This past week, I was at a conference and one of the speakers was a guy named Mark Batterson.  Mark is the lead pastor of a church in the heart of Washington DC, called National Community Church and has written a couple of books, one of which is called, "In the Pit with the Lion on a Snowy Day" (It's on our All Saints Bookshelf, so check it out!).  What challenged me was a quote that he shared from a Christ follower around the turn of the 20th century named C.T. Studd:

"Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell."

Studd grew up as part of an English aristocratic family, yet an encounter with Jesus changed him to see the need to engage and serve his world around him as opposed to the world that he knew which was relative safety and security.  In fact Studd's belief in Jesus compelled him to work and serve in a context that was completely foreign to him - rural China, Africa and India.

I appreciate Pastor Bill's comments in his message last week about the choices we make.  How fitting it is therefore, that as we journey together through this series in Colossians, as we continue to grow, we as a church are always faced with the opportunity to choose between being insular or engaged.  It is the choice to be always outwardly focused or to be insular, "safe", and keep to ourselves.  I have seen, all too often those churches that when they get bigger begin to lose that "dangerous edge," where maintaining programs isn't what it used to be, where they become more risk averse and settle for mediocrity with its leadership and its people.  It's the attitude that says, "When are you going to do a gathering for us who have been here, or what about us who have been here for a while?"  The dangerous edge that helped start the church has now succumbed to settling for the status quo.

To be truly dangerous with the message of Jesus is not achieved through rhetoric with dogmatic truth only then to scurry to our own fortresses of ecclesiastical safety, but rather to move forward and encounter this city through love and service in the name of Jesus.   Could you imagine what that would look like in Seattle?  To truly see this city changed?  I am thrilled, humbled, and excited to participate in that with you.  I hope that we can all be a little "Studd-ly."

I'll see you on Sunday.  Grace to you.

- Pastor Joel