missio

I’ve been really stuck on dissatisfaction lately as an instrumental role in spiritual growth. In fact, faith and hope are impossible without dissatisfaction. If you are completely satisfied with the way things are, then there is nothing to hope for. That is, hoping for something requires that you are not satisfied with the way things currently are. Because faith is the assurance of things hoped for (Hebrews 11), faith also requires dissatisfaction with the way things currently are.

Last night at Echo Group - Winterville, we experienced this first-hand. We were all disgusted with the way things are, including our own actions. We are groaning for the Kingdom to come. We are yearning for the King to show up fully. But while these things are already taking place, they have not yet come fully. It is this tension we live in, and it is in this tension we are frustrated and, ultimately, dissatisfied.

Dissatisfaction also drives us as a church. We are not content with the 30,000 people in Downtown Greenville not knowing Christ. We are not happy with our culture, which glorifies drunkenness, perversion, capitalism, and a brazen lack of care for the impoverished in our midst. We are not satisfied with Jesus not being famous in our area. We are not satisfied with how the local Church acts, both in relation to non-Christians, and in relation to Christians. We are not satisfied.

But we still have hope. We will keep the faith. Until one day….the tension is resolved.

And the King returns.

Here’s what Donald, our “pastor of incredible” thought about a font choice I made on a flyer:

You are so nit-picky…  I don’t care if it’s Arno or Times New Roman…  I don’t really care about the font… It’s just the one thing I would have chosen differently if the idea of that flyer flew into my head…  Don’t get so defensive - dang…  bite my head off for calling it Times New Roman instead of Arno… I’m sorry for disgracing Arno…  And your right, Tahoma is too overated… I just don’t like serif and Tahoma was the first sans-serif font that popped into my head, well besides Arial, but I hate Arial with a passion…  I guess I could have used Microsoft Sans-Serif, but that would probably make the flyers crash - one because they’re probably not compatible with Vista, and the other because it would be affiliated with Microsoft… It’s a good thing Microsoft didn’t go into aviation, their customers wouldn’t have the chance to give them a second try..

From the same guy who takes pictures like this:

On a serious note, this guy is incredibly gifted, and I have no idea where I’d be without him. He leads one of our Echo Groups and he keeps me straight, helping Miranda in a two-person job.