In the movie The Matrix, there is a scene in which the main character, Neo, finds himself in a computer program with his mentor, Morpheus. The screen is absolutely white except for their two characters. All of the visual constructs that make up life are taken away from them for them to rebuild. There is no up or down, left or right, there are no corners to determine the horizon or any sort of orientation. It is a blank slate.
I engaged in an exercise like that with the Dawnings team this week. We imagined taking away all of the possessions of the church: the Daytona campus, the camp and buildings, we imagined being in an empty space, and asked the question, “What holds Central Baptist Church together?” What makes us lump ourselves together with the rest of the people of Central Baptist Church? This is an exercise worth doing.
I would imagine that for most of us, the first answer would be relationships: people who have walked us through the struggles of life, and who have stood by us in times of grief, or sickness, or tragedy. For others, it might be a sense that the way God is talked about and thought about at Central holds us together. We have a very open view, if not always in practice (we are human, after all), of God’s love as a church. There might be many other reasons that you might name as to why we are held together, and some might be saying that you have no idea what holds us together, so why are we even trying.
For me, the greatest of all the reasons we are held together is that God is in the midst of our church. God has called our unique (and boy, are we unique) collection of people together, not because God is crazy (although there are times we might think he is), but because God believes that we can be and do great things for our community; things that other churches are not called to do. This summer has been difficult for Central because of the many different open ends that we are working through; enough open ends to make one wonder how we will survive. But open ends are not always about gloom and doom; they are also opportunities for God’s power and grace to shine through in magnificent ways.
But such a work from God will only happen if we let go of the stuff we are holding onto, and let God do God’s work in us. My prayer is that as we deal with significant decisions in the next couple of weeks, that we will keep our eyes on God with open eyes.
Blessings, Sonny