Live Sent

The missional church is a church that understands the Great Commission is not just for those who are called to cross-cultural ministry in a foreign country- but that every single one of us is a part of the cause- that we have all been "sent".   As Kyle Pewitt likes to say, "the missional church is one that lives sent". 

I have seen this mindset acted out in some awesome ways lately in our church family:

• Like the seven people who came to Christ last weekend because friends brought them to worship. 

• Like the host of  volunteers who help each week at the ROC clinic to care for the working poor in our community.

• Like the forty plus Middle Schoolers who spent their spring break caring for our homebound members.

• Like the testimony I heard a few weeks ago in Celebrate Recovery from a woman in our church who came to Christ in prison and told the group that when she walked down the dark cold corridor of concrete and steel afterward she felt more free than at any time in her life.  God is now using her to help set others free.

• Like the many children and pre-school workers who have stepped forward over the past few weeks to volunteer to help us during a transition in our Sunday morming minsitry and in our upcoming VBS. 

• Or like the terrific way God is using our teenagers.  Here is an email I got from one of our church members who was an organizer of the annual Memorial Marathan and wanted me to know how great our teenagers were at the event:

Thank you sooo much for all of your help with getting the teens out to the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon!  I know our Council Road kids are amazing, but it was still so much fun to watch them do their thing! They lined up along Classen, built human pyramids, cheered, hi-fived, and encouraged THOUSANDS of marathon runners yesterday.  They danced, they sang, they hopped a lot!!  They shivered, they jumped in and helped with different tasks in our area, they were a huge blessing!  I watched runners pull out their earbuds so they could hear our kids.  I even saw runners pull out their phones to take pictures of our group WHILE they were running the marathon.  Those teens were a huge inspiration!  We could physically see runners get their second wind as they came past us.  And the kids did all of this for a solid 4 hours!  Our teens are awesome!!!

One thing they did in particular at the end - there was an older, out of shape woman who was running all alone.   Everyone else had already run past.  She was very tired, but she was pushing through the pain just the same.  A large group of our kids ran down the road and joined her.  A huge smile came over her face when she saw the teens running to her.  They ran with her and encouraged her all the way to the checkpoint.  I was so proud to say that those were our Council Road Kids!!

Our area was a huge success because of each and every one of those kids that got involved.