🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌

I remember what it felt like, years ago, when I first felt life inside of me. Every kick and hiccup of the child within re-proclaimed God's design for us as co-creators. I quickly realized both big and small decisions are weighed on different scales when you understand you are doing it with Christ.

Now, we are stepping into a new season of co-laboring with Christ. We are launching a new church in Cape Town! In some ways, I've felt the familiar weight of a new parent. We dream of a place for people to feel at home with Jesus and their neighbors, no matter where they've come from. We believe His House should be the safest place for a person to become their whole, dearly-loved self.

This week, I felt a strange combination of gratitude, wonder and overwhelm as we considered details, big and small. I cued up my favorite album, and a short line from the second verse pierced my heart. "Look, I think sometimes we get so caught up on aspects of truth, we chose the dress above the bride..." ("Agenda" by Hastings)

It's not the dress. It's always been the bride. Jesus is the Bridegroom and His Church is the bride. (Read Ephesians 5:22-32 and Revelation 21:2.)

We're not hanging our hats on a new church's branding, venue or worship set list. We are loving God with our whole selves and letting the overflow of that build His church. We're asking Heaven to come down - house by house, street by street, until cities and nations are overwhelmed by the greatest Love.

It is a joy and a privilege to co-labor with Christ - to build one of many necessary houses for His Bride to gather. There will be many plans and decisions ahead, but this week's call to worship is to keep Jesus as our first and only agenda.

Listen to Benjamin Williams Hastings' "Agenda - Live at the Sound Emporium".