New Ventures

Tomorrow is Sunday and Joanie and I are fulfilling a commitment we made when we arrived in Pasadena. After 31 years of pastoring and being tied to a single church, we are exploring the church scene in our new hometown. Now, we have already made a commitment to attend a local church (it's the Pasadena Church of God with Revs. Kirwen and Madeline Manning) and we really enjoy the church. They are having a guest speaker tomorrow and Joanie and I are going to visit one of the local churches. We are either going to First Methodist or Lake Ave. Congregational. Why are we doing this and what was our commitment?
Back in August I attended a strategic planning conference in Nashville for the Church of God. At the conclusion of the conference, I was asked to make a commitment of some sort to live out one or more of the principles embraced at the conference. The commitment I made was to live out a more intentional life when it comes to both race and ecumenism. So, when we arrived in Pasadena, we made a commitment to be involved in a mult-ethnic church that is predominantly African-American. Tomorrow the ecumenist part kicks in as we take one Sunday a month to visit a congregation that is not Church of God. If this time in our lives is to be a time of stretching and broadening our horizons, then we must see how "others" are living and worshiping and going about serving God. That sense of knowing and seeing first-hand what God is doing in other fellowships is a gift that God is giving to us.
In my Ph.D. seminar I have become good friends with an African-American student who is Pentecostal. My professor is Anglo but has his ordination from an African-American Pentecostal Church and now attends a Japanese Methodist Church. My mentor is a Lutheran minister. On Tuesday's I have a study group with two ladies - one is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church and the other is pretty eclectic when it comes to her background (she did her Master's Degree at Oral Roberts and her Th.M. at Princeton - which is Presbyterian) and she is currently attending a Baptist Church here in Pasadena. As God grants us the chance to look beyond the scope of the Church of God Movement, I am blessed to see how He works in all kinds of places, with all kinds of people, in all kinds of ways. Maybe we all need to broaden our horizons a bit. After all, God is bigger than whatever we are facing or wherever we are headed. And that is good to know!