All Things New
And He who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also He said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” - Revelation 21:5
What a statement! In this world of sin, brokenness and death, my soul longs for this Revelation promise to be fulfilled. Maybe your heart yearns for this, too. However, while waiting for this ultimate fulfillment, we often find we don’t have to wait long to see God bring change and new things into our lives.
As I write this blog, God is bringing change and new things to Seed. It is a beautiful story about how God orchestrates the circumstances and events of this world. This week, we begin the process of formally moving forward to merge Seed church into Crossway Fellowship. I wish I could tell you all the details which point out God’s clear direction and provision. But this is a blog and not a novel, so I’ll simply keep to the highlights. Kristen and I started feeling a call to move to Arkansas to be a greater support to our family in late November of 2021. So, we began to pray. At the same time, Crossway Fellowship was led to sell their building and trust the Lord for a new home for their church. They began to pray. Then, God brought us together through a series of conversations stemming from the need for Crossway to have a temporary place to meet. We discovered that we are two very similar congregations with complementary things to offer to the need of the other: First, Seed has land and a building and Crossway has a faithful and healthy leadership and staff. Moreover, both churches contain wonderful followers of Jesus which both churches need. So we both began to pray for the Lord’s confirmation to what we perceived as God’s wonderful timing to make something new.
The leadership of Crossway Fellowship, Seed’s provisional elders, our regional director of NAB and myself discerned this union of churches to be a blessing from God which strengthens both congregations, and which reestablishes a thriving church that will remain on Cypress Way in Lynnwood, Washington for many years to come.
Does this merge come with sadness? Yes it does. All change brings some level of sadness, uncomfortableness, or uncertainty. Seed church will change and fully live into its’ mission of dying to live. The name and identity of Seed church will soon be enfolded into the life and identity of Crossway Fellowship. Leadership will change and Bart and Kristen will prepare to depart and begin ministry somewhere in Arkansas. I have only begun to wrap my heart around these hard realities and feel the sadness. However and most importantly, I am overwhelmed by a powerful comfort from the Holy Spirit assuring me that the name of Jesus will be glorified in His church, and that new life will spring up as the Gospel goes out.
I quoted Herbert Schlossberg in a recent sermon. He said, ”The kingdom of God advances from triumph to triumph, every last one of them cleverly disguised as a disaster.” We will feel loss in this change and perhaps perceive a failure but the truth is that God is triumphant in all He endeavors. I look forward to experiencing all that God will do as he leads us forward!