Surrounding all things Seven Mile in prayer
For those who are working with us to surround all things Seven Mile Road in prayer, here is a quick update of some places where we need serious grace:
1, the place we are in seats 125 and we are all of a suddenly running 115 every week. So we are out of space, are doing all the groundwork we can for a potential move to a bigger and better space for the Sunday gathering we do. We don’t have much time before we are literally out of space, and although we do have an Option A, there are other options as well. So we need wisdom and patience on this.
2, our latest directory has about 140 faces in it including our kids. (Oh, and 7 pregnant moms.) 50 of the adults are gathering weekly in our smaller communities, and about 20 more are wanting in now, so we need to lead the multiplication of our soulcare communities well as it is the place where discipleship is happening. This takes wisdom with leaders, locations, nature of the new groups, etc.
3, Friday night we are doing a campus event at Gordon Conwell for the seminary guys/couples who are tracking with us. We need much grace to communicate vision and call this crew to our mission… and not just to attendance with us.
4, in order to catch up to what’s happening already and get ahead of what is about to happen, we need at least 3 more people coming on in leadership next year to handle some areas that are desperate for attention. This means the hard work of clarifying roles, calling the right people, resourcing them to lead well, etc.
5, we are dealing, of course, with the daily pastoral grinds of addiction, father abdication, struggling marriages, porn problems, emotional exhaustion, laziness, miscommunication, doubt, fear, greed, and all the rest of the stuff that sons of Adam and daughters of Eve like us bring when we are put in community.
6, our Track for preparing the souls of future pastors/planters is going well, but working out issues of call can be hard work, and we need ears to hear how and where God by His Spirit is leading these men.
Given all this (and way more), we will be calling our people to change for the sake of the mission, and nobody likes change. So we are feeling the weight of needing to lead that well.
As I tell everyone who is not a regular part of Seven Mile Road, you would LOVE this church if you were here. We’re trying to hard to keep the Gospel anchored at the heart of every single thing we do… prayer, preaching, teaching, soulcare, children, mercy, hospitality, assimilation, music, communications, leadership tracks, operations, space, giving, media, all of it. We’re committed to contextualizing and living truth well so that the glory of the grace of God can flood the streets just north of Boston. And we’re committed to unity among the saints as we go about the mission.
Personally, my soul is great, but I’m breathing heavy and kind of staring at this next hill which is the steepest yet.
Thanks for reading and praying. Anything we can be helping you with, just let us know.
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