Dearest brethren of Center Grove Church,
It is with pain in my heart and tears in my eyes that I write this letter. These three and a half years behind us have reaped so much fruit for God's Kingdom. Along with many of you, my wife and I have seen lives transformed by the grace and love of Jesus Christ. We have experienced the warmth and healing of God's mercy in genuine Christian community. I can think of no greater joy - save the love of Christ - than sharing in the chapters being written into God's story which we've been so graciously allowed.
We are filled with such joy and yet it burdens us in knowing that we have experienced more grief and agony from tongues of those whom we should call brother and sister than we have from those who do not claim to know Christ. I say this not to dismiss the work that God is doing through the people of Center Grove Church. It's hard to imagine a greater tragedy than to allow a foothold to the enemy who seeks to destroy what has been established and consecrated by God. Rather these words are meant to encourage you dear brothers and sisters to press on in love and in oneness in Christ Jesus. Do not give up! Do not give up on His goodness and do not give up on one another. Surely, our loving Father has yet to give up on any of us. We pray as we leave you that in the days and months and years ahead that Center Grove Church will be known for being a community which listens. May you listen for God's redeeming voice in the silence between the busyness which most mistake for life. Don Miller said it this way, "We can trust our fate to a jury of peers, we can work to accumulate wealth, buy beauty under a surgeon's knife, panic for our identities under the fickle friendship of culture, and still die in separation from the one voice we really needed to hear.
I was invited to Center Grove Church to dream and to cast a vision for the youth ministries at Center Grove Church. The vision which I continually saw before me and was convicted to follow was not that of efficiency and fast-paced programming, but instead had more to do with authentic, relational community. I believe with all of my heart that God was blessing and will continue to bless that ministry in which He has laid the foundation.
It pains us to leave you this way, not of our own sensing of God's calling us elsewhere. However, God can and will take all things and use them for His glory. Of that we can be quite sure.
Therefore, do not stop loving one another with your very lives. For love washes over a multitude of things and it is by our love for one another in which we will be recognized by the world as Christ's bride.
As the apostle Paul said, "When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power."
May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ reign in your minds and in your hearts,
joel
