What an amazing Sunday! On the 26th of July we had our recap of Vacation Bible School. We had a full house with 75 plus kids leading us in song. We reviewed the lessons from the week and we celebrated God's presence in our lives.
Later that day something disconcerting happened. I was reading next to the wall in my office and as I went to get up I moved forward when a roller on my chair caught the light cord and the cord pulled my corner table on to the floor. On top of that table I had a special sculpted piece called "A Circle of Friends." My "Circle of Friends" shattered on the floor. Not one of the figures, there were five, kept their arms intact. The circle was broken. I was not happy.
Yet as I thought about it I realized this is a great illustration of what it means to be "Missional." You see as a church we tend to become so comfortable with our pew mates that we fail to embrace and sometimes even welcome new people that come to our service. We tend to lock arms with those people we have learned to love and forget that our arms and attention need to be open to new people. God places in our path new people that haven't heard the good news. In fact there are even times when God wants us to seek out new people with whom we can share the good news.
Sometimes we need to have our circle broken so we can look beyond our own little closed group. Sometimes we need to be open to the new people standing outside of our conclave. What made VBS Sunday so great is that we had so many new people here and hopefully most of us broke our usual circle of conversation and embraced some of those new people at church that day.
I am glad my circle was broken for it allows me to encounter new people that are interested in becoming part of the kingdom. Let us not close our eyes to the new opportunities God gives us. Let us open our arms to welcome new people for in the end it will only enlarge our circle of friends.
