I have been waiting to write this post until I had had all the appropriate conversations. This past Thrusday night I had the final one.
After prayer, conversation, and an enormous amount of healing of old wounds, we have decided to make
New Hope Community Church our church home once again. Since leaving New Hope's congregation in July of 2004, we have been wandering a bit. Sure we found a resting place,
Cornerstone, and even became members of their community. However, for reasons all our own, we never connected with them past sunday morning. I'll empasize here that we really feel this is us. We live many miles from conrerstone (+40 each way), and have trouble connecting simply because of distance. In fact, we'll leave with nothing but positive memories of cornerstone's community.
In March, as chronicled in this blog, I became connected again with the small group I once lead at New Hope. Thanks Paul. Anyway, an enormous amount of healing occured during those meetings. In the aftermath of returning to that small group, we (as a family) decided to invest several saturday night worshiping at New Hope. It was amazing to feel the community and acceptance we felt when we walked back through their doors. Doors, which mind you, would have been shut in our face at many other congregations because of the way we left in '04. This coupled with the spiritual healing I was receiving at the small group meeting, made it clear to us that New Hope was our home.
My wife, Lynn, however, played a much larger role in this decision than I. I largely dcided for our family to leave on '04. Lynn connected immediately during our return visits to New Hope this spring. And it was Lynn who first suggested we make our home there again. She is far wiser than I.
I still have a commitment to Cornerstone for an ammout of time in which they will specify. That commitment is to play drums for their worship team. I will greatly miss playing with this group of musicians. By far, they are the best with which I have ever taken the stage.
