Thoughts for the FenFam as we head into 2011

To my Fenway Church Family (#fenfam on twitter),

I love the start of a new season.  I think God wired me that way.  I love the anticipation of Opening Day, the preparation for the start of new YMCA basketball league season where everyone starts at 0-0 and no matter how bad your teams was last year you have a shot at the championship this year. 

I love looking at a blank canvass and dreaming about what could be painted on it (although I have no skill in painting - I can DREAM up a killer picture in my mind).

And, I love church planting because God takes a small group of messed up people and creates something with their shared lives that impacts not only the world but eternity.  He takes our past seasons and our unknown futures, and He creates a masterpiece.

So as we begin 2011, I am excited.  It's a new year, and many people are considering changes that they want to make to their lives.  Some of us have had time to relax and reflect over Christmas. As I did yesterday I was driving back from western Pennsylvania... 

I was considering the New Year, what ideas needed to come through in the preaching series, ways our church could grow and work together more this year... and God directed my thoughts from all my plans, desires, and dreams to past New Year's Eves and how every year for the last 10+ years when I've looked back at the year that is ending and thought about the year that is begining I've had the same thought:
I wish I had prayed and shared my faith more last year.  I want to pray and share my faith more this year.

To me if you read the New Testament and you read what Jesus said and watch how he and his disciples lived, if you forget about church structures and strageties and leadership gatherings, if you step a side from the discussion of how the band sounded and how long the message went, if you just read the gospels and the book of Acts, you can't really escape this message that comes pulsating through.  Life is about knowing Jesus and loving others. 

The main way I get to know Jesus is through prayer.  Prayer the way Jesus taught it - closing the door to everything on the outside, being alone with him and his Word (the Bible), and opening up our hearts, minds, and mouths to him.  And prayer the way the disciples did it - gathering daily to seek God together and experiencing his power corporately.

The way I love others is by sharing Jesus with them.  Jesus said, "What does it gain a man if he gains the whole world but forfeits his soul." (Mark 8:36)  We can be people's best friends, we can be servants of the poor but if we enable others through our love and companionship to gain things here on earth but we never introduce them to Jesus we have done them a great disservice - they will forfeit their souls. 

So for another year in a row, I am setting my heart on Jesus.  I want to follow him to the place of prayer, and I want to share him with those God places around me.

In January at Fenway Church, we are going to be talking about Foundations - the practices of scripture reading, being filled with the Holy Spirit, working in team, and confessing our sin that root us in the our foundation stone, Jesus. What I've discovered is that these practices drive me to prayer and witness.  My prayer for our church this year is that as we discover Jesus together we would gain an even greater capacity to pray with him and love like him in 2011.

Grace and peace to all God's adopted kids at Fenway Church and to those who don't know they've been adopted yet may you come to know the Father this year...

David W.