One year and counting…

Watching Hope Presbyterian Church grow over her first year has been filled with joy, frustrations, gratitude, and wonder. Some days take imagination to see what she could be; others require a full speed sprint to keep up with what she is becoming on her own.

Hope enters the fall continuing to meet on Sunday evenings. Our Sunday gathering has grown from a folksy bible study into a service of worship- singing, preaching sacraments, confession, fellowship. God is among us! There is a constant steam of new faces joining us to meet with God and a good number continue returning.

We have many young families at Hope. Our children are learning the Bible and how to love God’s family with patience. The deepening friendships among the kids are integral to the church. One Sunday a little boy was struggling to be at church. In the middle of the lesson a little girls stopped the teacher and asked if the kids could pray for the boy. What an example to us! Our kids are serving Jesus and teaching the adults by loving one another.

A Glorious Mess…

The gospel grants us freedom to be honest with ourselves and to face reality. The gospel creates a community where this honesty can be entrusted to others for help and healing. However, the trst that nourishes honesty often takes time to grow roots. After a year of praying, gospel-trust is beginning to nourish true relationships. This is glorious. And this is messy.

In the recent weeks a steady stream of honest conversations, phone calls, and emails have begun flowing. People are speaking with one another about the reality of their faith, their sin, their hopes, and their hurts. Out people are trusting the church family with the mess that percolates below the polite Sunday evening ‘hello’s.’

Struggling marriages, the grief of death and chronic disease, stubborn spiritual apathy, financial failure, the loss of faith, the despair of loneliness, anger, infidelity, self-righteous grumbling… The list goes on.

Sin and brokenness move us toward Jesus for rescue. As we come to Him for healing, we are bound to one another as instruments of grace and change. Pray that this glorious mess, the church, would grow in Portland.