We met there on Ash Wednesday to set out together on a devotional pilgrimage that will take us to a new and glorious experience of Easter. Our whole congregation was clearly represented by the forty souls who gathered there; and it was my distinctive impression that the Spirit of the Lord also gathered with us in that space.
In the months ahead, I would like to create opportunities for us to use that space more often. We began and ended our Leadership Retreat there last month, and it helped us to start the Interim Season there with spiritual resolve. Your Prayer Partners are meeting there every Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock to offer to God the prayers you entrust to our keeping. It is indeed sacred space to be used and cherished.
Our prayer chain shares your prayer requests to those who cannot gather with us there; but I think it is also helpful for our church family to know that there is a time and place where prayer partners intentionally gather to talk to God on behalf of our church. It is a confidential time. And it is a safe sacred place.
I am inviting staff, church leaders, and church followers to join me in exploring other ways in which we can utilize our chapel - whether for private devotion or for alternate styles of worship. It seems appropriate to me that our Baptist sisters and brothers are birthing a new congregation in our chapel space, even as we will be rebirthing our congregation in that same chapel space.
My hope and prayer is that it will become the very place to which strangers gather to feel at home with God, to which our members gather to discover God's expanding family, and in which God nurtures and blesses all who seek him there.
With love and praise,
~David
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