A Road Trip

Sharing in the Lewis Fellowship at Wesley Theological Seminary continues to enhance my pastoral life at Baldwin Community United Methodist Church. 

This trip consisted with many site visits to a variety of worship settings in the Kansas City area. Our first visit was to The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection. The Church of the Resurrection (www.cor.org) is the largest UM Church in The United States. Last year's Christmas Eve services at The Church of the Resurrection topped 22,500 in attendance! We met personally with Adam Hamilton, church founder for two hours. He spent time focusing on the birth of the church leading up to their current setting. Hamilton shared his thoughts on vision. As you can see in the picture, vision is a large part of the church's life. This vision statement is located in large print in their lobby area (the size of a mall!). 

When birthing the church and even today, Adam asked this of the people, "Why do people need Christ? Why do people need the church? Why do people need this church?" He stressed the importance of knowing the answers to these questions. Clergy and laity both need to know why we exist, what is our mission and what is the vision God has laid upon our hearts. We had an opportunity to spend one hour asking Adam questions relating to our personal ministries. 

Our second trip today took us to Jacob's Well (www.jacobswellchurch.org) Tim Keel met with us for approximately two hours. We asked questions and had an opportunity to listen to Tim explain the ten years of ministry there. Jacob's Well is an emergent church. An emergent church is meant to be a space that is honest and authentic to the context the church finds itself within the community. This church grew from a small handful to over 1100 attendees on Sunday.  

God is doing some great work among His people in the communities I witnessed on this trip. I also praise God that the Spirit is alive and moving through the community of faith at Baldwin Community UMC. We are blessed to be going through our purpose, mission and vision planning and I encourage each one of you to be faithfully praying for our church. We are in the midst of an exciting time.