Hey David,
Lets go dude... China! hahha. I've been to Balboa Park for cold turkey EV with the Navs. There was a lady.. we don't know her name but she trashed us... we call her burger lady because she was eating a burger. About your comment about us being a church. Of course we are a church in a certain sense. Yet in other senses I don't feel like we are a church. Perhaps this is my own feeling, but we have different ministries. You are caring about a lot of people I don't know. I am caring for a different set of people. We aren't deeply involved in each other's lives. We might get to see each other once a week, and sometimes not that much, but the new testament church saw each other every day. Yes we are a church in one sense, but in another I feel like we are definitely too far apart. We seem to have different visions and different callings which is fine. But I don't think our visions and callings are shared. They aren't coming together. There isn't the intimacy. If you were to be hurting on a particular day, there would be no way I could find out. You would have to tell me. Unfortunately we don't see each other often enough to go through every day struggles with each other. Perhaps a church in the wider sense does not need to do that, but the church in the traditional sense of the word definitely does have a sense of sharing struggles. I know we do share big struggles with each other, but not every day struggles. Sometimes we probably feel to far away to share some struggles even though we live in the same city. And its not just about sharing struggles, I think its also about helping each other out with those struggles. We can pray for each other, and thats the most we can probably do. If Sam were having problems with a guy bugging her, I couldn't go up to the guy and tell him to stand down. I couldn't because I don't know most of the people she interacts with. It is a matter of involvement. According to that definition of church, I think also, many local churches are not churches. And THAT is why we wanted to start a church.