church retreat

I just got back from Immanuel Fellowship's annual church retreat. Every year we go to Snow Mountain Ranch for a weekend. It's so much fun. We stay together in rooms that hold up to six people, eat all our meals together, swim, play kick ball, roller skate, hike, you get the idea. It's a good time to hang out and get to know everyone better.

This year all the times of teaching we had were focused on the Bride. (The room we rented for our gatherings had recently been used for a wedding and the decorations hadn't been taken down yet. How perfect is that?) A few things that stuck out to me were that we really need to identify ourselves with the Bride. Church is not a building, or even an organization, it's us. We can stand back and be disillusioned, criticize her, and be bitter, but we can't escape the fact that she is us and we are her. Also if she is the bride of Christ and Jesus gave Himself up for her then we need to learn to love her as He does. She is the body of Christ. I recently read an article from the book called The Relevant Church which stated that because the church is Christ's Bride and body we cannot really love Him unless we also love His church. However the church is not perfect. We are imperfect people thus the church is imperfect. God is working in His Son's Bride to purify her. We need to be doing the same; helping her rather than putting her down. We need to be helping her purify herself for Jesus. I need to pray for the whole church world wide to become more of what God made her to be, and ask God for more vision to see this.

Saturday night we always have a ministry time. You can come up front and pray, ask for prayer, and pray for others. I had to surrender my desire to have people's approval. That one will be a long time in the works. ; ) I had the privilege of praying for a few of my friends. I also got to translate for an English-speaking couple who were trying to pray for a guy who spoke Spanish. They were having a very hard time communicating with their limited knowledge of each other's languages. It was really cool to be able to help them out.

On the last day of the retreat we usually play a game of kick-ball. However this year it was cold, windy, and snowing on and off. So we played dodge-ball instead. I've got to admit that I like this a lot better. I like the chaos of it. I'm much better at it too. My team won (not because of me) by what seemed like a very little bit. And then it was over. *sigh* Well I'll be back next year, looking forward to it already....