There is an old expression, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”  That is quite true when it comes to this site, Numinous Writ.  In February I shared how my wife and I have begun pursuing a call to plant a new church in our area.  I said that I still intended to write for this site and would attempt to make posts every couple of weeks or so.

Now writing this in August, that obviously did not come into fruition!  There has been so much work to do bringing a new legal entity into the world that my attention has been captured up until now. 

Not to mention the various landmarks happening in our family (my oldest daughter started Kindergarten last week)!  Although I’ve had no shortage of ideas that I would like to flesh out in writing, when it comes to actually sitting down to put pen to paper (or fingers to keys, as it were) I have come up short.

However, I believe the tide has changed. 

This week we are officially chartering Grace Commons as a Global Methodist Church, and are welcoming our first members. 

It is an exciting time in ministry.  So much work has gone into bringing us to this point, and I look forward to celebrating this landmark as a congregation.

But what of Numinous Writ?

This site will continue, and I hope it will begin to grow into the image of the vision I first had when I began writing for it last year.

I have always envisioned Numinous Writ to be a place where people could come together and appreciate the goodness, beauty, and truth of the Gospel.

Obviously that is a rather dense sentence, and I have not unpacked it just yet in the articles I hope to write on the subject. 

But let me just say this…The Gospel, the good news that God has saved us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is not some dusty bit of doctrine meant to stay at arms-length behind the stained-glass piety of dead and dying men. 

Oh, no!  It is a proclamation—a grand announcement to the entire cosmos that a brand new day has finally dawned for all creation.  The same God who made the Heavens and the Earth has come to be with His people.  He has conquered sin and death, and graciously summons each and everyone one of us to be made new through Jesus Christ.

Such a message touches every corner of existence.  It startles us with its beauty.  It confronts us with its truth.  It heals us in its goodness.

Unfortunately, in our modern age (or postmodern…or post-postmodern), the Church rarely shares the message in its fullness. 

There are some, for instance, who only emphasize its truth.  They reduce the proclamation of the Kingdom to bite-sized pieces of theological bullet-points and cast a suspicious eye towards anyone who isn’t taking notes during the sermon.

Others emphasize the goodness of the message, but only as a means of beating others over the head with a moral sledgehammer.  Still others get lost in ecstasy over the beauty of the story, and yet they have no grounding in truth or moral growth and wander off into all manner of heresies and practices contrary to sound Biblical teaching.

My hope, my vision, is that Numinous Writ would be a place where we grapple with all three in a mighty way, daring to not let one ounce of the good news go to waste.  I want this to be a place of not only principles but also poetry, where the artistry of the faith is admired along with its contents. 

I hope I will not be alone in this endeavor; that others will catch on with the vision and want to contribute.

Is this too grand a vision for a lowly website like this, adrift, as it were, on the endless sea of the world wide web?  Perhaps.

But recently I have been encouraged by the story of the early church in the book of Acts.  As part of planting a new church, many seasoned planters and ministers suggested our congregation study Acts together, and I decided that was a great idea.

Now, preaching through the book of Acts is no small feat.  Luke’s history of the early church moves quickly and deftly from one thrilling sequence to the next. 

In one moment the audience is caught breathless at the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon humanity, and in the next we are treated to Peter’s masterful sermon where he exegetes Scripture both to interpret the events being witnessed and to proclaim the good news (Acts 2).

What I have been struck by the most during this adventure is how all throughout the story, the Holy Spirit is the only one who seems to really know what is going on. 

Oh sure, the apostles do their best to preach and teach and build the church, but in the end they are only human.  Instead of courageously paving the way, they often find themselves being driven about by the Holy Spirit from one unexpected opportunity to the next.

The apostles were a lot like us, in a way.  Their own plans for ministry were often interrupted.  Their dreams and visions sometimes came to pass, and at other times they realized they had been dreaming too small.

What the early church had to learn, what each of us has to learn, is that while our own plans may not always succeed, God’s plan is as sure and trustworthy as the rising and setting of the sun.

It’s this very truth that gives us the courage to think big and to trust that God accepts every offering made in faith, all our hopes and dreams, and uses them for His glory.

And so, in that same spirit of faith, I offer Numinous Writ in hopes that people will find on these pages a glimpse of the Savior who loves them and who calls them to step into everything God created them to be.

This has been a rather long and roundabout way of saying that I’ll be writing here more often, for real this time.

See you soon!