For Sunday morning worship today, our church is visiting another church. The leadership in both churches have begun to know each other and we felt it to be a good thing for the people in both congregations to do the same. So we rented a bus and are driving 4 hours to church today, in Milwaukee, WI.
Why? Why would would we do such a thing? Here are some of my initial thoughts, answering this question:
We believe in a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And, we believe that a personal understanding of this relationship is significantly enhanced by our experience with His community of believers. In other words, my relationship with Him is not in isolation from His relationship with others like me (and not like me). It is rare to experience my relationship with God in a deep way without the involvement of others in my life, without my involvement in others lives.
So, it is important to see some of the extent of the community God has established and continues to create. This is true because my own version of community is limited by my own experience with it. I grow in my understanding of the nature of God's relationship to me and my relationship with Him when I encounter how and where His work is on-going outside of my set of experiences (in my community). We want to foster this understanding of the God we follow and serve. We want to see more of what He is up to. And, we want to participate more broadly in His work than in the ways we normally imagine.
We need both our time-and-space and a sense of things beyond it.
Visiting our believing friends in Milwaukee helps us imagine God more profoundly, it helps us see to a greater extent the work He is doing, and it helps us participate more fully in the time-and-space we do live in most days.
We are going to Milwaukee to embolden our hope in the great Hope-Giver and to consider how locking our arms across things like state-lines can deepen our mutual love - affection, sacrifice, and worship - for those around us...in Warsaw, in Milwaukee, and around the world.
