Assembly begins

"Somebody make me laugh,
somebody make me cry.
Somebody tell me something my heart can't deny."
So go the lyrics to a love song by Hillary James that I believe carry what Christ does to us. He overcomes us with his unconditional love and we are beyond choice.
We do not chose him. He choses us.
Pastor Steve Bouman's keynote struck a strong note in my heart. We have lost our "evangelical muscle" as a church....for a bunch of reasons in my mind. But this Pr. Bouman tells us: we've lost the love song(s) that brought us to faith. So, I was moved by Pr. Bouman's call to "remember our first love!" Yes! It's not about us who are here. It's about the people who are not here! Mission! God is blessing and healing the world in Christ.....and our mission is simply this same mission....healing and blessing the world.....not the church!......with Christ.
Related: did you see and hear from all the folks walking back and forth on the dais this afternoon....what God is up to in and through the FB Synod! Healing and blessing the world!
Related: Pr. Livenson telling us in no uncertain terms how the love we share with Haiti and Eglise Lutherienne d'Haiti is the love of Christ and because of Christ we are not alone and we are one. That my friends, is the real deal!
Related: Together in Mission! After much work and rework and work and rework it looks like we have now something of substance into which we can all sink our teeth!
Identify, Invest, Provide, Expand, Give, Target! Provide, Invest, Support, Direct Resources, Fund! This will all work, and I believe it will, when we "remember our first love." Those words of the angel to the church of Ephesus (Revelation 3)call us to remember and respond!
Something really refreshing is happening....do you feel it? Do you sense it? What is God up to here with us in the Florida Bahamas Synod? What I sense is that after all the necessary attention we have given to the very controversial and divisive social issue of human sexuality, our church has made a decision (Churchwide Assembly last August)and now we forge on! This is not to say the August decisions are simply history or not open to molding or changing. This is to simply say it feels good to be focusing on reaching out and making disciples!
Enough for now.
Johan Bergh