Where to Begin?

So I started this blog a couple months ago because I loved looking at other people's blogs. Also, I always have a lot of thoughts going around that I like to write down to process. But I'm a little nervous about putting my thoughts out for anyone to see! Maybe that's why its taken so long for me to actually post something up here...

Andy and I began reading on the state of the modern Church and what must change about it. several months ago. Andy's boss gave him The Present Future, by Reggie MacNeal, and Andy told me I had to read it too. We were so challenged and stirred up that we continued eating up books on the subject. Next it was Irresistible Revolution, by Shane Claiborne, and then Exiles, by Michael Frost. Andy is presently reading Everything Must Change, by Brian D. McLaren, and I am working on Neil Cole's Organic Church. It's difficult to decide which one to recommend most, because each one has worked to develop our understanding of the Church and our part in it a little further. God has been using these authors, our own time in His Word and talking to each other and others on the subjects to compel us to make changes. To seek a new direction. To seek His kingdom. We just aren't totally sure what that looks like in our lives yet.

I have felt a frustration for a while in feeling not needed. Feeling like there's a lot of people doing a lot of work, and not knowing how I fit in that. Sometimes that may be a self-centered feeling. But I'm starting to wonder, perhaps that is actually God tugging on me, indicating that maybe there's places, areas, where His people haven't spread yet. I don't know if you've noticed in the Bible, but God isn't big on His people clustering. When they do, He scatters them. Ever since the Tower of Babel...no, even before that at Creation, God has been commanding His people to reproduce. And I believe that command is more than physical, but spiritual as well. Where does God want us to go to show more people His love? Where is God working and doing something new? And where, specifically, is He working that He wants us to join in on? Jesus told His disciples to wake up and look around at the harvest that is so great, harvested by so few workers (John 4). That problem persists. God's people seem to work on one section of the field and forget about the rest.

So maybe God is pulling on me and Andy, telling us to spread out and harvest a little farther out...Maybe its time for us to get in on the spiritual reproduction process (um, I don't think we're quite ready for any other reproduction just yet!) Maybe there's kids to be helped that no one is yet helping. Maybe there's people to be made disciples that no one is discipling. Maybe this discontent in our hearts is God preparing us to go find those people. And maybe God is stirring the same restlessness in your heart too.