Douglas County is growing.
If you live here, you know that’s the understatement of the century. It’s really growing.
The latest demographic data I could find for today shows an anticipated 11% growth rate in the SOTH zip code (30135) over the next 5 years. The national average for that same time period is projected at less than 5%.
Our county is growing.
Rapid growth is a fascinating thing. It’s a particularly American phenomenon. We’re optimistic people, we have room to expand, we have plenty of kids (more than any other industrialized nation), and our houses are big enough to hold large families.
Even so, watching rapid growth in an American small town is a fascinating thing.
In the last community in which Holly and I lived, the growth rate was moving at an even faster rate. Not unlike Douglasville, Evans is a place that has seen awesome transformation. New homes, new schools, new people, new businesses, new government, newcomers.
New.
As a result, I have listened for years to the heartfelt and heart-wrenching words of local people trying to cope with change. As one of the newcomers, I see the bustling growth of subdivisions and clearing for new shopping centers as places of opportunity and possibility. I see property values on the rise, and a great quality of life for more people.
For me, such scenes of “progress” don’t hold any pain --- because I don’t know the stories that have gone before.
When I tell you how to get somewhere in Douglasville, you won’t hear me say, “you know, hang a left where the old Smith place used to be.”
I’m new. I don’t know where the “Old Smith Place” used to be. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t ever there.
Change….growth…is as painful as exciting.
But what about change and growth --- in our hearts?
What if God wants to do something new with our lives?
A friend sent me a wonderful, and fascinating view of God excerpted from a recent article by Will Willimon, bishop of the North Alabama Conference, scholar, theologian, and former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University.
Willimon says, in part:
I’ve asked mainline pastors, "Who is the most sinned-against person of the Holy Trinity?" They always answer, "The Holy Spirit." Let's confess: there is this sinful tendency in the church to want to contain and stabilize God. Church furniture tends to be heavier than it needs to be—large and bolted to the floor. Church buildings tend to be built more substantially than is necessary. Church scholars tend to characterize God as an ossified essence. Perhaps this attempt forever to stabilize and to secure the church comes from the church's inchoate knowledge that it is the nature of this God's word to cause oaks to whirl, to shake the foundations, to rip doors off hinges (Ps. 29; Acts 2).
…to be apostolic is to be a body in motion, a church that is sent. It is not to seek permanence, stability or some significance of its own, but instead to be content to be apostolic and to serve at the pleasure of the One who calls and commissions. Introversion is the death of a church because the Trinity, for all its loving concern, seems to be ruthless in killing any church that won't be apostolic.
The comforting thing is that we don't have to content ourselves with the sorry state of the present church because the living God keeps raising up a new church. "A sower went out to sow . . ."
…Here is a God who is peripatetic, nomadic, ecstatic, unable to settle down. Jesus told many stories that begin, "A rich man called all of his servants in, distributed everything he had, then left." God has absconded our stable fellowship in order to beat the bushes in search of people we don't like, has abandoned the sheep safe in the fold in order to risk looking for the lost.
John Ortberg tells us in our current study, If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat, that disciples of this active, moving, unpredictable God have a choice.
Faith or fear.
I have felt the pain of communities that, with good and understandable cause, wanted to contain growth --- slow it, or make it happen in an acceptable pattern, one small notch at a time. Fear of a community out of control has the power to change elections, adopt codes and shape lawmaking.
But when God takes root in a heart, code enforcement gets pretty difficult. God isn’t interested in our fear, but he really does love to see us step toward him in faith.
Ortberg reminds us this week that God’s most frequent commandment in scripture is “be not afraid.” It happens 366 times.
Get the picture? New happens. God will help us. Be not afraid.
Grace, Peace, & Push –
Adam
If you live here, you know that’s the understatement of the century. It’s really growing.
The latest demographic data I could find for today shows an anticipated 11% growth rate in the SOTH zip code (30135) over the next 5 years. The national average for that same time period is projected at less than 5%.
Our county is growing.
Rapid growth is a fascinating thing. It’s a particularly American phenomenon. We’re optimistic people, we have room to expand, we have plenty of kids (more than any other industrialized nation), and our houses are big enough to hold large families.
Even so, watching rapid growth in an American small town is a fascinating thing.
In the last community in which Holly and I lived, the growth rate was moving at an even faster rate. Not unlike Douglasville, Evans is a place that has seen awesome transformation. New homes, new schools, new people, new businesses, new government, newcomers.
New.
As a result, I have listened for years to the heartfelt and heart-wrenching words of local people trying to cope with change. As one of the newcomers, I see the bustling growth of subdivisions and clearing for new shopping centers as places of opportunity and possibility. I see property values on the rise, and a great quality of life for more people.
For me, such scenes of “progress” don’t hold any pain --- because I don’t know the stories that have gone before.
When I tell you how to get somewhere in Douglasville, you won’t hear me say, “you know, hang a left where the old Smith place used to be.”
I’m new. I don’t know where the “Old Smith Place” used to be. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t ever there.
Change….growth…is as painful as exciting.
But what about change and growth --- in our hearts?
What if God wants to do something new with our lives?
A friend sent me a wonderful, and fascinating view of God excerpted from a recent article by Will Willimon, bishop of the North Alabama Conference, scholar, theologian, and former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University.
Willimon says, in part:
I’ve asked mainline pastors, "Who is the most sinned-against person of the Holy Trinity?" They always answer, "The Holy Spirit." Let's confess: there is this sinful tendency in the church to want to contain and stabilize God. Church furniture tends to be heavier than it needs to be—large and bolted to the floor. Church buildings tend to be built more substantially than is necessary. Church scholars tend to characterize God as an ossified essence. Perhaps this attempt forever to stabilize and to secure the church comes from the church's inchoate knowledge that it is the nature of this God's word to cause oaks to whirl, to shake the foundations, to rip doors off hinges (Ps. 29; Acts 2).
…to be apostolic is to be a body in motion, a church that is sent. It is not to seek permanence, stability or some significance of its own, but instead to be content to be apostolic and to serve at the pleasure of the One who calls and commissions. Introversion is the death of a church because the Trinity, for all its loving concern, seems to be ruthless in killing any church that won't be apostolic.
The comforting thing is that we don't have to content ourselves with the sorry state of the present church because the living God keeps raising up a new church. "A sower went out to sow . . ."
…Here is a God who is peripatetic, nomadic, ecstatic, unable to settle down. Jesus told many stories that begin, "A rich man called all of his servants in, distributed everything he had, then left." God has absconded our stable fellowship in order to beat the bushes in search of people we don't like, has abandoned the sheep safe in the fold in order to risk looking for the lost.
John Ortberg tells us in our current study, If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat, that disciples of this active, moving, unpredictable God have a choice.
Faith or fear.
I have felt the pain of communities that, with good and understandable cause, wanted to contain growth --- slow it, or make it happen in an acceptable pattern, one small notch at a time. Fear of a community out of control has the power to change elections, adopt codes and shape lawmaking.
But when God takes root in a heart, code enforcement gets pretty difficult. God isn’t interested in our fear, but he really does love to see us step toward him in faith.
Ortberg reminds us this week that God’s most frequent commandment in scripture is “be not afraid.” It happens 366 times.
Get the picture? New happens. God will help us. Be not afraid.
Grace, Peace, & Push –
Adam
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