Organized Chaos

Nope, not talking about my desk, because right now there is no organization at all. I am talking about VBS, in fact I'm talking about the church. As I write this article, we are smack dab in the middle of our excellent VBS Program—Panda-mania. Thank you Jennifer Manuel, and all our many, many volunteers. But what you could observe from the outside, are these children being herded around the premises as they are guided from crafts to snacks, to video to story time to outside play time and around. If you didn't know better, or maybe if you knew all too well, it certainly looks like organized chaos. But why not, because I suspect that is often what church looks like, too.

During one of my recent sermons, I shared from a book entitled “Going Home” by Robert Raines, about the nature of the authentic church. “It's not a neat, tidy, sober congregation, seated heatedly side by side all facing forward, but the church is a milling around, shoving, laughing, loving crowd- a combination of Moses and the whining mob- all making our way through the wilderness, but all headed toward the promised land.” Amen, brother Amen! Organized chaos!

Here at Covenant, we can observe some folks headed toward worship, some headed toward Sunday School, some toward service in the music, children, youth, and other service areas, some gearing up for Pumpkin Patch, others coming to exercise or weight loss programs, while others come to fellowship. Some of us are confident, others of us are doubtful. Some of us are wandering, others of us are wondering. But, together we are all headed in the direction of the promised land.

My function as your pastor is to help you along the journey. I can't make you nor would I want to. All I ask is that you ask the Lord where and what you should be doing for His Kingdom. We have lots of opportunities for you to jump right in as a disciple of Jesus Christ. I love worship, but you miss so much of the riches of the church, if that is all you do. Some of you who get this newsletter, need to evaluate if you are even doing that enough to reflect your Love of God.

We are on the move here at Covenant. It is my prayer, soon, and very soon, we will be unveiling the details of our building program here and asking people to step up and help us make that dream come true. We will be adding opportunities for you to learn God's Word, to hear about God's desire for improving our marriage relationships, hearing about our need to put our financial house in order as a spiritual act of worship, and we will be adding opportunities for our church family to get healthier so we might better serve the Lord. You don't need to do them all, but surely you can find something to jump right in and add to our organized chaos around here.

See you each and every Sunday at our place of worship.