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MINNESOTA, LOS ANGELES AND HOME
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 30
Sorry about the silence. We arrived in Minnesota on Friday and have had limited opportunity to get text into the website. Right now we are sitting around in Los Angeles waiting for midnight to come when our trusty V Australia will have its GPS coordinates set on Sydney Australia and we are hoping to sleep for as much of the fourteen hour journey as possible.
MINNESOTA
This was our twelfth state. Wow. When we talk to local people about the fact that we have driven from North Carolina to Minneapolis they have trouble believing us. The car rental guy was a bit amazed at the start and wondered why we wouldn't be catching a plane. But this journey has been very informative, reflective and enjoyable for us.
As I referred to in the title of this blog, we have had an amazing opportunity to sit in someone else's puddle. That is, we have had the opportunity of being somewhere where we weren't known, where we had no primary responsiblity (but of course we always will have secondary responsiblity). By that I am referring to the fact that it is a long time since I have sat somewhere where I didn't feel somehow a primary sense of responsibility. It probably was when I was in Africa. When you are in your own place you are always thinking primary - what should I be doing to carry the purposes of God and sow the seeds that will reap a worthy harvest. When we are here we are always thinking about how we can support someone else in their primary responsibility. Believe me, there is cause for concern here in this nation. We have become so starkly aware that this great nation no longer has answers. It is amazing to see how they passionately cling to something that may have made them great in a past time, but no longer has relevance, righteousness or power. It is the clinging onto yesterday's reputation.
We have been with people here who know this. The leaders we have been hanging around are not those who would have an idea that because it is America it will be good and will work.
In Minnesota it was the same. We were staying with a couple of friends we have known for more than thirty years and had not seen for more than twenty. They were able to give us a perspective on the nation that we would probably not have had unless we were with people like them. Too much to talk about here, but we will get to that in the future. It is amazing to see "Empire America" (Rob Holmes' phrase) crumbling from the inside. It's like reading about the fall of Rome.
GREG BOYD and WOODLAND HILLS CHURCH
We spent Sunday morning at Woodland Hills. This was the real reason for coming to Minnesota. It was refreshing to see a large church that was committed to impacting the community through its people rather than setting up an "empire centre" and trying to attract people to it. It is a big church - about 5,000 members and they have three "seminar and worship" gatherings on the weekend that are designed to equip and serve the missionaries who are working in their community. Not everyone in the congregation is doing that, but that's where the momentum is.
It was simple and focused and purposeful.
MEETING WITH GREG BOYD
Wow this was a great time. It was amazing to me that we could sit with someone we had not met, and who was a world away from where we were in distance but to feel the same working of the Spirit. I will have much more to say about this meeting later. but I found it so encouraging. Not just reassuring in the sense of talking with someone who agreed with me, but to see someone else trying to forge a ministry focus into the community as we are trying to do. It was refreshing to talk to a bloke who may well be the senior minister of a mega church, but whose heart is much more focused on gathering a group of people together in a poor housing estate block and seeking to bring something from heaven to where they are.
My own hope about this meeting was to get some idea of who Greg is connected with and to see where his Holy Spirit organic connections led to. We were able to do that and I know that this will be an ongoing connection that will be truly international, broad and fruitful. It seems that there are a whole lot of people like us who know that the current shape of the church in the west will never make it to the end of God's purpose. It is clear that those people know what they want to do but don't really know who they belong to. God is setting up a whole range of connections much like the way the church in China has been connected = people connected to leaders who are connected to each other.
So we were grateful and felt fulfilled by what we did. Now we will be fulfilled by getting back home and getting on with it. Albeit with some great new connections to bring to what we are trying to do.
We love you
Brian and Nola
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