Our Church

I wrote up the following after a request on the MOMYS board (Mothers of Many Young Siblings) to share about our churches. I though some of you might also be interested.

How would you describe your church?

Well we just planted a church, so it’s a little different than what most people might expect. We’re small, meet in homes and are just enjoying building one another up.

Music style?

MrPages and his guitar. We sing everything that comes to mind from classical to acapella to country to contemporary. Everyone is open to make requests.

Teaching style?

We read through the chapter or section we are studying (currently John). Each person who can read, reads a verse or two. We stop whenever it feels right and discuss. Usually a few adults have done some extra research over the week and will share their insights. It is really encouraging and refreshing and challenging. A few times we’ve watched a DVD or listened to a more formal sermon.

Size?

Just two families right now, but we’ve had a few others show some interest.

Church building or someone’s home?

We rotate between two homes - two weeks in one place and two weeks in another.

How long have you been there?

Six months meeting weekly on Sundays, but before that we met every three weeks for about six months on Saturdays trying to discern the will of the Holy Spirit.

Where did you go previous to this one? What was your reason for leaving?

We went to a larger urban church, but really felt the need to look at early church models and try to emulate them.

How often do you get together with people from church?

Every Sunday and usually one other time during the week. We also try to connect by phone or email throughout the week.

What time does your service start? End?

We try to arrive between 10 and 10:30 and start the morning with a potluck brunch together. Then we relax after the meal, clean up a bit, and let the kids run. Sometime in the early afternoon we all join together to sing, read scripture, discuss, pray and sing some more. Then we usually spend the rest of the afternoon doing something together. We’ve been for walks, played scrabble, had a family baseball game, gone to zoo, or just sat around and talked. (Yesterday the men caught a few zzz’s in the living room!) Then we scrounge something up for dinner, enjoy more fellowship, clean up some more, and then head for home, usually about 8pm.

Just yesterday I was thinking how peaceful my Sundays have been the last few months. No rushing around, no feeling tired and drained when we got home. Just several hours being together with our children and friends enjoying God’s presence and Sabbath rest. It’s been good.

That is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other’s faith, both yours and mine. (Romans 1:12)

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MrsPages and I consider ourselves students of church signs. You know the ones; they usually have some sort of pithy saying, or the date of the Bible Camp or perhaps some scripture on them in those big plastic removable letters.

We theorize that you can tell a lot about a church by what’s on the sign outside. The church we used to go to had scripture on it, a different verse every week. It was usually a statement about Christ, either prophetic or from the letters. We thought that was powerful and made an important statement.

We were at a different church discussing the pending purchase of a sign like this, and we suggested that scripture was the best thing to put on it. We were met with horrified looks and a clear statement that scripture would simply scare people away. We needed a witty saying. Like maybe “Seven days without prayer makes one weak.” Or maybe “Sign broken, come inside for message.” Or “Prayer is the ultimate wireless connection.” Or the classic “No God, no peace. Know God, know peace.” God’s public presence reduced to a crummy witticism. Sigh.

So, back to the point: We were driving to our friends’ house for church this morning when we passed this beauty. I had to stop and take a picture. I would have likely had to stop even if I didn’t take a picture, because I was hyperventilating.

Now, in a non-Christian setting, I can maybe see the point of this saying. Faults make character. Imperfections make one interesting. Arguable, but a valid opinion.

But in a Christian setting? I’m blown away on two different levels:

First off, Christ himself is faultless.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)

If Christ is faultless and faultless people are lifeless… connect the dots to read the secret message this sign is presenting.

Secondly, even if we make the assumption that the sign can’t be referring to God, it’s still saying something contrary to scripture. And not just a passage or two. The themes of our becoming righteous, pure and faultless through faith, and of Christ presenting us as blameless and faultless before God are listed many times throughout the Bible. I would go so far as to call them cornerstones of our belief.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy… (Jude 1:24)

…yet now he has brought you back as his friends. He has done this through his death on the cross in his own human body. As a result, he has brought you into the very presence of God, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. (Colossians 1:22)

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe. Philippians 2:14-15)

Our God became a faultless man. We are instructed to become faultless. Christ will present us a faultless people before God. But apparently we will be completely lifeless. A church sign said so.

