An Update and a Journey Through Acts

Over the last few months our pastors have been in deep prayer over our mission church in Laurel. Don't get me wrong--they are always in prayer over both our mission churches but for one of them they were trying to determine a new vision and strategy. The reasons are numerous.

But the end result is this...Calvary is now Emmanuel Baptist Church - Laurel Campus; a satellite of EBC in Billings.

The grand opening is set for October 4, 2009. Between now and then we've got a lot of work to do!

In the meantime, Steve put together a Laurel Campus Team Journal and as a church we are taking a 120-day journey through the book of Acts. Additionally he's preaching each week during this time on "The Church Afire". Sunday's sermon was pretty amazing.

I'm dual tracking the journey through Acts because I want to participate corporately in developing unity but I am also on a really big personal journey. It's intensely private right now but there's more than one reason I took a season off from teaching Bible study. Hopefully by the time I resume in the fall, God and I will have wrestled this thing out. I also hope I don't end up like Jacob and limp the rest of my life from my wrestling match with the Almighty.

So, in yesterday's reading I read the portion about what happened to Judas and two things jumped off the pages at me.

First, Judas shared in the ministry of Christ but clearly he was not one of them. Jesus knew this yet he treated him the same as the others. How as a church are we to treat someone we know is not one with us? I'm really mulling this over. There is such a probability of division if handled improperly. The other disciples treated him as one of them but they didn't know he wasn't. But if you know, what then?

Second, in verse 20 of chapter one it says "may another take his place of leadership." If God has something for us--either an individual church body, an individual, a family, or whatever--and we don't step up to do what he's' asked, he will appoint someone else to do it. And we'll miss out. That certainly happened to Judas. He stepped back, someone else stepped up, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I think this will be an exciting journey. I hope to share my personal track on this eventually but not now. It's too painful, too raw.