The Church@Rapha

Next month, we will be celebrating our 6th anniversary of holding a service on the Rapha Compound.
6 years?
Yep, although it doesn't seem like it has been that long.
I knew that God would lead me to Rapha eventually when I first started going as a volunteer teacher.
Even as we were doing House of Blue at the Gadsden Vineyard, I knew that at some point we would hold a service there on the property at Rapha. It was just a matter of God's timing.
Then on a Sunday morning in April back in 2006, we met for the first time.
Once again, God had us in a learning stage.
We took what we had learned from our time at the Vineyard and God added to it as we were doing church a new way.

I messed up a lot. Messages were good but never seemed to be what I felt they should be. The worship was a work in progress and I am so grateful to Debbie Handy, Wayne Wimpee and Barry Hooks for their patience with me. In all the hub-bub and mess, God was still showing up and lives were being changed.
The Church@Rapha was off and running.

God has been very gracious to us, in that we still are seeing the evidence of His hand and presence in our meetings. I can't tell you how many men have been saved and baptized since we started in 2006...hundreds.
But I can tell you this. The reason this service works isn't because of me........it's because those who come through that door on Saturday night, do so with hungry hearts. They are ready to meet with God.

Over the years, we have gone through seasons where God called us to specific teachings and areas of teachings. Back in December of 2009, Seth Barber spoke a message that opened the door for God to lead us through the 12 Steps in a year. All of 2010 was spent teaching the steps according to scripture. Each month we took a step and taught on it for the entire month. You can find these messages over in our podcast section of this blog.

Even in all the change, there has been one under lying thought that God has kept alive. We are a church. We are a different church with a focus that is uniquely ours, but a church none the less. Why are we different? Because our congregation is always in transition. There is a turn over every seven weeks. This presents us with some unique problems in the way we approach what we do. We have to clearly define what our intention is and what we feel like God is wanting to accomplish during that persons time at Rapha.

Our number one goal is:
To present a God that is approachable and desires to have relationship with us.
We do so by emphasizing worship. Worship is our highest priority in that we believe that we were created to worship the Lord. We do so in our music, in our messages, in our giving and in our lives. Saturday night is a time of celebration for what God has done to us and through us by bringing us out of addiction into a living, breathing, changing relationship with Him.
We want to emphasize that God is not some entity sitting off in a distant galaxy but rather a loving creator that desires to come and interact with his creation. We do this through our ministry, or clinic time as John Wimber called it.

Secondly, we want to instill an understanding that God has called all believers to participate in the Kingdom of God. That is a fancy way of saying "God wants us to do the stuff that Jesus did."
Matthew 10:1 reads: Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to cast out evil spirits and to heal every kind of disease and illness.
Again, at the end of the book of Matthew, Jesus commissions his disciples to take the message and demonstrate what they had been taught to others. In the process of doing this, they were to make other disciples who, in turn, would take the message also. It was reproduction by divine design.
So our call is to begin to plant the seed in those who come to our meetings at Rapha, that they have a call and greater purpose than simply being clean and sober.  They have been extended an invitation to participate in the kingdom rule of God here in our town, our county and state. To do the works of Christ.
To pray for the sick and see them healed.
To proclaim liberty to the captives and see them set free from whatever bondage sin has them in.
To break off demonic spirits and influence.
To feed the hungry and clothe the naked.
To be a voice crying out in the wilderness of sin and addiction....."Prepare yourselves because Jesus is here to set you free."
Pipe dream? I don't think so.
I could tell you thousands of stories about this Jesus and the things I have seen him do, not only in my own life, but in the lives of the people who had come through our meetings. Here again....it isn't about me.....It's just Jesus.

I realize that everyone will not like our model of church (the way our services are conducted).
Most of the time, it is a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of service. By that I mean that we are trying to hear what God wants to do rather than what I want to do. I always go with a message, but I am prepared to throw it away at any moment when God shows up. I rather listen to Him than myself anyway.

I want to provide a place where someone can meet this Jesus that I am so much in love with.
I want to be a non-hyped environment, free from religious jargon and language (after all, Jesus didn't sound religious did he?) A place where we can all gather and be changed into the men and women who are hungry to tell others and demonstrate the power of the Kingdom of God.

I would that you pray for us at the Church@Rapha as we go through these changes over the coming weeks and months. You have a standing invitation to join us on Saturday nights at 7 p.m. for our meeting.
Thanks for stopping by Greene Street Letters.
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God on you.......
mb