This past Sunday at church I was given the opportunity to share our story of how Jeff and I "happened upon" Moran Park. Pretty cool. So now I think it's time to tell you that story and fill you in on Moran Park. First, some Moran Park (MP) details. MP is a satellite campus of a bigger church called Ridge Point Community Church. MP was created by a group of people that wanted to serve the neighborhood specific to MP. They put it like this "Moran Park is a neighborhood church serving the area surrounding the Moran Park campus. Moran Park is committed to fixing what’s broken in every aspect of life by reaching lost people and leading them to full life by thinking, loving, serving and living like Jesus."
Mid week 8 weeks ago, Jeff asked if I wanted to try another church this weekend. I said sure. He suggested one just down the street, he didn't know the name. I knew what he was talking about. Rachel -"It has a green sign, right?" Jeff-"Yeah, and free coffee at 9:30!" The free coffee clinched it. That weekend we attended Moran Park for the first time. We were welcomed from the get go. A really nice guy named Charlie introduced himself and just started chatting with us. Learning that we were new to Holland, we invited us to hang out with his small group that night. Wow, thanks. So at 6:00 we met in the park next to the church. There we met Charlie's wife, Susanne, and about 4 other couples. They were so nice, and normal. Not church scary. We all took turns asking questions. Jeff and I asked about the church and what brought these couples to MP. They asked about our life in Mt Pleasant (the other MP) and what brought us to Holland. We enjoyed ourselves and left with an open invitation to the small group and to a potluck at Charlie and Susanne's in 2 weeks. Needless to say, we returned to Moran Park the next Sunday.
We were away for 2 Sundays, but returned for our 3rd time on the 8th of August (my 33rd birthday). This was such a neat day. For this story I will default to Britton's blog. Oh, Britton is the pastor at Moran Park.
prayer at moran park
My time as the pastor at Moran Park continues to be a learning experience. God is doing some incredible things. The other week I was getting ready Sunday morning to preach. I was feeling a lot of distraction and couldn't get my thoughts together. When the service started and we began singing, I kept feeling this sense of distraction among the people there. I wrote it off and kept singing.
When I got up and began to preach I felt an even stronger sense that something was going on and prayed to myself as I started talking. All of a sudden the mic cut out. I quickly changed mics and continued talking for another minute or two. Then the mic cut out again. It was like God was trying to get my attention calmly and then had to cut out the mics twice becuase I wasn't getting it. I shared that I didn't think I was supposed to be preaching that morning. My first thought was, "Oh crap, but now what are we going to do?" I explained to the faith community that I was going to pray and then invited anyone who wanted to come up front to pray to do so in the microphone.
As I was praying, I thought there was no way anyone would come up front and actually pray in front of everyone else. To my suprise, when I finished praying there were 5 people in line to pray. The doubts in my mind kept coming as I thought, "Oh no, I just gave an open mic to random people that i don't even know." Despite my fears, the prayers were beautiful. Powerful, raw prayers of a variety of struggles and praise came from the mouths of those who shared. When the line got down to one or two people, a few more individuals would get up to pray. This went on for 45 minutes. If I would have waited, it probably could have continued all afternoon.
I was going to be teaching on faith - how we are to go to God for more faith as he is the one who gives it, but that was demonstrated by those who came up to pray. I was going to talk about how we need to be open and honest with our doubts and struggles so we can encourage one another towards deeper faith, but that was demonstrated too.
God showed up in a powerful way and demonstrated what I was going to be teaching on. It was unbelievable. We have new people at Moran Park every week so I made a comment at the end, "If you are new to Moran Park, I'm not sure what to tell you. I guess you never know what to expect here or how God will work." www.brittonsmith.blogspot.com
Jeff and I are a part of this. Can you believe it? How grateful and amazed I am that we get to be in this place with these people. Thank you, God! Thank you so much for this amazing gift!
I am thrilled to be with people who want to follow Jesus and who want to love his people. Who recognize that people are real with real issues that need to be addressed. To be in a place where we listen to God and obey. Dang. This is awesome.
I was one of the people who stood in line to pray that morning. I couldn't help it. I had been having such a terrible time with life. Sad and lonely and anxious and discouraged. I could use some prayer. If God was trying to do something, which I believe He was, I wanted to be a part of it.
After the service Charlie and Susanne asked if they could come to our house and pray over/for it. I broke into tears, "that would be amazing". So Charlie and Susanne followed us home and the 4 of us prayed and asked God to fill our home with all of Himself. Thank you Charlie and Susanne.
Phew, that's a lot, I know. If you made it through, thank you. These recent happenings are very important to me and I want you to know about them. Rachel
p.s. After Charlie and Susanne left our house, Jeff looked at me and said "So, I think we've found a church". Yes we have :)
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