Team Time!

On Wednesday evening we hosted a little gathering for Lauren (the Nieucommunities apprentice whom Megan is coaching.) As I looked around the room an astonishing thing happened. I noticed that our whole team was gathered together in one place at the same time! Now for a missions team this should not be that astonishing, especially one who's very name includes the word "community" however, for our team this has been a very hard thing to do for a very long time. There are busy schedules, children of all ages who require babysitting, or lots of child-proof space, and most importantly it requires that our team make the sacrifice necessary to facilitate us being together. Satan has played his hand well at proving this difficult, but recently, the proverbial penny has drooped, and for the first time in months, our team gathered together to just be with each other, and love on one of our own.

Call it conscience, (I don't believe in conscience) but just as we entered the Nieucommunity learning posture of Contending, the need for us to contend for each other was over whelming. Our attention has moved from fighting with each other, to fighting for each other, from striving for our voice as individuals, to uniting our voice as a community. We contended for one of our apprentices to fight the temptation of giving up and going home and have seen her pull through with the love and support of key people on our team. We taught about Spiritual Warfare, and then moved out of the classroom and on to our knees to engage and experience the very thing we talked about. It has been a very hard 7 weeks in this learning posture, but this Thursday evening we came to a close with a celebration dinner. We ate, we played, and we celebrated our victories. We also held close to our broken hearts, our very real losses, only we did so as a team!

The Contending posture has past, and we are now moving on to the posture of Imagining. We will be imagining what the new future holds for a broken but victorious, struggling yet stronger, Christ united team.

God contend for us, as we continue to contend for each other.