May 2006
As many of you know by now, at our April session meeting, we decided not to go ahead with the day care center here at Kiowa Creek Community Church. We are continuing to work on fixing up the sub-basement with the hopes of turning that space into a place where our youth can meet. The session did leave the door open to consider the idea of day care at a future date – ministries such as this are as much a matter of timing as anything else.
The decision made on the 17th of April was a very difficult one. As I watched session consider the pros and cons of the day care, I was impressed with how seriously they took their task. I told the session that this was a very important decision, in that it would change the way that we do ministry at Kiowa Creek Community Church. In fact, I told them that it is one of the few real decisions that they will be making regarding this church. Let me explain. When a church looks for a pastor, that is important, but ultimately, the choice is whether or not they should hire candidate A or B. Understand, I am not trying to downplay the importance of hiring the right candidate, but the church is looking for a pastor that will take them where they want to go, and so the decision really is, “Which pastor fits us the best”. A choice needs to be made, but not a real decision about how the church will function. Now if that church were to decide not to hire a pastor, but rather, become a series of house churches and sell their church property, that would be a real decision because they would be committing themselves to looking at church in a drastically different way. Although not as drastic as becoming house churches, the day care center will only work here if we commit to doing church differently, if we decide that we must minister to those outside our church community in order to bring them into the community of believers. Our desire needs to be more than just providing a service for paying customers, but to figure out how to shower both the children and their parents in the mercy and love of God.
