Alright, so I am a huge church nerd.  I’ll admit it.  So when I went on vacation a couple weeks ago, I totally made sure to go to church.  Yep, in a strange city I made sure that I went to church.

The after message song was fantastic.  I couldn’t wait to figure out what the song was and who sang it.  It was going to be on repeat on my ipod until my ipod exploded because of awesomeness.

I found out the song was unreleased and was coming out May 10th.  I marked my calendar (seriously, I did).  And on the 10th, I confidently searched the itunes store for my song.  And it didn’t show.  And I tried the band name.  Nope.  I tried just a section of the song name.  And then I found the statement from the band that the release of their EP had been delayed with no new timetable.  And I was heart broken.  It was like the morning I woke up to find my mom putting a quarter under my pillow for my latest lost tooth.

However, thanks to the lovely folks at Relevant Magazine, you can listen to the song that has been on my mind for weeks.  Check it out:  http://www.relevantmagazine.com/sons-daughters/songs/25400-brokenness-aside

I am preaching this weekend at Thrive.  I am super excited and nervous.

And I have a problem, a really good problem, but a problem nevertheless.  (Yep, that is a real word)  I have too much to say.  I have all of these Bible stories and analogies to make that I could talk for hours.  But since I have about 25 minutes, here is some stuff that didn’t make the cut.

Do you realize how many times the people of Israel in the Old Testament wait 3 days for something?  

• In Exodus, Moses tells Pharaoh that the Israelites were going to go out into the wilderness for 3 days.
• Darkness plague? Three days
• The Ark of the Covenant was captured by the Philistines for three days before being returned to the Israelites
• Jonah was in the belly of the large fish for three days
• Esther fasted for three days before approaching the king to save the Israelites
• Hosea 6:2 says this, “After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight”

Fascinating, right?  So according to tradition, Jesus died and was raised from the dead three days later.  Now, because we are really smart, we notice that Good Friday is not three days away from Easter Sunday.  But look how often three days appears.  This would have been something that people would have remembered.  We should remember.  Maybe the three days is because something good usually happened at the end of three days of darkness.  

I’m still working on this.  Come check us out this Saturday at 5pm to see where I’ve landed.

I moved to Minnesota almost 7 years ago.  There are several things I had to learn with that move.  First of all, Minnesota is wrong.  The game is Duck Duck Goose.  What the heck is a Duck Duck Gray Duck?   Who cares what color the duck is, it is a freaking goose!  I will show leniency in the hot dish vs casserole debate.  Because a casserole done right is a hot dish.  But I will never cave on the Gray Duck.  Never.  It is the principal of the whole thing.

The thing that was hardest to learn (besides how to deal with the extreme cold) was that community doesn’t just happen.  Maybe I was spoiled in college, but I left behind a crazy great community that was intentional about getting people together.  I tried to rebel against it while there, and now I would give anything to have that back.  I am now in a place that I have lived in for a few years.  A place that I love, with a great ready-made community at the church that employs me.  But a community outside of the people who have to like me?  A community that has known me for years and wants to challenge me and care about me and is willing to call me on stuff?  A community of people who are at a similar life stage and facing some of the same struggles I am?  That is still formulating.

I just read an article from Relevant Magazine about community in which the writer said that the church is not responsible for whether or not you have friends.  We have made community into friendship.  But community is more than just friendship.  It is about doing life together.

When I was in 7th grade, my friend’s dad died in a horrible, tragic accident.  My hometown was really small, so everyone knew who her dad was.  It was interesting to be at their house for the weeks after.  People kept dropping off casseroles.  People who my friend didn’t even know dropped off food for more than a month.  That is community.

That is what we want to be at Thrive.  We definitely do not have it all figured out yet, but we are working on it.  A community that loves each other and does life together.  Even if it is sometimes messy and awkward.  We want to extend that community to people outside of the Advent community.  And I am going out on a limb here and saying that personally, I am hoping that Thrive can be a place where people who are struggling to find a place like I am can find that community that is so hard to find when you leave an old life for something new.

They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers.  Everyone around was in awe—all those wonders and signs done through the apostles! And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person’s need was met.They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved.               ~Acts 2:42-47