Ninety-degree heat will do some pretty wild things.
It will fry an egg on the hood of your car (maybe...an internet search proved inconclusive...thinking of running a test on my car this week).
It will draw a river of sweat from you, take you back to a middle school locker with the smells it will produce, and put you into extreme dehydration.
It will make you yearn for the barren snowy winter wastelands of the midwest in July.
It may, in-fact, fry your brain.
One of the other things it should do is ruin a gathering.
Sunday morning, Hopesprings in Bangor gathers at 301 Market St. for a time celebrating who God is and what He is doing in our lives. We get together to get to know each other better, dive into the Scripture together, and invite others into the story that God is telling in and through this community of faith. It is a friendly atmosphere, and has a vibe of belonging and welcome that I have not often experienced. We try to talk about things in a way devoid of churched language, and we have a pretty diverse group of people that get together to take their next step towards God and each other. There are a lot of cool things going on there. But there is something very uncool going on there right now.
It is July.
There is no form of air-conditioning except an army of fans deployed throughout the space and whose impact is similar to taking an oscillating fan to the Sahara and expecting a cool breeze.
It was 92 degrees yesterday. Put people in the space and it feels like 120 (hyberbole much?)
The building is basically designed as a furnace and often it will feel hotter inside than outside the building.
Don't worry, this is not a vent-session. (Sorry...had to do it.) The bottom line is this: we should not be able to have people come and hang out at this building in July.
But they do.
They come and keep coming.
They sing and sweat and engage with a message centered on the story of God.
They bring their kids. They even invite other people to come.
And they stay after to connect and share their lives with each other.
The building at 301 Market St. was a beautiful gift to Hopesprings. It has come withsome many challenges (little parking...no air conditioning...a space that has aged and has needed updating and repair), but it is a HUGE blessing, and it is right in the middle of the community God has called Hopesprings to minister to in Bangor.
My heat-addled brain was thinking about something yesterday. We have had so many challenges to the identity, mission and vision of Hopesprings, but all those challenges are nothing compared to God at-work in the lives of people. If you are doing the thing you are meant to do, if you are doing the thing you are called to do, (in our case) if you are loving and serving people, creating a culture where people can experience the grace of God and find their place in His story, the temperature of the building doesn't ultimately matter.
The mission of God is not about buildings. It cannot be contained by a clever strategy. It will not be derailed by details.
This is not to say the heat didn't affect us: IT DID.
This is not to say we don't try to address the heat: WE DO.
Yet we stay faithful to our mission to love God and love people no matter how hot it may be in July on a Sunday morning. In the heat, in the struggle, we see they are nothing when God is working in a people.
Siouxland will bring its own host of challenges...and there will be barrier after barrier and challenge after challenge in staying faithful to our mission there to love the city, to serve its people, and to demonstrate the good news of Jesus in our actions and in our words. Yet none of those things can defeat God in search of people, and a community of faith that is on a mission of rescue in a city.
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