Hi,

We are always considering more ways we can connect with our community, getting to know our neighbors, with an agenda of simply loving them like Jesus would do. This is what it means to be the church, engaging with the world around us.

This isn’t just a “good idea.” This is at the heart of what Jesus said was the MOST IMPORTANT thing we are to be doing: Loving God and loving our neighbors. (see Matthew 22:36-40)

This is not a marketing campaign. This is about genuinely caring about the people we encounter every day, as well as the people who live all around us, including the people we may have been inadvertently overlooking! This is a mission of love.

I am inviting YOU to be a part of this effort at Bethany.

Please consider joining our Bethany Beyond Walls Ministry Team. How might you be of help? I don’t know! We’ll find a way to include you, as all of our combined gifts and talents will be important in this. We are very much exploring some new exciting ideas for the year ahead!

This website has a TON of information on this topic, so if you are intrigued to learn more, please click around and read more about all of this.

You might start HERE: Who Are We Maybe Overlooking? and then at the bottom of each page it has a link to the next page to read.

Email me at kevin@gourley.com :

• if you want to join our email group just to follow what we’re doing, or…
• if you want to join our team and be a part of this wonderful endeavor

God bless you all.
Kevin

Here’s a great blog article by Jake Thurston from Indiana Wesley University.

Link: The Gathered Church and the Scattered Church

I just wanted to highlight this part of the article:

“The Church was never meant to be confined to a group of people who meet in a building for an hour once a week. The Church, God’s chosen people, are ultimately sent on a mission to make his name known everywhere they go through everything they do. Therefore, the Gathered Church’s job is to build up God’s people so they can scatter into the mission field. This is called the Scattered Church.

The Scattered Church is Christ-followers doing ministry outside the church building’s walls. They are actively engaging in the mission field through their work, families, and extra-curricular activities. Every waking moment, the Scattered Church is rubbing shoulders with people who don’t know Jesus, are far from him, or need built up in their own faith. This occurs when a barista encourages a customer who is having a bad day, a businesswoman casts a vision that makes the world a better place through Christian values, or a stay-at-home dad who reads Bible stories to his three kids. But then, after a week of ministry, the Scattered Church gathers together again on Sunday for worship, confessing sins, and being built up by the Word before scattering to their mission fields again.”