Just been Percolatin'

This is my month to listen to God speak to me. I belong to an incredibly tiny church - we have one building which houses the sanctuary - and our total population is 29 of which we are lucky to get ten people in church every Sunday. As such, we cannot afford a full-time pastor to come tend to this radical group of sheep. So, we have created a three-person revolving door of elders who preach to the congregation.

We used to be a huge church with population exceeding 400 people - so much so that our former building could not hold all the people and so we had a spin-off and sponsored the new church in town. We accomplished this function way back in the 70's - like over fifty years ago- Wow! what a decision, most of the movers and shakers took off to the new church whereupon they have grown and exceeded our original count.

Former church? Yeah, it is one of those things that typically happens in the rubber-band theory of the expansion of the universe that says that it will expand out to is furthest reaches and then snap back to its theoretical spoonful of mass and matter. Whoa!! TMI? Let me start again: Rubber-band theory might be a little too hyperbolic, a little too sarcastic, maybe. Over 50 years ago, we spun off half of our church population to the new church in town and they began to grow in size and popularity and our downtown church began to decline. We had a viable population of 150 even as late as when I joined the church in 1993. But then over the next 20 years, there were some factions within the church that had begun to show their stripes and colors and forces. It was the beginning of the end. It was not as evident as schism but sometimes people can find ways to just quit when things don't go the way they want them to and that is what happened to that wonderful church. People just quit going.

By 2011, the preacher had departed to greener pastures, and we were left with a dwindling congregation and too much property and too little income to manage it. So we had to sell the church and the congregation that remained CHOSE to continue as a congregation but in a smaller town, in a smaller church building, as we navigated the waters of the "where-does-God-want-us-to-go." concept.

We opened our doors to our new church building in the latter half of 2013 and by Christmas we had lost half of our congregation who moved back to the spin-off church. We still had a loving congregation but the new location was also not enough to sustain us. Had it not been for a member who left us a sizeable donation in her will, then we would have closed long ago and scattered our sheep to the rest of the churches.

So here we sit with three elders performing half the workload of a full-time preacher One year ago, we began preaching once every three weeks and in mid-February this year, we changed the rotation to one elder per month. May is my month. This Is why I get to listen to God speaking to me about the message He wants me to deliver to the congregation.

Well, if I haven't bored you to tears yet, I tip my hat to you. I am going to close here and start working on the scripture from the Gospel of John 14:1-14 whereupon the focus of the scripture is that Jesus is the Way to the Father. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

My prayers are with you, may your day be blessed with everything that God offers you for having a rich and fulfilling life in this chaotic world.

p.s. If you have any questions, please ask and I will meditate upon your answer. You may accomplish this on the website by submitting your information on the form. Your information goes nowhere else. It is strictly between you and me.

Have a great day and remember that Everyone Goes To Heaven.