at least once a week about how the Gospel affects your everyday life
- Learn Christ- Read the Bible daily.
- Sent- journal/meditate weekly on what it means to be “sent” to Sioux City
Our prayer is that our church will be full of thoughts,
prayers and discussions about new friendships they have developed, principles
Jesus has taught them, and fresh, practical ways we can love our community to
the glory of God and for the maturing of disciples.
In Christ,
Richard
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