First Sunday

Yesterday we met for the first time in our new space in the small gym at the Norwood Child and Family Resource Centre. After some minor locking and key issues we got in and began assimilating ourselves to our new surroundings, figuring out what we forgot, what we need to bring for next time, what we need to do to make it a little more user friendly for us and the people around us.
So why were we here? Why are we now meeting in public? Why are we going to put a sign out front to tell people who we are and where we are? Well the short answer to those questions is that we don’t fit in a living room any more, and we don’t see anyone buying a larger house anytime soon, so here we are.
But there is more than that. We’ve always believed that we were called to something bigger than our living rooms, that the message we carry is bigger than the numbers of the messengers who carry it, and that the message we carry actually matters. It changes us. It changes us as individuals. It changes our relationships with other people. It changes our networks and communities.
So as we go forward into the answered prayer that is this bigger public location, our message doesn’t change. The passage God gave us from 1 Samuel 22 is still our DNA
David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him. And he became captain over them. And there were with him about four hundred men.
David has been rejected by Saul and Saul’s kingdom of God’s people. He doesn’t fit in the Kingdoms of the world around him, so he ends up alone in the wilderness. And his family comes, and then others come, and he finds himself surrounded by all who find the Kingdoms of the world aren’t working for. And what they find in short order is that God has called this band of losers and misfits to the wilderness to make mighty people of them who protect and serve the people around them and change the course of history. We believe that we’re in the same boat. The we don’t fit in a lot of places and we’re scared and we’re in debt and we’re bitter in soul but in this wilderness we meet Jesus who changes everything about how we see him and ourselves and the world around us. We become part of a family worth belong to, a family that we can be honest with and requires us to be honest with ourselves, and we do things and perform acts that change us and the world around us for the better.
And this is what we did when we fit in a living room. And this is what we’re going to do now. And this is what we’re going to keep doing, because we believe like God told Paul about Corinth that he already has many people in this city. We have to different things around it, but the core of who God is calling Bridgepointe to be is the same.
Sunday @ Norwood Centre 9516 – 114 Avenue
Continental breakfast @ 9:30, Words and Music @ 10:30