How Sweet It Is

Friday night was especially sweet for me. Eileen and Joshua were in California re-connecting with friends there, while I was here in Paducah enjoying way too much frozen yogurt with Kent and Tracey Buchanan. (O.K., so the sweet pun was a little intentional.) We laughed and chatted like comrades who’ve done life together for decades.

Anyway, I thought you might enjoy a couple of the photos that Eileen sent home: Josh with his best SoCal bud Noah at the San Diego Zoo; and some of the women from our former Growth Group, part of the church’s discipleship ministry. Wonderful moments not to be taken for granted.

Anyway, when I got back to the house that evening, after spending some time on my sermon, I was surprised to see that the FBC college group meeting at our home was still very much “in session.” You have to remember that 11:00 p.m. is now very late in my book. (Can you say “old and boring?)

What a blessing I walked into! Now I don’t know exactly how you’ve done it, First Baptist Paducah, but I must say that you’ve managed to raise one of the finest crops of young adults I’ve ever been privileged to know! These college-age believers are an absolute joy to hang out with, and to share life with in general for that matter. This sweet treat was the icing on the cake for me.

Later it hit me. Though we were thousands of miles apart, Eileen, Joshua, and I were all experiencing the love and fellowship of the body of Christ. And not one of us was in a church building.

In his book Follow Me, Pastor David Platt makes this compelling observation: “The majority of people in America associate a church with a physical building … Identification of churches with buildings may seem common to us, but it’s foreign to the New Testament, where we never once see the church described as a physical building.”

Buildings can be great blessings as ministry outposts, but our real identity is “in Christ.” We’re God’s family (Ephesians 2:19-22). May our Lord grace us with many more “late nights” of laughter, watermelon, new friends, and heartfelt praise. O, how sweet it is!