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Beyond Us, Beyond Here
Brian Mashburn
September 9, 2018
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Beyond Us, Beyond Here
It was epic: One of our volunteers brought this massive, 7-foot-tall, inflatable rubber ball for the youth group to use in a made up sport where you "scored" by hitting the wall behind the other team. At one point, four of the biggest students were behind the ball barreling past my teammates. I was the last hope, so I ran with all my might into the front end of that giant rubber ball to stop them in their tracks. That was my plan. But what actually happened was I went firmly into the rubber ball, where I was decisively stopped, and then forcefully thrown 10 feet before tumbling to the ground only to be run over by my friends and the ball.
It was a powerful lesson in INERTIA. You know that is? It is the resistance of an object to change its state of motion. This includes changes in direction, speed, or state of rest. In other words, things that are motionless, resist moving, and things that are moving, resist stopping or even changing direction, without intervention powerful enough to do so.
Three decades of intentional ministry has taught me that people have inertia, too, and churches even more so. Churches that are moving in one direction are hard to redirect, and those that are motionless are hard to move.
Our annual ReGroup, and our new marching orders from our leadership, both of which we introduce today, will expose our inertia. Our leaders are after two things: One from YOU and one from US. They want YOU to be committed to and actively involved in a small group, and they want US to move our ministry sites well beyond us, and well beyond here.
Today we look at God Himself, and how our call to move beyond us, and beyond here, is grounded in His very nature and identity as revealed in scripture. Will you allow your inertia to be altered by Him?