Sorry about the absence, but I got busy. I haven’t finished my story of Nehemiah and the bus ministry and the unruly kids in kids church. So let’s pick it back up again, shall we?

Deep Thought: Here’s a good thing to do if you go to a party and you don’t know anybody: First, take out the garbage. Then go around and collect any extra garbage that people might have, like a crumpled-up napkin, and take that out, too. Pretty soon people will want to meet this busy garbage guy.

I am pretty sure this is the tactic that Nehemiah employed when he first moved back to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls. Then when he became popular enough as that garbage guy, he introduced them to the vision of rebuilding the walls. He introduced the vision of rebuilding the walls by showing them the problem. The problem was the gates were burned and the walls were destroyed. Now that he had identified the problem, the next element of vision was the solution. He brought that next in verse 17 of the 2nd chapter of Nehemiah.

Nehemiah 2:17 “Come, let us rebuild the walls of Jerusalem that we may no longer be a reproach.”

This is how it should be. The walls of this city lay in rubble. The solution: let’s rebuild them. Why? So we will no longer a reproach. The solution addresses the problem and accomplishes the vision – that Jerusalem is no longer a reproach.

That’s how we got Shoreline’s vision; we saw that people didn’t want to have anything to do with God because of their  perception of God. For the most part, their perception of God was formed by the church and by Christians. We saw how it is, wrong perception of God and how it should be; they should have a better understanding of who God is and  how He desires to be closer to them . So the solution was to change people’s perception of God. Hence the vision, changing people’s perception of God by changing their perception of church.

If they have a different perception of the church, they will like going to church. Then they’ll make friends and get invited to parties and then they won’t have to be the garbage man because they will know people.

Side note: Don’t forget Shoreline Insider tomorrow night at the Destin Community Center @ 7pm. Snacks and child care will be provided.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Pastor Eric. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.