The Church Gathered

The Church Gathered by Colin Brokaw

The Church Gathered has been a great start to my Sundays, and I look forward to it every week.  After some time to grab some coffee and a bagel, we warm up with a few songs.  It’s been fun singing some of my favorite songs of my youth with my kids, now three and six years old. They’re a little shy about “singing out loud on the telephone wire” on Sunday morning in front of their cousins, but we’ll sing “All God’s Critters”, “Peace Like a River”, and the latest Bible School songs in the car throughout the week.

I do have to admit that my favorite part of The Church Gathered is when the kids are off to their Sunday School classrooms and the adults circle up to discuss the topic of the week.  I saw on the weekly “This Week at Zion” email recently that the topic for the upcoming Sunday would be “Kids Ask the Darndest Things”.  I was reading The Children’s Bible to Chloe that week when we came to the passage “all who are worthy will join God in heaven”.  I could feel the inevitable question coming, and knew I’d have something to share with the group on Sunday.  I think everyone enjoyed hearing how I did my best to come up with an answer.  It was heartening to hear that others had similar experiences, and I was encouraged that I probably did okay. 

Some of the past topics covered how to talk to your kids about the latest tragedy on the front page, how Lutheranism compares to other Protestant denominations, how to talk to friends or coworkers about your faith, and what do you do when prayers go unanswered.  Many of these conversations have been deep, some highly educational, and some emotional.  (We’ve laughed / we’ve cried…)  In all cases, we understood that we were not alone in how we thought about these topics.

A number of years ago I worked closer to Oldwick, and loved coming to Book of Faith over lunch break on Wednesdays.  As my job moved further away, I really missed that time for Bible study, conversation with friends, and soaking in Pastor Summer’s incredible depth of knowledge about church history and different ways to think about familiar scripture.  The Church Gathered has brought back a lot of what I was missing.  Best of all has been the opportunity to spend time with friends who attend a different service, making new friends, and getting to know everyone better through our discussions.  I highly recommend coming to The Church Gathered if you haven’t tried it before – it’s casual, you can just listen in if you want, and I’m sure you won’t regret it.

The Church Gathered begins immediately following 8:30 worship at the CEB.  Refreshments 9:30-9:45.  Singing 9:45-10:00.  Discussion 10:00-10:45.  I hope you’ll join us.