Reflections From Sunday Evening

After early service today Cindy went to a wedding shower thing (sounds like a man/father doesn't it) while I met up with son Bobby and we went to Church of the Resurrection Downtown. A good experience to see what is taking place in the center of our city. The place was full and God was at work. Ministry takes place in context. One factor of context is demographics. COR downtown is obviously doing a great job in their context. I see other places doing very well in their context. Grand Avenue Temple does an amazing job of ministry in their context. Half of their congregation is homeless. Very good contextual ministry. Jacob's Well is a church meeting not far from KU Medical Center. This is the "emerging" church being attended by large numbers of young adults. They do a great job of ministry in their context. I think of the pastor's I worked with in July who are primarily serving small membership churches in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. No one talks about them like they do COR or Jacob's Well, but they are doing very significant ministry in small towns and rural settings. Context. It makes me think about our own church. (PWUMC) We are not an inner city church. We are not really a suburb but that it pretty close. We are certainly not a small rural church. One of our unique traits is that we have elements of a number of different type churches. We do great ministry where we are. Context. I will be taking some time over the next couple of weeks to re-charge as we gear up for the fall. There is a lot coming. I look forward to it. In the meantime I will probably be taking some time to think about current and future ministry in the context God has given. It's been a good day. I hope you've had a good day too. steve