Tuesday, February 19, 2013

just one too many

How many times do “coincidences” need to happen before you stop and say, “wait, that's way too many coincidences at once – something's up...”


For this blog, I'll say that number is 11.


Going backwards, this is the result of the 11 coincidences: The direction/focus that EMC wants to go with the English congregation is affirmed. At least, affirmed to me. =)


Here is what happened...


1)Ultimate frisbee game had to happen before 9pm (otherwise I wouldn't sub).. game was at 8pm

2)Couldn't use my bro's car to drive to the game myself (he made other plans)

3)Couldn't get ride from Alvin (he had family plans and wasn't playing) and no one on the team lived anywhere close to me so no one offered a ride (womp womp)

4)I had to switch my nursery shift from Feb 10 to Feb 17 (switch was requested by Doret) in order to have a conversation with Lawrence about subbing for my ultimate team called Goodies the next day (today) and I couldn't find a ride

5)Lawrence was also subbing for Goodies. For the record, he didn't sub once in my earlier season with Goodies. Anyway, he so graciously offered me a ride despite going very out of his way (thanks Lawrence!)

6)An email was 2 hours delayed... an email which contained someone else offering to pick me up from home to drive me to the game (I “blame” Wind Mobile for this delay)

7)The delay forced me to subway to Lawrence/Linda's place where a meaningful conversation about Midsize Group (MG) and sermon topics began (had I received noted email 10min earlier; i.e. Before I left my house, I wouldn't have met up w/ Lawrence/Linda before the game at all)

8)MG met today in the afternoon and the focus is on sermon content as it relates to the English Mission Statement: Cultivating a Community that Fully Responds to God (this MG focus was agreed upon by the 4 small groups a month ago that MG should be more aligned w/ the church direction)

9)The conversation which started in the Wong house, continued in the car ride to the ultimate frisbee game (I'm quite confident that if Linda didn't ask me first specifically, what is MG doing, I wouldn't have brought up the recent sermon scriptures/topics... and if MG didn't happen this afternoon, I would've forgotten)

10)After the game, Lawrence drove me home and I had the opportunity to hear what he and his small group needed from ET (In summary: ET lacks basic knowledge of scripture and general spiritual disciplines)

11)Three other small groups independently came to this same conclusion last month...


You may think I may have had other opportunities to talk to Lawrence/Linda, but no, I likely wouldn't have spoken to them before the EMC Meeting (Mar 1) because I'm out of town from Feb 22-25... which means, I wouldn't be as fired up about this church direction affirmation and wouldn't push for how much ETCBC NEEDS spiritual discipline to incorporated into the church direction.


We need to go back to the heart scriptures and it needs to happen at the pulpit.

Coincidences? I think not.   God has His wheels in motion and we just got on board. =)