This week's entry will be a departure from the ordinary.
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What's the new name?
The main thing that I wanted to write about was the name change for our English congregation's worship. Here is a little description of the new name: "Intersect."
James 1:22 states, "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."
The vision of Intersect is to be a Church Family that hears the Word of God and applies it together. Our Sunday Worship is a time in which our lives intersects with God's activity. As we worship, pray, fellowship, and learn, we want God to speak into our lives and to transform us from the inside out.
What's behind the name change?
Over the last year or so, God has really been blessing our congregation and church. We are "growing up" and beginning to form our own unique identity. In the past, I have balked at the idea of a name change because I didn't want to do it just for the sake of change. But it became clear that our church family was entering into a new stage of life in which a name change seemed appropriate.
The reality is that our church family has been striving to "intersect" with God's Word for a long time. There are stories upon stories of our members wrestling with the implications of God's Word upon their lives. As I have been saying as of late in many of my sermons, "It is all about application!" and to see our church members strive to do this has been really encouraging to me as a pastor. The names "Intersect" isn't really anything new... it is just a word that articulates what has been going on here in our Church Family for some time.
Personal Note:
When I first became a Christian, my youth pastor taught us how to do our Quiet Times. He first told us to get a journal and then he said that we should write in it every day. He told us to divide it into two major sections.
The first section was "Discovery." After reading the Bible, we were suppose to write down the various things that we learned from that day's reading. What new things stood out to you? What are particularly interesting or convicting about the text?
The second section was "Application." What does this mean in your life? What was I suppose to do with what I just learned? What was God wanting me to change?
He told us that that the section on "application" should always be bigger than the section on "discovery." It's good to learn new things about God but it far more important to spend the time to write down the applications for my life. It is far easier to find the things from God's Word that was interesting but than it is much harder to find specific applications for one's life. Ever since I started journaling, I have struggled to find enough honest things to write down in my "application" section so that it would as long as if not longer than the "discovery" section.
20 years later I am still struggling with this challenge and yet still dutifully press on in trying to apply what I read each and every day. The rhythm of my devotional life has not changed since I first started. Discover and apply. Discover and apply. Discover and apply.
This is what we are trying to do together at Intersect...
