Posted in Church Life

It has been some time since I shared an update on our church situation.  I know there are several of you who have been praying and waiting with interest to know how things are going.  For those unaware, several months ago, my husband and I, along with a small number of other families, felt led of the Lord to start a small fellowship, a family-integrated, reformed church.  We knew from the start that it would be some time before it actually looked like the church we believe the Lord wants to raise up in our local area (reformed, family-integrated churches are very few and far between in the New England region), and so many of the things we chose to do (having “interim” elders for a short time, meeting in homes) were intended to be temporary.  We had such hope for what God would do with our little group.  We also had a sweet sense of unity and fellowship.  That being the case, it was very difficult to experience the time of testing that would come a few short months later.  When two of the families in our small group broke away within three months (for different reasons), it brought us such sadness.  What we had planned and expected did not come to pass.  In fact, being the eternal pessimist that I am, I came to believe for a time that all our hopes and vision for our family to be a part of a true covenant community had been completely dashed.  My husband held firm in his belief that God has a work He wants to do, and that He is going to allow us to be at least a small part of that.  I clung to my husband’s hope, as I had very little of my own left.

The Lord, in a very short time, showed Himself faithful yet again, and I now have a renewed hope, though it looks slightly different than it formerly did.  What God is doing is so much bigger and sweeter than what I thought He would.  You see, though our vision was clear, our timing was a little off.  God’s timing, on the other hand, is always perfect, if we would only trust Him to bring His will to pass when it is right for Him to do so.  We are now a part of a fellowship group made up of most of the families from the original group, along with several others whose friendship and fellowship have so greatly blessed our family in recent months.  We now meet regularly with a number of likeminded families who have the same passion for the Word of God, as well as a spirit of maturity and an appreciation for one another’s unique gifts and convictions.

So, even though what we have for a church situation now isn’t what I thought it would be when we embarked on this (somewhat scary) journey almost ten months ago, it is, in fact, better.  We have learned many extremely important and valuable lessons through the last few months.  The Lord has been refining us and stretching us in ways we would not have expected.  Some of the refining and stretching has been quite painful.  Perhaps that is why I have for so long put off sharing some of these things here.  I have now finally come to a point where I can honestly thank God for the difficulties, the hurts, the betrayals, the uncertainties.  I am beginning to come to an understanding of the fact that all these things have been blessings because they were for our benefit, to shape and mold us into what He wants us to be.

Our convictions haven’t wavered.  We believe wholeheartedly in the family-integrated church model.  We believe in the doctrines of the reformed faith.  We believe in the importance of matching our orthopraxy with our orthodoxy.  And we are passionately continuing to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, trusting in His covenant promises for them.  We are looking with great hope toward the future generations, those yet to be.  What we do now will have an impact on those who come after us, which is one of the main reasons we made the step of faith we did when it came to how we “do church”.

I am again at a point of excited anticipation for what God is doing in raising up a community of likeminded Believers for which our family to be a part.  He is so good and faithful, and I have seen Him answer so many prayers in the past, why would I have any reason to doubt what He will do in this?