The ER team had one of our "Super Sundays" last night, reflecting on the year's highlights and discussing the things God has taught us and where he is leading us. Our Super Sundays are 3-4 hour training sessions which include intensive training and praying. Last night's meeting was refreshing and very encouraging. Everyone on the team was involved in discussing the vision and direction of Emmaus Road and the input was more than valuable.
Some interesting "tweaks" have been made to our ministry, but really nothing related to the philosophy which remains as it was from the start. The tweaks mostly involve verbage to better reflect, in our culture, what we are doing. For example, "life group" is a term that is phased out and is replaced with "house church." This may not resonate well with the Berean Fellowship, but we are not in a typical Berean Fellowship ministry. In Boulder, "house church" resonates and seems to be an acceptable phrase. We also now will be reflecting on our ministry with 3 "expressions". The expressions include House Churches, Gatherings and Launch Teams. House Churches will be exactly that...multiple churches meeting in homes across Boulder County. Now that Phase 1 is nearing completion for the original Emmaus Road launch team, we will begin dividing into multiple house churches, starting with two churches. Gatherings are our monthly or bi-monthly corporate worship gatherings for all the Emmaus Road community. Launch Teams are those families and individuals who believe God is calling them to uproot and move to Boulder to begin training for this kind of ministry, just as the original 6 families did this year. We are looking at recruiting for next year a new launch team to move to the area and start training (two families have already indicated this possible move, one from Florida and another from Denver). How exciting is that!
Doing life with our communities is still essential and really the heartbeat of our ministry. Our goal is not to "raise the flag" and hope people show up. Our goal is to reproduce ourselves into the lives of others, both unbelievers and believers alike. And, of course, this means getting dirty and doing the tough job of going to people in our community and meeting them where they are, which doesn't include a church building.
The longer we live here, the more convinced we are that ER is heading in the right direction and fulfilling what God has called us to do. It's amazing to hear all the stories from each family of how God is at work. I can't wait to see where we are in December 2007. Would you pray for us? We are a God dependent community and prayer is essential to the success of this ministry. Pray for wisdom, direction and most importantly the multiplication of the kingdom. Emmaus is not concerned about growth in our ministry near as much as growth in the kingdom. Thank you for supporting us this way!
One last thing, check out our newly launched website at www.emmausroadonline.org.
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