I found this great site called wordle.net that lets you enter any amount of text and it will create a “tag cloud” for your text.

I copied the entire text of the WonderfulWorship discussions and let Wordle go to work. I ended up removing a lot of extraneous words like user names, “link” “post” and things that weren’t relevant to the topic. I also cut the number of instances of “worship” and “God” in half, because those two words were so large you couldn’t read any of the others.

I love looking at the words that were present enough times to make the list. Things like “think”, “feel”, “kneel”, “submission”,”experience”.

Take a look, and try it yourself. Link to any creations you make. Here’s my del.icio.us tag cloud.

I think I’ve blogged about this before,but every time the K9 Blocked Page page comes up, I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s doing it’s job, and it’s doing it well.

K9 Web Protection from Blue Coat Systems is a free Internet filtering system.

A few years ago, before we had K9, the LittlePages opened an E-card from a friend that took them to the American Girl site. I let them poke around the site while I prepared dinner in the kitchen. (The computer is temporarily living at the kitchen door. We have been temporarily without baseboards for ten years. Sometimes it’s the small delusions that keep me going!))

Suddenly I heard one of the LittlePages say”Let’s go to the American Boys site”. They typed in a web address similar to the American Girls site and then I heard a comment about how it was sure taking a long time to load (the computer savviness of my children sometimes concerns me) Somehow, my dinner-drenched brain kicked into action and I went flying across the room screaming, “NO! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!”

In fear, my little ones slammed off the monitor button and scattered. I hit the reset button on the computer and rebooted. I checked the web address they had typed here. It told me that someone had rated the site as p0rnography. I’m so thankful that the Holy Spirit protected us. I’m so thankful that those images never loaded. And now I knew we needed some internet filtration.

I tried all the paid ones out there. When some of them were installed, they wouldn’t let me go to their competitor’s sites! Some of them were easy to break. Some of them were just too expensive.

Then I stumbled upon K9.

K9 offers an impressive, fully-customizable array of blocking categories. You can set them from high to none, or customize which categories or sites you want blocked. It will email usage reports and alerts, if you wish. It has a three-strikes-and-you’re-out option. It also allows custom overrides for blocked categories, either permanently or temporarily. It will monitor Peer2Peer and Instant Messaging. It can automatically set all online searches to a safe mode. You can limit time spent on the internet and prevent phishing. It maintains both a comprehensive list of categorized sites as well a real-time dynamic rating system for uncategorized sites.

Pheww. There’s probably more that I’m still not aware of, but for now I think I’m set.

K9 does not monitor email at all, but we solved that by having a single log-in on our computer. Nobody has their own desktop. We all share one desktop. Which means we all share the same email program. We all have our own email addresses, but we all use the same email program to look at them. That means I can read my children’s mail. And my children can read mine. Mutual accountability. Mutual respect.

None of us uses online chat or instant messaging. None of us maintains any social networking accounts, like Facebook (I hate being trendy!) I want my children to value fellowship and accountability, which I don’t think happens online. Many may disagree with me, but I’m not sure that you can really get to know someone online. You can’t be true friends with someone you have never met. You are merely acquaintances, if that. But I digress into another post.

Please be careful about what little eyes in your home see. Get K9. It’s free. It works.

Today we shoveled and raked and leveled 7 yards of soil.

The yard looks great.

The children need showers.

We can’t move.

Midnight.

The sound of the pet rabbit scuffling in his kitchen cage.

The sound of rattling in the kitchen cutlery drawer.

The sound of a child peeing on the kitchen floor.

MrPages: What are you doing?

Sleepwalking child who has never sleepwalked before: Going to the bathroom!

The sound of two parents giggling uncontrollably in the dark.

Never a dull moment in the home of the Pages!

“Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.” - Edward R. Murrow

MrsPages just emailed me a link to this optical illusion page.

I so want that top image as my windows XP desktop.