The other side of the pulpit

God put a conviction in my life a year ago this month. At the time, it wasn’t a comfortable conviction it caused a lot of pain in my life, the life of my family and a church full of people who God entrusted us to pastor. It was a bit of a confusing time but I knew for an unspecified season in my life I was not to earn money from working in “The Church”. I was to work outside the bubble, study His Word and volunteer for the cause of Christ. (Thank you Destiny friends for supporting me through this transition!)

This year of being a missionary to OKC has blown me away. I’ve made some lifelong friendships, connected with ministries all over OKC, learned some great truths and served every segment of the population. It has been an absolute blast!

One thing I learned by sitting on the other side of the pulpit this year is that there are people in the church who work their 40-50 hours per week and still make time to serve and love.  It was powerful to see these individuals give of their time and resources. Sadly, I also saw the other side, people who were too worn out from their jobs and their busy family lives to even add one more thing into their schedule.

This gave me a new passion, a passion to empower people to change from merely attending a church to being The Church. The Paseo Meetup was started with this in mind. A group of people who attend various churches around OKC coming together to be The Church to the Paseo area and greater OKC. The pieces are coming together and God is doing something really special and exciting.

Seeing this begin to happen has taught me that churches across America might be overstaffed!  Come back tomorrow for a shocking continuation of this idea from Dave Gibbons, Pastor of NewSong Church in Irvine, Ca.  It should be fun!

-Rex Barrett
image via [phil h]