Chrysalis Weekend!

A Chrysalis is the time in the early stage of a butterfly's development where they are cocooned as they form their wings for flight. It's a vulnerable time for the butterfly as it undergoes significant changes. It's a place that is completely nurturing and formative. Inside the cocoon, the butterfly has everything that it needs...but is NOT the final stage of the butterfly! The purpose of the nurturing, formative stage is so that the butterfly can fly!

This weekend, Dale and I will be at Camp Clark Williamson with close to fifty youth and adults for a weekend of re-connecting with God. The focus of the Chrysalis (and the Emmaus) weekend is developing a clear understanding of what it means to live in God's agape-style love. For many of the youth, it will be a time they will remember for the rest of their lives. Dale and I have seen young people visibly and tangibly moved by their encounter with God on the Chrysalis retreat.

Please pray with us over this weekend that the retreat be a powerful encounter with God! We covet your prayers and intercession for our leadership of the retreat, for the fertile soil of the heart into which good seed will be planted, and for the young men themselves to which we will be ministering - that they will receive EVERY good gift God has for them this weekend.

As I write this, it occurs to me how the process I've just described resembles so well what we've experienced at Promise Church! The Lord has given us an amazing season to get to know each other and create a safe and nurturing place for healing and community-formation to take place. He's cocooned us in some respects. But the sense that I and several of us are getting now is that the time has come for us to FLY!!!

That's exciting to me because it means that all that the Lord has been doing in the life of our church has been purposeful. It has been directed toward our RELEASE to minister in FREEDOM! As you pray for us this weekend at the retreat, include our church in your prayers, if you would. That we seize our divine opportunity to take flight and become the amazing church God has created us to be!

Blessings and favor in 2009!

Pastor Jay