Wanna Hear Something Cool?

For the next 6 weeks the elders and ministers at Sugar Grove have suspended all of their normal meetings and are getting together weekly to do nothing but pray. However doing nothing but praying is anything but doing nothing.

I am now in my 23rd year of full time ministry and I have had the chance to watch church leadership after church leadership operate. At my first church I witnessed a bizarre exchange during an elders/ministers meeting in which the preacher proposed we take a leadership retreat to pray and the elder that held the most clout with the church asked why we would want to waste our time spending the weekend in prayer. (this church is, by the way, no longer in existence)At my second and third churches I witnessed time after time as decisions were made based not upon guidance by God or scripture but based upon what would make the most people happy.

Therefore as I was leaving my third church and looking for my fourth church I was very focused upon finding a church that sought to let God be a part of its decision making process. I did not realize this question would pose such a problem because I spent around two years interviewing with 45 different churches...

 It was in the first half of 2003 when I came across one church that was different. This church had a story that was characterized by God's intervention time after time and a leadership that was willing to allow God to play a role in its direction. This church was, and is, Sugar Grove.

Sometimes being led by God means you have to be willing to change course midstream. This happened in the late 90's with a large piece of land at hwy 59 and West Airport and it happened in 2005 when thousands of people from New Orleans ended up stranded in hotels all around the church building. In this same manner there were no plans for an extended amount of prayer by the elders and ministers until a couple of weeks ago when it suddenly became clear that it would be very good to stop and simply pray seeking God's guidance and direction for Sugar Grove.

Sugar Grove has its flaws but one element of Sugar Grove that I really, really like is that it will drop everything at a moment's notice and simply go to God asking for guidance and direction. Now that's cool!