This is my inaugural blog! I am glad to finally be part of the blogosphere. I don’t know how often I will update this blog. We’ll have see how things develop. However, let me welcome you to our new web site and this opportunity to expand our community in new ways. I realize the term community has taken on a number of forms in recent years. With the advent of blogs, web sites and social networking online, community has begun to include this format as well. Of course, there are limits to what words on a page (screen) can do for community building. Real community, Christian community, involves far more than words. It involves us, heart, body and soul. As Scripture tells us, “let us not love in word only but in deed,” in action. Real community takes time. It involves pain and conflict. It means serving side by side and sharing loss as well as victory. True community includes the “least of these,” the broken and the hard-to-love. It is not neat. In fact, it can be quite messy at times. 

   Welcome to the church! It’s God’s (messy) idea of how we are to do this thing called the Christian life. It is to be done in community, stumbling and tripping all the way, but hopefully falling forward, leaning into His grace when we don’t have a leg to stand on. And realizing that, at times, He has asked you and I to be those legs (and feet and hands, etc.) for the one who have none. 

   Feel free to let me know what you think of this and future blogs as well as how we can improve this site.