I know many of you have interest in how things are going with our Gospel Community perspective so I wanted to give a quick update about that. First off, we had our first GC meeting about two weeks ago. There are four other families in our group (which is on the generally bigger side although in some churches they have around 50 people). We don't know any of these families particularly well although we have been friendly with most of them over the last year or so. The kids range in age from 5-20ish (some families do have even older kids than that), and they have all seemed to get along fine.
Our first meeting ended up having some neighbors join us which was great. The time was mostly centered around enjoying conversation with each other and getting to know everyone better. We had a small bit of gospel interaction which I think would have been stronger had our group been together longer and more intentional about our conversation. Going forward we hope to have some of the times be just with our group so we can grow together and others times be more evangelistic. It's a bit unique for our case right now as this group will likely break into multiple groups in the fall. We also don't have a specific mission focus, and it's possible we won't since we are only meeting for a couple months together.
We've also had two DNA (discipleship, nurture, and accountability) times. These times are just with the guys and just the girls. The guys have been having all-church DNA times these last few weeks so our group of guys hasn't met just on their own. The girls have met twice now, and they have helped us get to know each other better. In the future, we will work on sharing our testimony with the group. The hope is also to spend some time together in prayer and encourage one another in our struggles through applying scripture to situations and accountability in our weaknesses.
So, it's been a good, but somewhat slow, start (you know me...let's go, let's go). I'll try and update from time to time as we go forward.
Dave thought the camera magnified the colors a bit
this pic is probably the most accurate colorwise
