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Hello everybody, My wife Brenda and I have just started a house church this past Sunday that will meet in several different homes here in the Chillicothe/Peoria area in Central ,Illinois. I left the United Methodist Church after 16 years. We have charismatic/Pentecotal roots and have also been gteatly affected positively by some of the past and present renewal movements God has graciously initiated. I welcome all other Illinois residents who might be interested in making this shift! Blessings, Jeff and Brenda Hurst
I hope your fellowship is with God and with His son Jesus. Let me comment on something here, I am often perplexed by the categorizations and names we use e.g charismatic/pentecostal and others like this. I wonder if we could break out of all these modes and understand that we are simply servants of the living God and will be used by Him anyway.
There is a simplicity in Christ, imagine the apostles calling themselves pentecostals or charismatics. No they were bond servants with Christs simply that, they simply sought to be with Him and to have others know Him, Christ was the centrality of their gospel. Nothing less.
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Dear Joy, I agree about not using categorizations! It was only a summarization of where we have been. My wife and I both met at a independent Pentecostal Bible College and she was raised A/G and I was saved and initially nurtured by Pentecostal people--but I was raised Methodist but never was impacted like iwas the above group. So we understand what you are saying but were trying to let people know that if they were in at persuasion that we would have some understanding of that and show acceptance and love---that is hard to do in that little block given to write in. Since we have left the UMC, we are opent to all backgrounds of former or present affialation and especially just providing a safe place. We are certainly open to all people and we are praying most fervently that friendship evangelism would flow here and other places. Thanks for replying! Jeff
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Hi Joy and Jeff! We all have our background, don't we? We all have a particular "church tradition" in which our Christian lives began and were nurtured. In many ways we are the product of our backgrounds and learning where each other have come from helps us to understand where we are today!
Few of us want to go back where we came from but we desire to keep channels of communication open with others who are still there. But as we learn how the divisions that separate so many of the Lord's people are not according to the mind and will of God, we need to be willing to miinister across those artificial lines and also to be willing to be ministered to by others with whom we formerly had nothing to do!!!
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