Renewing the body of Christ…
Three thousand, one hundred, eighty four pounds of food were collected by mail carrierson Saturday, May 9th, for Operation Food Basket.
We are deeply grateful for the mail carriers for taking the time to get out of their trucks, and/or bend over many times to retrieve the food people left by their mailboxes.
We are grateful for the City of Paris, providing a lift truck to haul the food from the post office to OFB.
We are grateful for the volunteers who came to sort and shelve the food on a Saturday afternoon.
On a separate matter: We are witnessing “church renewal” take place through the creation of a number of interest groups which are emerging around the interests people already have.
The knitting group has about 12 women interested. The gleaning group, which will take surplus food from Robert and Cheryl Stone’s farm and distribute it to senior adults, has five people interested. The yoga group had over 20 people express initial interest and about 12 show up each week for centering and stretching exercises.
These are just examples of how we are using personal interest groups to extend of the love of Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit to all people.
Each group will have a “shepherd”, which will be a person who just listens and pays attention to the rhythms and interests of the group. They will respond to personal needs, prayer concerns and other issues that may come up.
But mostly they will knit, eat, stretch, pick or whatever.
If you have an interest around which you would like to build Christian community and activity, let me know and we will work with you to create a fellowship of believers doing what all of you enjoy.
It is called renewing the body of Christ one group at a time.
Moving to the deeper places,
Jeff