Worship Gathering this Weekend!

What we’ve been working toward for the last couple months is coming to fruition this weekend with the first monthly worship gathering of the Storyline Community.

Thanks to all of you who prayed that we’d find a venue to meet in — we did, and the doors opened for it in providential ways. Why did I doubt?

This is a new beginning for Storyline, though perhaps not in the same way the first worship gathering is for many new churches.

For many church plants, the launch of the worship gathering is a sort of grand opening — the birthday of the church.

When asked when they launched the new church, most church planters respond by mentioning the date of the grand opening worship gathering.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with that.

But Storyline’s worship gathering plays a different role. In the Storyline Community, the worship gathering demonstrates that we’ve succeeded in developing a network of house churches that now need a gathering in which they can come together for mutual support and celebration.

The launch of our worship gathering is not the launch of Storyline as much as it is an outgrowth of our house church network.

In fact, Storyline actually launched on May 4 when we started the first house church gathering. We launched again in the middle of October with the start of the second house church gathering.

And hopefully we’ll launch many more times in the future…one day sending teams of people who will go elsewhere to begin similar networks.

Rejoice with us as this community of house churches comes to life further through the advent of the first worship gathering. It is in a small way God’s own advent in Uptown (though he’s been here all along, of course).

On February 8th, we plan to host an “Open House” worship gathering where we’ll invite all our friends, partners in mission and the Uptown community to get a glimpse of what God is doing in the Storyline Community. The venue for the occasion will be one of Uptown’s coolest…we’ll keep you in suspense.

Everyone is invited.

We hope in that gathering to say thanks to our friends and supporters and also to pledge to our community friends that we are here to serve the cause of justice and mercy in our city. If Uptown Dallas is not a better place for Storyline having been here, then we are failing in God’s purposes for us.

Please pray for us as we continue to arrange the details for the weekend. We want more than anything for it to inspire people to trust God more deeply in their lives.

You can read more about our gathering at www.storylinecommunity.com/upcoming-worship-gathering.